and Mr Bell cited above, but used the argument, sounding strangely on the lips of an Attorney-General, that consideration by judge and jury is consideration by an unfriendly tribunal. The Government was pledged to make concessions; and, in effect, the Bill, so far as relates to the liability of trade-unions, abolishes the law of conspiracy, gives a special and limited definition of agency, and legalises picketing for the purpose of persuasion.

These concessions, even though they amount indirectly to a complete surrender, were not satisfactory to the Labour party, whose view was expressed by Mr Shackleton as follows:

"They were told,' he said, 'that it was the intention of the Government to remove from the trade-unions all the liability possible, and they proceeded to carry out this intention in a certain way. But the Labour party preferred to take what they deemed to be an honester course, not seeking to obtain immunity by false pretences, as it were. Under the Bill the officials of the unions could do the very acts about which complaints were made; and all that was needed to evade the consequences was that the executive should say that they repudiated those acts. They preferred instead to say that they would not take responsibility for those actions at all.'

Two nights later Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, in a speech of amazing levity and recklessness, yielded to the clamour behind him, threw over his Attorney-General, and accepted the second reading of Mr Hudson's TradeUnions and Trade Disputes Bill, expressly conferring on trade-unions the powers which the Government had refused.

It is a poor defence for such a surrender to lawlessness that the original policy of the Government may possibly be restored and its authority protected against its own followers by the action of the House of Lords. Meanwhile the situation is not one which inspires confidence or respect. Only the most robust faith in the ultimate triumph of liberty and justice can survive such sinister betrayal of trust by those who ought to be specially solicitous for the King's peace, but are doing their best, by their recent action, to legislate it away.

Art. X.-A PLEA FOR CAMBRIDGE.

1. Endowments of the University of Cambridge. Edited by John Willis Clark, M.A., Registrary of the University of Cambridge. Cambridge: University Press, 1904. 2. Report of a Meeting held at Devonshire House on January 31, 1899, to inaugurate the Cambridge University Association. Cambridge: University Press, 1899. 3. Statements of the Needs of the University. Cambridge: University Press, 1904.

4. University accounts for the year ended December 31, 1904. Cambridge University Reporter, March 17, 1905.

5. Abstracts of the accounts of the Colleges. Cambridge University Reporter, February 10, 1905.

THE grant of a charter to the Victoria University in 1880 marked the beginning of a new era in English education. Not to speak of Scotland and Wales, there are in England to-day six universities which bring the new learning and the old to the very doors of the vast populations which surround their seats. Birmingham claims the Midlands; Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield instruct the manufacturing and commercial centres of the north; while the University of London, full of new aspirations, does its best for the huge and somewhat apathetic population of the capital. The calculated prodigality of the state endowments of Germany, the individual generosity of the citizens of the United States, the vigour of the young universities of Canada, have smitten the national conscience, if not with shame, at least with fear. But, while so powerful a lever as the dread of industrial decay may have been necessary to overcome the intellectual inertia of the country, the consequent impetus given to the study of science and (it may be hoped) of letters is not dying away, but rather taking permanent shape; and it is now impossible to say, as was said in 1903 by one of the members of the Mosely Educational Commission, that in this country... we seem to be doing nothing for its own sake, and least of all in education."

The new edition of the 'Endowments of the University of Cambridge,' suggests other though kindred reflections. The book has for its basis a series of documents, beginning with the year 1293, and ending with the year 1904.

The learned Registrary has prefaced the account of each bequest with an explanation, and, by his discriminating comment, has invested his material with something of that charm which characterises all his work. In one aspect his book serves, and is intended to serve, as a history of the progress of education in Cambridge; and the large amount of new matter which has been incorporated since the previous edition of the Endowments' in 1876 is, in this aspect, highly satisfactory. Yet, though it is a mistake to suppose that the flow of benefactions to the ancient universities has entirely ceased, the fact remains that Cambridge has twice appealed, once in 1898 and once again in the spring of 1904, for help without which she cannot meet her national responsibilities. Oxford has at last been constrained to confess that she is in a similar if not yet so dire a strait; and it is easy to understand the effort which it has cost her, as well as her sister university, to sue in formâ pauperis.

