John Richard Magrath

“ Apart from any other reasons against determining permanently to other objects what seems now to be able to be spared from educational purposes here in Oxford, it should never be forgotten that the passing of fit persons from the lower-grade schools to the higher, and so on to the University, has always formed a part of every complete theory of national education ”

“ In money matters we trust to the experience of age and habituation, when we are ready to trust our own judgment on questions of general policy. In colleges, as well as in the University, the non possumus of those who are supposed to be acquainted with the finances of the Corporation has often postponed or defeated important administrative reforms. There are still thirteen colleges in which the college property is administered by Fellows trained in all the old traditions. ”

“ The Catilinarians of every community hope that something will fall to their lot, if a sufficient chaos is produced but the vague aspirations of the generally unsatisfied can hardly be speculatively dealt with, and at all events we may neglect them if we can satisfy the leaders under whose banners they fight. There may perhaps be some who still think that one more Commission, like the third wave, will land us on a shore of rest, and hating our continued state of reforming dissipation are ready to throw in their lot with, anybody who will promise a final scheme. ”

“ In the "Standard," which reports the speech in the first person, it only occurs towards the close, in conjunction with learning and education, to turn a rhetorical phrase. Yet the Bill cannot pass through the Commons without a fight about clerical restrictions; or if, by misfortune, it should, each college must gird itself for the battle within its own walls. This is clearly a matter of Imperial policy. On this the Government ought to have made up its mind. This ought not to be left to Commissioners, or colleges jointly with Commissioners, to determine. ”

“ The beneficent work of the Commission of 1854 would have its full realization, the colleges would be able to develope and emancipate their resources, and, above all, the State would advance steadily to the conception and realisation of a completely organized system of national education. In twenty years we should be in all respects in a better position for undertaking the work which a few impatient doctrinaires are hurrying on prematurely. ”

“ I am of opinion that it is desirable, to avoid future complications, that separate and distinct provision should be made for the maintenance of religious worship and teaching within the colleges; that better security should be taken to secure the property of the colleges from waste or improvident management, and that facilities should be afforded for making grants from the college revenues for University purposes, either special or general. ”

“ Apart from the religious difficulty and other crotchets, the question as to the possibility of a so-called scientific education, co-ordinate with, and alternative to, the literary education which is still the secondary education of the civilised world, has yet to be settled. It is no good preparing an elaborate roof, till we know how many chimneys the house will want. ”

“ The plan shadowed out by Lord Salisbury seems to me to be vitiated by the radical defect of all attempts to reform on a large scale, and once for all, institutions whose business is mainly administrative. It is extremely hard to anticipate the results of such legislation, and few legislators will take any pains to anticipate these results, even so far as may be possible. ”

“ I believe that with proper facilities granted, and under proper restrictions imposed, the University and colleges could be all the while going on with the more wholesome, if less dramatic, work of gradual self-reformation. It is true that self-reformation of colleges has become unpopular, both within the University and without. ”

“ But the foundations are hardly yet laid; till primary education is compulsory, all over the country, can hardly be said to have begun to be laid. Only step by step, layer by layer, can the work go on; what we shall want on the first storey, we know not till we be come thither. ”

“ The colleges have not yet fully entered into the inheritance bequeathed them by the last Commission. The financial condition of some of them is where it was last century. Many of them are in debt up to the neck for loans contracted to improve their revenues in the future. Hardly any college will enter into the rack-rent value of all its property this century. The present moment is one for gradual and cautious improvement, not for promulgating new and permanent constitutions. Let Parliament deal with clerical restrictions and with celibacy ”

“ Every alteration proposed to be made in an ordinance should be published, at least two months beforehand, in the Oxford University "Gazette," and in the Cambridge "Reporter," and a locus standi for opposing on any grounds of public policy any alteration should be given pretty freely to persons by their office or position likely to feel a reasonable interest in the well-being of the University. ”

“ The worst that could happen would be a slowness on the part of the colleges to avail themselves of the power of reformation, a worst it seems to me far better than the hasty, one-sided, uninstructed revolution, which, it is to be feared, an executive Commission at the present moment would inaugurate. ”

“ New Schools, New Museums, New Lecture Rooms, Increased Remuneration to Professors, (so that they may devote themselves without distraction to the business of their Chairs) , Fair Pensions for those who have become superannuated, are all objects which have been before the eyes of all Oxford for years past. The colleges will have no difficulty in finding suitable objects for their superfluities, as soon as they are relieved from the necessity of filling-up the number of fellowships insisted upon by the ordinances framed by the Commissioners of 1854. ”

“ Unless the seniority have been unusually repressive, the juniors, as they become a majority, probably wisely hesitate to upset hastily arrangements with whose history and bearing they are probably imperfectly acquainted, and this delays perhaps necessary reforming work. A premature effort to put the Fellows elected under the ordinance on the same footing, as regards allowances, with the older Fellows was put down by the votes of the juniors in one college with which I am acquainted, at the first college meeting at which the juniors were in a majority ”

“ The improvement the last twenty years have seen take place here affords, it seems to me, a just ground for believing that, if the same influences are allowed to work unchecked, the Oxford of 1895 will be as much better than we are as we boast to be better than our fathers. ”

“ The colleges that have availed themselves to the full of the powers given under the University Estates Acts of 1858 and 1860, have done a good deal to free their estates from the control of their tenants, and to develope their revenues ”

“ Arrangements which are to last even for half a century, to say nothing of permanent arrangements, cannot be based upon calculations resting upon data so fleeting and uncertain as the statements of revenue and expenditure of corporations which are going through such financial processes as these. ”

“ Times" has indicated vaguely and tentatively, as is its wont, some of the directions that University Reform may profitably take. The Cambridge folk have been convoked to discuss some questions of University Reform, on which their discussions were thought likely to be helpful to the powers that be. It is rumoured that a small but influential meeting has sent word to the Chancellor of the University, that (Heaven save the mark!) the Liberals of Oxford desire the present Government to issue an executive Commission to reform the University ”