The Scotch Universities Bill has passed through Committee, and the
Report is fixed for July 11th. The chief discussions of the week have turned upon the amount of the State grant to the Universities, and upon the question of theological tests. As regards the former matter, the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposed to increase the grant to the four Universities so as to bring it up from £28,000 to £42,000,—that is, by about 214,000 a year,—but he added that if the Commission, in revising the salaries of the Professors (which he thought were at present calculated on a very high scale) should be involved in difficulties by the necessity of finding compensation for the Professors who would suffer by the proposed reductions, he should not be indisposed to suggest to Parliament some further help for the express purpose of extricating the Commission from their difficulties, on condition that the compensations granted were moderate, and that the system of pensions should be such as would commend itself to the House. With this concession most of the Scotch Members seemed to be satisfied, and the Government passed the clause on the subject of the money grant without difficulty or opposition. For ourselves, we desire greatly that private liberality should show itself much more conspicuously than it does in the endowment of the higher education.
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