The life and letters of Benjamin Jowett, M. A., master of Balliol college, Oxford.

1846-1854]

University Reform

I83

'... I hope the Commissioners will chiefly rely on themselves and not on the witnesses whom they examine..
We have long ago settled, I mean as our own opinion, that
open Fellowships, Professorships, modification of clerical
restrictions (certainly), change in the constitution (probably),
should be the great topics. To which I would be glad to add
"Poor Students" and "Expenses" (although there are difficulties in the matter); first, because it is a most popular topic
-the University educates 1,500, why not 3,000? Is it a
sufficient or EvEKal of a national institution that in the nineteenth century it educates 1,500, two-thirds of whom are the
sons of country gentlemen and clergymen? Jeune will be
lukewarm in this matter, but I hope you and Tait will take it
up. If the object of the Commission is only to make a more
intellectual aristocracy, this may be good, but will hardly
command much sympathy. Secondly, unless the Universities
are to be wholly separated from the Church it is of the greatest
importance that poor clergymen should be educated at the
University and not at Theological Colleges. The poor student
clergy have always a tendency to High Church views, because
they give them a position which they had not before. This
tendency would, I think, be very much diminished if the
University became their home more and its Professors their
teachers.
'The general principle I would be guided by in reference to
the Commission is to ask oneself plainly what changes have
taken place in the country in the last 200 years, and then as far
as possible transfer them to the University. If the relation of
one class to another is different, if the subjects of knowledge
are different, the University must receive corresponding changes
sooner or later before it can return to a natural state; only
remembering that it is a place of education chiefly, and that
education clings naturally to the past....
'I feel that I do not agree either with Vaughan's intellectual
aristocracy as the idea of a University, nor with the "gentlemen heresy" that appears to be partially entertained by
Jeune and by G. Smith. I hope that the small numbers

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