Page:A Few Words on the Future of Westminster School.djvu/12

 Bill do not at any rate seem to contemplate, would be required for a measure affecting the property of either of those bodies. Upon this contingency the question of removal must to no small extent depend. Again, the net return from the sale of all the ground and buildings occupied by Westminster School in Dean's Yard and Vincent Square—supposing that this area were assigned to the School as its own, which hitherto it has never been—was estimated in the evidence given before the Public Schools Commission at no more than 30,000l. Charterhouse has sold its site and buildings for 90,000l. Again, the character of Charterhouse is in no way bound up with its present site: the School is enclosed within its own walls, and the neighbourhood is nothing but an inconvenient appendage, which may be dropped with positive and obvious advantage. In the case of Westminster School, however, its most characteristic features depend upon the locality: separated from the Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, the School would no longer be Westminster. Removed into the country, there would be some difficulty in its retaining its identity.

2. But assuming the Public Schools Bill to pass, and to put the School definitely and directly in possession of a fixed income, the present time does not seem very favourable for the foundation of a new school of the Public School type in the country.

(a) The need of more Public Schools, felt some years ago, has been since met by the rise of Marlborough, Cheltenham, Wellington College, Haileybury, and Clifton, not to mention other schools. To some extent Westminster, if removed now, would start at a disadvantage as compared with them.