LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.

THE PROPOSED NEW STATUTES AT OXFORD.

[To THE EDITOR OF THE " EPROTATOR.1

Sra,—The articles which have appeared in the Times and the Daily 1Vews on the new Statutes proposed by the Oxford Uni- versity Commissioners show so much misapprehension of the scope and effect of these statutes, and seem to me in other ways so calculated to mislead the public, that I must beg for your permission to say a few words on this important subject.

" No research, no independent study, no free choice of sub- jects, no wide range of treatment, except in an occasional public lecture ; but a dull, unceasing round of mere teaching, rigidly subjected to the practical end of some specific examination," &c. These are the words in which the writer in the Times sums up his account of the " duties of an Oxford Professor of the future." What are the facts ?

First, as to the quantity of work, which is to leave the Pro- fessor no time for study and research. A Professor is to lecture at least twice a week during seven weeks in two or three terms,— three terms, if he is one of the most highly-paid Professors (re- ceiving from £800 to £900 a year), two, if he receives £400 or £500 a year ; and he is to give private instruction twice a week. Whereas a German Professor, with whose happy independence this state of things is pointedly contrasted, usually gives six or eight lectures a week, and for a considerably greater number of weeks than the twenty-one (or fourteen) of the Oxford Pro- fessor's year.

Then as to Lehrfreiheit,—free choice of subjects. The Oxford Professor, we are told, is to be rigidly subjected to specific examinations. The ground of this astonishing assertion seems to be that the Professor is to examine his own class, in the sub- ject of his own lectures. Comment is needless.

It is only necessary to point out, in reference to this part of the Times' article, that there is not the slightest ground for

saying that the statutes contemplate none bat undergraduates attending professorial lectures. It is true that they make no definite provisions for others attending, doubtless because they are meant to leave the Professors that freedom which the writer admires. And in the absence of definite provisions, it is not to• the words of the statutes that we are to look for an expression of the hopes and expectations with which they may have been framed.

The Commissioners have wisely abstained from merely hor- tatory enactments. The same obvious remark applies to the writer's complaint as to the absence of any provision for the Professors taking part in the advancement of learning or the prosecution of research.

I pass on to the same writer's account of the machinery by which the " dull, unceasing round " of four hours a week for two- fifths or one-third of the year is to be enforced, and the liberty of the Professors " effectually and finally stamped out." Omitting, as he says, all reference to collegiate and sub- professorial teaching—omitting, indeed, to observe that the statutes on these subjects are not yet published—he proceeds to describe the proposed Councils of Faculties, which are to consist of all the Professors and University Readers, together with elected representatives of the College teachers. How, then,. in his view, do these Councils—which are evidently intended by the Commissioners to help towards the much needed organisation of the teaching power in the University—tend to stamp out the liberty of Professors ? In the first place, apparently, by requiring the subjects of a year's lectures to be announced a few months beforehand. If, as the writer puts the case, the Professor is a Ritschl or a Bekker, " announcing a course of lectures he had been preparing for years, and to which scholars from all parts of Europe would flock," a few months' notice will not be amiss. But then we are told that the Council of his Faculty may object to the course. This is not so. The Council has no power to exclude any lectures offered by a Professor or Uni- versity Reader. The writer seems, indeed, to have partly un- derstood that the Council has not an unrestricted control. He goes on to say that in the case supposed, the Professor may have to submit " to the humiliating task of convincing a Council

on which men half his age, and with a tithe of his knowledge,. may be sitting, that his proposed lectures are in respect of their subject-matter a bond fide fulfilment of the statutory duties of his office.' " Here he falls into a gross mistake. The clause from which he is here quoting refers not to the Council of the Faculty, but to the Visitatorial Board,—a body not of an administrative but of a judicial character. Moreover,. this Board will have no right to interfere, unless the proposed course lies distinctly outside the subject of the Professor's chair. It need hardly be added that the supposition of a

Council of Oxford teachers discouraging a course of lectures- likeTy to attract scholars from all parts of Europe, is the wildest absurdity. The only fear is that no Board or Council will be sufficiently willing to act, even when a Professor's neglect of duty becomes a grave scandal.

The last sentence of the Times' article appears to hint at the possibility of some protest of a public kind being made by the

Oxford Professors. It would be much to be regretted if any such course were taken. It is very unlikely that the Professors, if they reject this scheme, will ever have as good a chance of im- proving their position in the University, and of setting them- selves right with the outside world.

The outside world, it is to be feared, imagines that the Professors already carry the conception of learned leisure to an undue length. The Daily News expresses this popular, and doubtless in most instances unjust, impression. The new

Statutes will hardly seem, to ordinary hard-working men out- side Oxford, to add materially to professorial duties. And they contain one provision which has escaped the criticism of the

Times and the Daily News—perhaps because their attention was not called to it—but which will certainly not escape less

favourable observers. A Professor who desires for any reason to be free from work for a term may obtain the leave of the Vice-Chancellor to give four (instead of two) lectures a week, with a proportionate amount of private instruction in the pre- vious term. In other words, it is conceived to be possible that

a person whose duties are already of the crashing character denounced by the Times and Daily News may find. it convenient

to double his work for a whole term. Does not this merciful provision look as if the ordinary duties of a Professor involved what an unfeeling public would call working half-time, or less?

The article in the Daily News is much shorter than that of the Times, and I need not detain your readers long over it, since it is entirely founded upon a single, wholly false assumption. It admits, as I have said, that a Professor's work under the Statutes now in force is popularly thought to be light. " A bed of roses and port wine," is the figurative expression which con- veys this meaning. What, then, is there in the new statutes that makes so vast and sinister a change There is to be a "Council of the Faculty," which would, or might, reject Sir Henry Maine's lectures on " Village Communities." The writer implies, if we press his language, that the value of such lec- tures would not be recognised by a Council consisting of Oxford Professors and Tutors. He is obviously unaware that Sir Henry Maine also lectured on the ordinary text-books of jurisprudence. But it is needless to urge these points, when we can ascertain, by a simple inspection of the proposed statutes, that they give the Council of the Faculty no power to refuse any course which a Professor may choose to announce.

" The dull, unceasing round of mere teaching." Glancing over the two articles once more, I seem to find in these words the key-note of the whole outcry. Mere teaching, or mere every-day work of any kind, is apt to seem dull, even when it comes in the moderate form which is the lot of an Oxford Pro- fessor. But if the Oxford Professors try to cure this by setting -up as their aim a paradise of leisure, filled by researches of European fame, they will inevitably find—or, at least, the public will find—that they have relinquished the substance for the shadow.—I am, Sir, &e.,

Oriel College, November 11th. D. B. Mouao.

have just noticed that Professor Bluntschli, writing in the Gegenwart of October 2nd about his visit to Oxford, calls attention to the insufficiency of the teaching. " The Professors," he goes on to say, " are not obliged, as we are, to deliver lectures almost daily." He evidently does not think that the backward state of learning and research is to be cured by an increase of professorial leisure.