Ittten to the elan.
THE OXFORD COMMISSION REPORT: THE SMUTTING OF THE GREAT COUNCIL
Burnham, Somerset, 15th June 1852.
Sat—I do not pretend to have as yet perused every word of the vast folio respecting our University which has been recently "presented to both Houses of Parliament by command of her Majesty" ; I have, however, diligently gone through the Report itself, and am working my way at a fair pace through the Evidence which follows it. In the course of these operations I have met with several points to which I would gladly call your attention. In so doing, I am compelled by the circumstances of the case to throw off ' that kind of semi-incognito with which I have hitherto invested the numer- ous communications which you have done me the honour of inserting in your columns. I prefer the use of initials on these occasions, because, without drawing unnecessary attention to the writer personally, they sufficiently de- note who he is to all persons to whom the name itself would convey any very definite idea. But, as one of those whose evidence forms a portion of the Blue Book in question, and as having occasion to refer to my own share of it, I do not see how I can help throwing off the thin disguise I have hitherto observed, and signing myself openly by my name. Passing by other points, some of them perhaps of equal importance, bet to which my own attention has never been so specially directed, I would at pre- sent call your attention to the new constitution proposed for the University by the Commissioners ; reserving, with your permission, for a second letter, the question of the internal changes which they suggest in the constitution of the Colleges. As one who has been, as your own columns can testify, an uncompro- mising opponent of the Commission, I feel it only justice to acknowledge the very great merits of the manner in which their labours have been accom- plished. A more grave and temperate document, one more evidently the work of indefatigable and conscientious diligence, cannot be imagined. But, if some of its most important suggestions are, as they appear to me to be, of a character not only to impair the wellbeing of the University, but to strike at something higher and dearer still to every true-hearted Englishman, it is clear that the great excellences by which the Report comes recom- mended to our attention cannot fail to make it in reality more dangerous, and, in a sense not implying any dishonest intention in its authors, more insidious.
The great glory of England, the crown of fourteen centuries of struggle and development, is to .have achieved self-government. This is our great distinction from nearly every Continental state, despotic or constitutional. We know " government" as the administrator of the law, the protector of our rights and the avenger of our wrongs, not as something controlling our free agency and intermeddling with every action of our lives. With a na- tional unity of the most perfect kind, there is no country where local and municipal independence has taken such firm root, or where it is found so little to suggest the idea of severance from the central power. With the single strange anomaly of our county magistrates, (and even those stand on quite another footing from Government functionaries,) all our institutions, vestries, boards of guardians, municipal corporations, go on this principle of independence ; so long as they keep within their legal powers, the central authority has no direct control over them. The Englishman is not content to give himself a master, single or manifold ; he must have a voice in small as well as in great matters, either personally or by those whom he commis- sions for that purpose.
Now the greatest and most venerable of these our free and independent mu- nicipalities are our two ancient Universities. If men would look at them
aispassiontately, they would find in the imperium in imperio so often sneered at, the very noblest embodiment of the old Teutonic spirit of self-govern- ment. A vast autonomous community, framing its own laws in a democrati- cally constituted assembly, with its own officers, many of them democratically elected, invested with all authority, temporal and spiritual, even that of life and death, over its own members, and which has yet been so far from coining into collision with the central power as to have too often laid itself open to the charge of unworthy servility, is surely the very noblest instance of this great political instinct of our race which history can furnish. And I do unhesitatingly affirm, that in any way to alter these its essential charac- ters—to bring our greatest municipality under any more direct State control— to infuse any elements from Prussia or Saxe-Coburg into the most English of English institutions—to add a single particle of oligarchy to the most venerable of democratic bodies—is something involving higher considerations than any mere questions as to Modern History Schools or affiliated Halls; it is opening the flood-gates to the whole torrent of foreign centralization and Government meddling; it is high treason against the liberties of England and the innate instincts of the English people. The general theory of the University government is one of pure demo- cracy, as a parish vestry is now, or as a shire-mote probably was a thousand years back. All who possess the franchise have an equal vote ; the standard of citizenship in a learned body being, of course, not birth or wealth, but learning. This great assembly of all full academical citizens, the Convoca- tion of the Masters of Arts, is the one legislative and elective body of the University; where offices are in any other gift, it is by virtue of bequests ac- cepted or statutes made by Convocation itself. But among this democracy an oligarchy gradually arose, and finally received a legal establishment; Convocation can only discuss such legislative propositions as are laid before it by the too famous Hebdomadal Board. Otherwise its powers over its own society are limited only by that authority which limits all others, net the caprice of an ephemeral king or minister, but the written law of the land. That such an institution is liable to abuse, and that great abuses exist in it, I am as little inclined to deny as the Commissioners themselves. I only contend that the institution, as a democratic municipality, is one preEmi- neatly English, and ought to be reformed only on sound old English prin- ciples, not on any theory which may be concocted in the brain of some in- genious speculator, far less according to any newfangled notions from the other side of the German Ocean. We have put down oligarchy in our towns and cities ; self-elected corporations have given way to representatives of the people ; a storm seems even half-disposed to threaten the time-honoured autocracy of our lords of manors and preservers of