The London University

Abstract

FORTUNE so far has not been too kind towards the efforts made for adding teaching functions to the existing University of London. As already chronicled in NATURE, the answer of the late Government to the request of the deputation to Lord Rosebery from institutions mentioned in the Report of Lord Cowper's Commission was the introduction of Lord Playfair's “University of London Act, 1895,” enacting the appointment of a Statutory Commission to give effect to the recommendations of the Royal Commission. Before it had been read a second time, the Government went out of office and the Bill was dropped. From reports which have lately appeared in the press, it would seem that on June 13 a deputation from the members of Convocation hostile to the scheme waited on the Duke of Devonshire and Lord Salisbury, then in Opposition, and were led to believe that these statesmen were not unwilling to support an amending clause to Lord Playfair's Bill, which would entail the scheme, when arranged by the Statutory Commission, being submitted to Convocation for approval in the manner prescribed for a senatorial election, i.e. by voting-papers. And by July 1, Sir John Lubbock, in seeking re-election for the University, had pledged himself to oppose the Statutory Commission Bill unless such a clause were inserted, and comes into line with those against whom he voted in the Senate a year previously. Following this, came the Duke of Devonshire's reference on August 15 to the “strong opposition taken by a large and not unimportant section of Convocation” to the scheme of Lord Cowper's Commission, coupled with the announcement that legislation on the subject would not be undertaken in the short session then commencing.