In truth the neglect, almost absolute, of Oxford and Cambridge, while the new universities are finding generous. benefactors, either leads to the conclusion that the old universities are condemned and found wanting, or has its origin in a profound misconception of their efforts and resources. It may be urged that neither alternative is. true; that the needs of the new universities are more urgent, and that the needs of Oxford and Cambridge will in turn receive attention. But a delay of a few years. may in these days involve damage which will not be repaired for more than one generation. Of Cambridge, at any rate, it is asserted that she is at the end of her means; that in the last forty years she has, in her efforts at development, strained her resources to the utmost; and that without assistance, which, to be effectual, must. be both prompt and generous, no further advance is possible. Science has emptied the University chest; yet, as the late master of Trinity Hall said, 'Science' is still 'hungry and aggressive.' As the result of her straitened. resources, Cambridge can no longer satisfy the just demands either of science or of letters. When we compare this state of things with that in Germany, where the University of Berlin enjoys a state endowment of 170,000l. per annum, or in the United States, whose universities have received from private benefactors alone

42,000,000l. sterling in the last thirty years, apart from large funds provided by the State, we are forced to recognise that much yet remains to be done in England.

It is not difficult to suggest some reasons for the comparative neglect of the older universities in the matter of benefactions. In the first place, neither of them can appeal to local patriotism; and an appeal on the wider ground of national efficiency is not so easily nor so effectively pushed home. Next, it is hard to imagine that a university whose colleges enjoy a corporate income of something like 300,000l. a year can be in serious want of funds. Moreover, if this deficiency really exists, it is generally regarded as the result of the squandering of revenue on an extravagant system of 'prize fellowships,' that is, fellowships given as the reward merely for a high place in examination, and held by barristers, doctors, and civil servants, professors and lecturers in other universities, and even successful men of business-persons who do not contribute in any way to the efficiency of the University as a teaching or as an investigating body.

We propose briefly to examine the University balancesheet, the college system, and the question of the fellowships, and to endeavour to give the candid enquirer some ground for a judgment on the claims of Cambridge. But we must first discuss what is perhaps the most serious obstacle to the satisfaction of her needs. This obstacle is the belief, apparently ineradicable, that the older universities teach and care for nothing but the ancient languages, theology, and mathematics. For the persistence of this belief the daily press and public speakers are in a great measure to blame. Scarcely a week passes without an allusion which betrays, if not a culpable levity, a most unfortunate ignorance. Cambridge men have listened with amazement to the covert attacks on Cambridge science, and have wondered how long it may be before Cambridge letters are also disparaged. Of late, too, another note has been heard; and, notwithstanding the just aspiration of the new universities to a many-sided activity, alike in the literary and scientific fields, an attempt, which must be stigmatised as ungenerous and illiberal, has been made in the press and on the public platform to limit the functions of the ancient universities, and to drive

them back into the grooves of the thirties and forties, from which Cambridge, to say nothing of Oxford, has so completely escaped. Whatever the reason may be, it is at least certain that Cambridge is frequently written and spoken of as if she were still the Cambridge of 1850.

It has been suggested, even in responsible journals, that Oxford and Cambridge would do well to keep to the older lines of education, and to leave newer studies to their younger rivals. The obsession of men's minds by an ideal which passed away half a century ago can alone account for the impression that the policy of restriction to the ancient learning is in any way possible, or has been possible for these fifty years. Those who know Cambridge may well be astonished that responsible persons should gravely speak of the university of Newton and Charles Darwin, of Maxwell and Rayleigh, as still shrouded in medieval shadow.

It cannot be too often repeated that since the Commission of 1850, or rather since the promulgation of the new statutes in 1856, the University has advanced without pause to claim as her own the whole field of modern knowledge; and that it is the rapidity of her advance which has depleted her treasury. The state of things before 1850 need here be referred to only for purposes of contrast. The only avenue to an honours degree was then the Mathematical Tripos, or, for students of classics, the Mathematical combined with the Classical Tripos. Science formed no part of the regular course of instruction. Adam Sedgwick himself, pre-eminent geologist as he afterwards became, knew nothing of geology when admitted to his professorship. When he was appointed to his chair, classics, mathematics, and, in a less degree, theology and law, were well endowed; but effective provision for modern studies or for science there was none. In 1851 was founded the Disney professorship of archæology; and the creation of this chair may fairly be considered to be the first step towards the recognition of the sciences of ethnology and anthropology. The imperial value of ethnological and anthropological research is incontestable; and to this research no more important contribution has been made than by the bands of Cambridge travellers and students.

Mention has been made in the first place of the studies