THE UNIVERSITIES OF SCOTLAND.
Aiv impression is gaining ground that Ministers will oppose Mr. Rutherfurd's University Bill on the second reading. By so acting they would doubly stultify themselves. The terms in which Sir James Graham and Mr. Home Drummond spoke of the measure, on its first introduction, showed plainly that the leading men of the party in their hearts approve of it. This is not all : the prin- ciple which Mr. Rutherfurd's bill proposes to establish in the Scotch Universities is the principle which forms the basis of the Ministerial measure for establishing additional Colleges in Ire- land. If Ministers oppose the Scotch University Bill, they not only falsify hopes which they at first encouraged, but shrink from asserting in Scotland, in conformity with the wishes of the people, sound principles which they are forcing upon reluctant Ireland.
Mr. Rutherfurd's bill is the measure of an enlightened states- man. It makes no compromise with sectarianism of any kind. The Free Church people, and some of the other Presbyterian Dissenters, wish a small test of their own substituted for that which Mr. Rutherfurd proposes to remove. His refusal exposes him to the contingent embarrassment of a sectional opposition in his own camp. But he has relied upon principle, and the sound sense of Scotchmen. He leaves the theological chairs to their present possessors, the clergy of the Establishment ; but he throws open the literary and scientific chairs to candidates of every creed, by imposing no test whatever. The vacillation, the infirmity of purpose evinced by Ministers, threatens destruction to the Universities of Scotland. Hitherto, the theological students of all the Dissenting bodies have attended the literary and scientific classes of the Universities, preparatorily to their entering into the theological seminaries of their respective denominations. They added considerably to the number of stu- dents and the emoluments of the professors ; and the bitterness of sectarian controversy was materially allayed by the intimacies and friendships contracted at college between those who in time became pastors of different sects. If Mr. Rutherfurd's bill be thrown out, the Free Church and other Dissenting bodies will immediately carry into effect their threat of founding independent Colleges. The consequence of this will be, a generation trained in all the bitterness of polemics, and the substitution of a swarm of pauper colleges for a sufficient number of universities well attended and attracting men of talent by the distinction and emo- lument of their chairs.
To say that these projected Colleges will never be founded, is a delusion. Ministers see in the Disruption, how much the strength and energy of the Free Church movement were underrated from
the beginning. With this warning before their eyes, will Minis- ters persist in underrating that strength and energy, now that it threatens to assail the Universities ? The Free Church has carried off from the Establishment the most popular and able preachers-- the most eminent men of science among the professors—and with them the most earnest and resolute of the laity. The hostility of a sect that can in a few days raise 20,000!. from twenty indi viduals, is not to be slighted.
At present, the Scotch professors depend mainly on the fees paid by the students. Taking the rich chairs with the poor, the average of their incomes, even in Edinburgh, does not probably amount to 600/. per annum. The extent to which these incomes would be reduced by the foundation of rival Dissenting and Free Church Colleges, may be inferred from the effect produced by the disrup- tion on the divinity classes in the University of Edinburgh. An account of the classes and emoluments of that University in 1838, furnished by the Magistrates of Edinburgh to the Commissioners of the Treasury, has been printed : the number attending the di- vinity classes in that year was 171—the number attending last year, 60. The diminution in the attendance on the literary and scientific classes would be much greater. The reduction in the divinity classes has been occasioned solely by the secession of the Free-Church students—there were no Dissenters in these classes : but the proportion of Dissenting students in the literary and scientific classes has always been large, and the projected Col- leges would drain them off in addition to the Free Church stu- dents. It is a moderate estimate to say that the salaries even of the Edinburgh professors would be reduced to 2501. a year. What men of talent and acquirements would accept such offices so inadequately remunerated? Perhaps in Edinburgh the students of law and medicine, and in Glasgow the students of medicine, might prevent these Universities from sinking altogether ; but the others would be destroyed. Increased salaries might be pro- vided by the Government to compensate the loss of fees ; but that mode of remuneration would diminish the stimulus to exertion ; the half-empty class-rooms would depress the energies of the pro- fessors; a race of indolent sinecurists would succeed the indus- trious and intelligent teachers who have raised the reputation or the Scotch Universities.
The abolition of the religious tests to which the lay professors in Scotland are liable, is the only means of saving the Scotch Universities. If Ministers " turn their backs on themselves " at the second reading of Mr. Rutherfurd's bill, they will lend a hand to destroy those seminaries which developed the genius of Black, Cullen, Munro, Reid, Stewart, Playfair, Brown, and Leslie. It is easy to see what has tempted or terrified them to this tergiver- sation. Since they expressed the general coincidence of their views with those of Mr. Rutherford, the General Assembly of the Residuary Church (with eleven dissentients) has resolved to petition against the bill. In giving ear to this petition, Ministers humour the Kirk to its own harm. Were the tests abolished, the old Dissenters, who are almost unanimously averse to the Free Church scheme, would rather send their sons to the National Universities than the Free Church Colleges : but the perpetuation of the tests will drive them into the latter. When Ministers think it necessary to surrender their own better judgment to the mulishness of the Residuaries, they exaggerate the influence of that body. The influence of the Established Church in Scotland has long been ridiculously overestimated. When the Whigs were in their zenith, the Churchmen in Scotland were divided in politics ; but for many years before their ejection from office, it was difficult to say whether the Vetoists or Anti-Vetoists were the more inveterately opposed to them. Yet while the majorities of the Whigs in England and Ireland were crumbling away, in Scotland their majority was comparatively little diminished. The combined Kirk could not unsettle them. The disruption has destroyed all of popular influence that was left to the Establish- ment. If Ministers can but screw up their courage to face this ghost of a Kirk, they will find it as harmless as any other ghost.
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