pheasants ; and yet we are called upon to confirm the sway of oligarchy in the most venerable seat of freedom : her Majesty's Commissioners, the picked men of the Liberal and Reforming party, the selected agents of a Liberal and Reforming Pre- mier, can find no better model in their new Fourth School than to tread in the steps of the Doge Gradenigo, and close the Great Council for ever ; they can find no analogy more honourable in the history of old Greece than to become the Peisanders and Antiphons of an academical Four Hundred. The Hebdomadal Board, as at present constituted, is clearly too monatrous an institution to be defended ; the Commissioners, in fact, practically give it up, by proposing to establish as coordinate with it a body by whose side it is impossible that it can preserve any vitality. It is clear that with such a body as Convocation, a Committee, a Board of IrpoPovXoL, is needed, to have the initiative in legislative matters, which it would never do to allow to every individual member. For the constitution of such a body, I only contend, as I have argued at length in my evidence, that it should be a real committee, not permanent, but renewed by some process or other, and consequently re- sponsible to its constituents, and so constituted as really to represent the general opinion of the larger body, and to be incapable of in any way form- ing a clique. These I conceive to be the qualifications for such a body re- quired by all English principles. Instead of this, the Commissioners give us, coordinate with the present Board for legislative purposes, and invested with further very extensive powers, a new oligarchy, (usurping the ancient and respectable name of Congregation,) to consist of the Heads, Proctors, Pro- fessors, and the Senior Tutor of each College. This body is to appoint Proc- tors, Examiners, and even many of the Professors; leaving no offices on the gift of Convocation at large except those of Chancellor and Burgess in Par- liament ! A straiter oligarchy could not well be devised, not a single mem- ber being appointed by Convocation or being in any way responsible to it : a vast proportion of the members will be appointed for life, and, in the case of many professorships, the Board will actually fill up ifs own vacancies. One can easily imagine that such a body, though too large to become a mere per- sonal clique, will in no way represent the opinions of Convocation at large, or be at all under its influence.
I am no zealot for Convocation in its present state, as it manifestly contains an enormous proportion of members utterly unfit to share either its legisla- tive or its elective functions. The latter is the real evil; very few unquali- fied persons come up to vote about a new statute, while they appear in shoals on the occasion of a contested professorship. But it appears to me that the remedy is a very simple one : do not give seats in Convocation at random ; make the franchise of learning a reality, by imposing an examination for the Master's degree of a character to render that degree a real honour, and thus to make Convocation consist only of the dlite of the University, who have won their places there by merit. I argued this at length in my evidence, on this ground as well as others. Some objections have been brought against an examination for M.A. which do not appear to me conclusive, as I look upon it as desirable for other reasons; but as far as a Pride's Purge of Convocation is concerned, it would have the same effect to confer the M.A. degree only on those who had obtained certain honours at their B.A. exami- nation—I should say, on those who have obtained a first or second class in one of the four schools, or a third, or honorary fourth, in more than one. I think I have some little reason to complain personally of the Commis- sioners. In page 12 occurs this passage—" Some persons would modify the powers of the Hebdomadal Board simply by investing Convocation with the right of debating and amending all propositions submitted to its vote " ; after which follow (in answer) the usual arguments about "a promiscuous body," and the like. In the margin my name occurs, with three others, as supporting this view. Now this is hardly accurate : what I have stated above both as to Convocation and to the Hebdomadal Board, I have also stated in my evidence; that is, so far from "simply modifying" the powers of the latter, I wish entirely to abolish it in its present form, while the Con- vocation which I would invest with the right of amendment would be very different from the "promiscuous body " at which the Commissioners ex- claim. In like manner, in page 17 my name appears in the margin, together with many others, appended to certain suggestions relative to the office of Proctor not one of which I have proposed in my evidence, and to all of
I Which very decidedly object. This may mean simply that I have given some evidence on the subject ; but if so, I must be allowed to say that it is very darkly expressed.
.This same office of Proctor is one which greatly kindles the wrath of oligarchic and theorizing reformers. The mode of appointment is, of course, utterly unjustifiable • on any theory ; but it produces the desired effect— the election of two average Masters, two fair representatives of the mass of the academical citizens. Every institution of this kind, though con- ceived in the very spirit both of old Athens and of our own country, is of
course grievously objectionable to men animated with that strange hankering after boards, which, had Aristotle lived in our days, he would assuredly have added to his list of similar monstrous and unaccountable propensities. It is really wonderful to see how your genuine Whig instinctively shrinks from the old principles of English municipality, how naturally he runs off to his beloved oligarchy and Government interference. Throughout the whole Report we have permanent Boards, standing Delegacies, self-elected Profes- sors, Crown appointments, finally a hint of Crown Visitations. Convocation is to be reduced to a nonentity, and every trace of responsibility of rulers swept away. Visitors, it is suggested, should report to the Crown; that is, we are to be periodically overhauled, not, as in the case of Colleges under Royal Visitation, by the law in the form of the Lord Chancellor, but accord- ing to the caprice of the Premier, perchance of the Minister of Public In- struction, for the time being. All this is no question of merely academical concern ; it is a subtile blow struck at the dearest liberties of England—at the heritage of Alfred and Do Montfort.
Thus much for the doctrinaire system as applied to the general government of the University; I trust in another letter to consider its workings with re- ference to the internal constitution of the Colleges.
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