The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-05-23 00:00:00

UNIVERSITY REFORM.

THE proposition of a bill before Parliament, for
what is called a reform of the University of Oxford,
preparatory to a similar measure with reference to
Cambridge University, has led to a demand, on the
part of the Dissenters, for an admission to the ad-
vantages afforded at these time-honoured seats of
learning, upon the assumption that they are na-
tional institutions, . and ought, in consequence, to
be open to all. The Church of England is a
national institution, and only in the same sense
can the Universities be said to belong to the
nation. All the colleges were founded, endowed,
and supported by Churchmen, strictly for Church
purposes, as seminaries for learning and training
schools for the clergy. Till within a few years
past, no candidate for Holy Orders was admitted
unless he had obtained a college degree, and
though this rule has been partially relaxed, the
exceptions are but rare. In every respect the
Universities of Oxford and Cambridge essentially
belong to the Church : the nation, as a nation, has
contributed nothing to their resources nor means
of usefulness, and, therefore, to throw them open,
as it is termed, to all students, without distinction
of creed, would be to undo and frustrate the very
object for which they were especially established.
We shall not enter into any discussion on the
various points which have been raised during the
progress of the bill through Parliament, with re-
ference to the mode of government in the university,
but there is one point of especial importance to
which attention has been directed by an able
writer on the subject in Blacicwood's Nagazine for
this month. It is proposed by this bill to take
away the heritage of the poor, and Oxford is to be
no more what she has been for five hundred years,
" the almshouse of noble poverty." By the words
in the bill it is declared,—
" No preference shall, after the passing of this act, be
accorded to any candidate by reason of birthplace, kinship,
education at any school, or indigence, over any other
person of superior fitness in character and attaiments."
Upon this the writer observes,— •
"Let the people of England look to it. If their old
adage be true, that learning is better than house and
land,' a heritage is passing from them. The nation has
a claim to the national Universities,' it is said. If it mean
anything, it means this—that rank, and wealth, and
worldly possessions, are not to hold them, to the exclusion
of the poor seeker after knowledge. Will they believe us,
if we tell them, that the great and good men who in other
days built and endowed these colleges, said more than
this ; they said the poor alone should hold the seats of
honour there, if they could prove that they were led by
the love of learning to enter in and take possession. The
sons of the rich and noble might resort there for educa-
tion ; but their fellowships.and their scholarships, endowed
by their bounty, were for the poor for ever. * * The
public is not awake to the fact, and needs to have the
wrong set very plainly before them in order to appreciate
* * There is many an honest Radical, hating a
parson or a lord, who, ne doubt, chuckles over reform in
any shape, but especially reform of the Universities—they
being, as it were, hot-beds for raising parsons, and lords,
and such like. He regards this bill as a little step in the
way which we are to go,—not much, but something,—`the
beginning of the end,' as the Examiner has it. He
thinks it is to throw open' the good things to his chil-
dren, which the higher classes have hitherto been giving
away quietly among each other. Never was a more com-
plete delusion. Who will be the fortunate claimants for
these `open' scholarships, which are to be wrested from
country grammar schools to which the middle classes re-
sort ? It will be, in nine cases out of ten, boys from the
head forms of Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Westminster—the
sons of parents who can afford to spend 'one or two hun-
dred per annum upon their education—who have had ad-
vantages of every kind, which the poor curate's or the
country tradesman's son can never hope for—who should
need no such incentives to study, as they need no such
help in its pursuit. Are these the classes for which foun-
ders bequeathed their wealth? Hear the good William
of Wykeham, one of the most magnificent of Oxford belie-
factors—whose too princely foundatious ,are, as it would
appear, never to he allowed to do the-.noble and pious
work For which he intended them. ' I will have,' says he,
not those already learned, skilled in letters, wealthy,
accomplished in arts.' His gifts were wisdom to those
who sought after wisdom, and help to those who needed
help to seek it."
Enough has been said -to show that these pre-
tended friends of the 'people would perpetuate the
exclusiveness which 'has led to a popular demand
for a reform of the 'Universities, instead of restoring
the endowments to their legitimate objects, which
the writer whom we have quoted has demonstrated
to be the education of those whose chief claim to
the bounty is their worldly poverty.