DIJLWICH COLLEGE.
SIR—We all remember with what demonstration of the work to be done the Charity Commission was introduced by the noble Lord who created it. For forty years the dirt had been accumulating, and he striving for its clearance; at last he had raised the needed powers. In almost all the cases Involved, the work is very ordinary, and requires mere ordinary powers. Here and there a crucial ease exists—perhaps none will fall under the Com- mission more truly testing its- ability -than Dulwich College. A final scheme has lately appeared for its settlement. You gave an abstract of it not long ago. I suppose it wants the sanction of Parliament. I do trust it may not pass unchallenged. Verily, if the public are to judge from what has occurred in this ease of the powers the Commission bring to the work, the charities of England are in evil case.
"Famous Ned Allen's" own original scheme suggested all that was re- quired for the management and applied uses of the foundation. He never has had fair play, and if this scheme becomes binding, never will have. By the easiest modern rendering you have in the founder's provisions an ex- ternal element of control,- and the most enlightened and comprehensive edu- cational uses ; the locul and property interests being, meanwhile, regarded as he would have had them. In the scheme of the Commissioners you have an unpractical government, and applied- purposes of narrow design,. whether locally or generally considered. Let me just_give in detail one point of the scheme, to maintain the false liberality of which the working departments seem starved down below the point of efficiency. At an inquiry conducted the year before last by the Commission, it was elicited from the Master and Warden, that the one received 640/., the other 480/. per annum, money- payment. In the first scheme issued.bY the Commission last year, it was proposed to grant the Master 800/., the Warden 650/. per annum, retiring pension. In the recently-issued scheme, the Master's pension is raised to 10151., the Warden's to 850/. per anniun ;' with a Clause securing to the present Warden the Master's pension in reversion should he survive him, though all connexion otherwise with the College will have ceased : 4600/. per annum is thus to be spent among six gentlemen and twelve old men and women! The strict residence and celibacy which at present bind officers of the College, being altogether, of course, done away with.
It is very easy to see what conditions involve a liberal consideration of existing interests. Long service, zeal and ability shown, prospects else- where hindered, narrow circumstances, all claim a regard beyond the mere vested right. Under which of these do the present Master and Warden claim ? The Warden, not long ago factiously put into an office for which he never presumed any fitness, finds himself III reversion of the Master's salary and perquisites eakulated at a maximum !
The future Head Schoolmaster and Master of the College generally, (an unwise union of offices,) it is proposed, should have 3.50/. per annum and a capitation-tax !
I am told that Lord John Russell astonished the Board one fine day not long ago' by coining and asserting his right to-assist at its labours. Can it he, that there too, in this most Whig mode, he can have been proving "the obstacle to moral and intellectual progress' 1?
I am,. Sir, yours faithfully, ' M.
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