Page:University Reform - Two Papers.djvu/11

Rh 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; and the settlement of that day has been accepted to the present.

The power, too, belonging to financial knowledge is sure to remain with the seniors after the voting power has been lost to them. 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.

My first position then is, that we do not yet know what Oxford will be when the work of 1854 has had its full effect. 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.

Postponement of a large measure of alteration seems to me also to be likely to be beneficial, on the grounds of what I described before as the other source of arguments in favour of an immediate measure of extensive reform.

The returns obtained for us by the University Commission of 1871 are supposed to have put in