Page:University Reform - Two Papers.djvu/15

Rh Universities, and the colleges therein? These grounds present themselves to my mind as so strong, that I should be prepared even to accept the status quo as preferable to anything like final action by such a Commission. 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.

But I do not think that the alternative lies between nothing and an executive Commission. 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. The essays in that direction of some colleges have prejudiced the subject; I think the qualities that characterized these essays may however be discovered, and sufficient precautions be taken that the errors which have amused or scandalized the community may not be repeated.

First of all, they were practically secret; nobody knew what was going to be done till the reform burst upon the world as fait accompli.

Then they were partial and unsystematic; they would have been called provincial, if the reforms had been municipal, sprung too much from, and