ACADEMIC REFORM

AND

UNIVERSITY REPRESENTATION.

BY

JAMES HEYWOOD, F.R. S.,

B.A., TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

LONDON:

EDWARD T. WHITFIELD, 178, STRAND.

1860.

232. a, 124.

PREFACE.

VARIOUS Examinations for public employment and academic reward are described in the following Work, so as to exhibit important requirements of the public service, as well as the subjects of examination for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and for some other degrees.

4

Memorials relating to academic improvement are presented to the reader, as registers of the progress of amelioration, and, in several cases, as records of unsettled subjects still demanding, public attention. Among the latter class of Memorials may be noticed the Petition against the continuance of compulsory celibacy for College Fellows at Cambridge, drawn up in the courteous form of requesting the University Commissioners to consider the restrictions upon marriage to which the tenure of Fellowships is subject. This Memorial received the signatures of 371 Graduates of the University of Cambridge, 107 of whom were either past or present Fellows of Colleges in that University.

*

Living languages obtain, at present, a large share of public favour. The ancient English Universities, in their

* See infra, p. 76.

they would make Theology the end of their studies, and students of law, who obtain Fellowships, will, consequently, be no longer subject to such an exclusive

test.

The scheme of College government arranged between the Cambridge Commissioners and the authorities of Trinity College and St. John's College, has not been well adapted to the modern state of these Colleges, which contain, in each case, resident Students of different religious denominations. Compulsory Ordination is insisted upon for the Master, and compulsory celibacy is directed for the eight senior Fellows of each institution, nearly all of whom are usually clergymen of the Church of England.

On the 14th February, 1860, these College arrangements were discussed in the House of Commons, when Mr. Walpole mentioned a recent instance of consideration on the part of the governing Board of Trinity College for the conscientious scruples of a Jewish Undergraduate, in whose favour attendance at the College Chapel has been dispensed with. During the same debate, Lord Stanley, one of the Cambridge University Commissioners, observed that the Cambridge University Act of 1856 had clearly stated, that no person should be required, on taking a Degree, or obtaining a Scholarship, Exhibition, or other College emolument, to make or subscribe any declaration of religious belief, and that, in his opinion, the enforcement of attendance at College Chapel, in cases where conscientious objections to the chapel service are felt, would be contrary to the spirit and intention, if not to the letter of the Cambridge Act.

At Haileybury College, short forms of prayer were usual, and at the principal Church of England Normal School, in the north of London, a short service, varying on different days of the week, is read to the assembled students.

Scholarships cannot be fully opened to the nation, in Cambridge Colleges, without some modification of the daily reading of Church of England services at the College Chapel.

Prayers for the Parliament are published in this Work, p. 99, as an example of a short general liturgical form adapted to a mixed assembly, including Members in the House of Commons belonging to different religious denominations.

Suitable forms of ordinary chapel service, for College Students at Oxford and Cambridge, may be prepared on a similar principle with the Prayers for the Parliament, so as not to weary the audience, and to be read to a congregation comprising individuals of various theological opinions.

In both the ancient English Universities, the majority of the registered Electors are in Holy Orders, nor can any plan of academical reform be complete which does not embrace the improvement of the Examinations of Clerical Candidates and the revision of the religious tests still required for Ordination. The Appendix to the present Work contains some Divinity Examination Papers, which have been prepared in a freer spirit than would be encouraged by the academical authorities on the Cam and the Isis, and were intended for Theological Students who do not subscribe either to Articles or Confessions