Page:University Reform - Two Papers.djvu/26

22 as little harm as possible may result is all that can be hoped for.

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; let the powers now enjoyed by the Visitors of the colleges be entrusted to a permanent board, consisting of a great jurist, a great educationalist, and a great financier; and let the colleges, as yet only partially regenerated by the reforms of 1854, be given full powers to amend themselves at their leisure and as suits their several conditions, and there will be no need of a University Bill either in this session or in this century.