The Express.
London, England, 1846-11-18 00:00:00

of the said town." No obligation is laid upon them
to consult their surveyor much less to adopt his plans
and surveys. A public 'body, to be effective,, and to
escape the contagion of ,jobbery, should have unity,
permanence, professional skill, and responaility.
The Commissioners, under this act of Lord LINCOL.Nrs,
may be at once fluctuating, devoid of unity, irrespon-
sible, and entirely without professional knowledge.
Such bodies, when they do exist, have, from all time,
been very hotbeds of rascally and ruinous jobbery.
Lord LINCOLN has been careful in creating a new
machinery to implant in it the seeds of every mischief
from which the community already suffers at the
hands of the old one.
The Committee recommend the following alteration
in the functions of the commissioners, and their rela-
tion to their surveyor :
And be It further enacted, That the surveyor of the COMlligeoll
shall prepare plans and estimates for all alterations of the sewer% by
deepening, widening, einbanldng, arching over, or otherwise altering
the same, and shall inform thereof the owners and occupiers of the
lands and houses drained by such sewers; and if the commisdoners
shall approve of each alterations. they shall direct public notice thereof
to be given as hereinafter provided, and shall bear obit etlomi thereon,
and shall, as they shall see at, direct amended plans and estimates to
be prepared, and shall have authority to direct notice or public adver-
tisements to be made for tenders to execute such works upon con-
tract, &a.
They further suggest that all plans, before they are
executed, must be submitted to, and approved by, the
district-inspector; that all work shall be done by
contracts on open tender, to be made for terms of
years, and paid for by a special rate, to be levied on
the property. in the several localities benefited. On
this plan, as is observed in the report, " no immediate
outlay is necessary. The burden is distributed over a
series of years, and being comminuted into an annual
rent-charge, is not practically felt even by the poorest
tenant."
In the present bill, the proceedings to enforce
sewerage and drainage, paving, and providing a
house with priv.y aid cesspool, arc mated as in
the old local improvement acts. The owner, on
notice given, is to do the work, if he will; if not,
the commissioners are empowered to do it for him.
In all cases the owner is to bear the expense. These
provisions, the Report shows, on evidence compiled
by the several sanatory commissions, to be at once
"practically inconvenient and altogether vicious in
principle."
The plan recommended by the Report, on the
other hand, converts the expenditure on such im-
provements into a rent-charge, and spreads the
repayment, both of principal and interest, over
a series of years commensurate with the duration
of the works. We need not take up space in show-
ing. how superior,. both in justice and facility of exe-
cation, this plan is to that of the Bill, and we have
little doubt that the alteration will be adopted.
But the necessity for such supervision of an official
measure by an unofficial body strikingly illustrates
the slovenliness of our boasted legislation. In
many, and those the most important, functions
of government, the necessities of the country 6Ce1:12
to have fairly outgrown the machinery of office.
That so important an enactment as Lcrd LINCOLN'S,
founded on evidence so sufficient, should admit
with advantage the tinkering of a London asso-
ciation, redounds as much to the discredit of our
administrative system, as to the credit of the body
who have so intelligently and boldly come forward
to repair official shortcomings, and correct the blun-
ders of the Executive.

IN a recent article we alluded to the subject of
popular instruction, es one that it iimately concerns
the people of Englandto consider. Every department
of education, however, concerns as, and perhaps
none more so, in its bearing en soekty at large, than
the nature and extend of informal on communicated
to the middle classes, and especially to that portion el
the middle classes who• form the increasing body de-
nominated professional men.
As schools form the subject of interest in the
education of the masses, so do colleges and uni-
versities replace them for youth, mare advanced in
life, and supposed to. req•dre something beyond
school instruction. It is worth while to consider the
nature of institutions of this kind in England, for it
is a subject constantly before us, and one which
attracts growing interest.
Our English university—a system :18 peculiarly and
exclusively ours as ary point in OCT national cha-
racter—has always been acknowledged to possess
many and great advantages, in, spite of its imperfect
action and nan ow spirit% It in certainly effectual in
developing those qualities and powers which belcag
to the gentleman. It is successful inducing certain
habits et reasoning. It produces admirable divines,
excellent lawyers, an& first-rite mathematicians; and I
in each case the foundation success is laid in early
manhood. So far as mere guidance in certain direc-
tions is concerned ; so long as we look only tee, the
successful cases in which is seen the firvaerabk action
of mind upon mind,. and the ripening of the judgment
by association with men of acute intellect and kindred
pursuits ; so long may we dwell with satisfaction on
this, perhaps the richest and the most enduring, fruit
of the philosophic and religious charity of the middle
art!:

....stances, however, may occur which induce
us to think seriously of the terms on which we enjoy
this benefit, and consider whether the result, however
beneficial to the few whose especial pursuits are fa-
voured by it, may not be a very unreasonable
sacrifice of the interests of society to these
few individuals. From the two universities of
Oxford and Cambridge together, about six or
seven hundred young men per annum are sent
out into the world, or, at least, take their degree
of Bachelor of Arts. With comparatively few excep-
tions these are distributed in the church and at the
bar. Some become country gentlemen and poli-
ticians. Some few are afterwards physicians, and
some are mere resident fellows of colleges. The
latter, it may be as well to mention, form a
curious and locally important tiers etat in the univer-
sity, most of them too idle to learn, too well paid to
starve, neither governing nor governed, who have
exhausted their energies in obtaining a high degree,
and who sit sown at the age of twenty-one, satisfied
that they have done their work for life. They are
willing to exclaim "Eregi !" but, alas, where is
the " monunientani" of their labours ?
Now, we ask, ought the state of these richly en-
dowed universities to be such ? Are there no other
interests in England at least as important as those
here provided for ? Are there no classes which, in
their future intercourse with society, are as influen-
tial and prominent, and for whom, therefore, a na-
tional system ought to provide? The evil of our
university system is, that it is not national : it par-
takes of the mischief of class legislation.
There is in this country the vast mass of the middle
classes, numbered by tens of thousands. We have
amongst them young men who are to be employed in
all the varied and important applications of science
to the arts of life. We have, for example, the medical
practitioner, the chemist, the engineer, the manafac-
turer, the merchant, the mining agent. And what
education does our University system provide for
them ?
There is absolutely no provision for these classes :
they are utterly and entirety neglected, so far as the
country and the great national institutions are con-
cerned; and if they have any resource, it is entirely
the result of private speculation.
But we say more. Science in all its phases, apart
from pure mathematics ; scientific knowledge, scien-
tific tastes, scientific principles, and scientific pursuits ;
are things not merely disregarded in our universities:
they are positively disliked. Instead of being
taken advantage of as at least in some cases assisting
in the work of education ; as founding habits of
observation co-ordinate with habits of reflection;
everything of this kind is discountenanced and "put
down."
But if these great institutions will continue to
check in every way that mode of intellectual advance-
ment which characterises the period in which we
live ; and if, in spite of this check, the mighty power
of scientific research, and an opinion of the practical
11 usefulness of scientific knowledge, still makes itsway
then the old university system must ultimately be
remodelled; for a well-grounded opinion on any sub-
ject, felt and expressed by the mass of intelligent
people of this country, never fails in obtaining the
attention it deserves.
It may be, however, that respect for age and past
services, and a dislike to interfere in what many will
regard as private endowment, will for a long time
prevent any direct external influence from being
exercised ; but during this time public feeling on the
subject will undergo great change, and that system
which was once all-powerful, an instrument acting
at the most favourable time on the most plastic mate-
rial, will degenerate into a mere scholastic institution
—a seminary for the clergy and a retreat for the