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with which the authority of the Board alone is competent to deal, a sharp watch would be kept upon their innovations by the other members of the College, if their proceedings were known. This would of itself serve as a check. There are other cases, however, in which the intervention of the visitors or of the crown is necessary to give validity to the measures of the Board. With the help of secrecy this little obstacle is easily surmounted. An apparently innocent resolution comes before the visitors or the government, for their assent; it is not opposed by any members of the College, for its existence is unknown to them, but of course this silence appears to the visitors or the crown, to imply consent, and consequently the resolution becomes law. It may not be discovered until it is too late to be easily remedied. Probably it may only be the small end of a wedge, the pressure of which is not felt until the sanction of immemorial usage is alleged against those who complain of being crushed. The remedy is publicity.*

Do these remarks seem in any degree exaggerated? we would ask our readers to recollect that it is only a few years since the Board of Trinity College, concocted a statute intended to be a sop to the members of the University who were beginning to ask for a constitution. This statute affected the rights and privileges of some two thousand persons, now masters of arts, besides all future graduates, yet not a hint of its preparation, much less of its contents, was conveyed to any of those persons or to their parliamentary representatives. It was discovered quite accidentally by one of the fellows, as our readers may remember, in the printing office, where it had lain printed and undergoing corrections from time to time for two years, and it finally obtained the Royal sanction, without an opportunity being offered to any member of the University to examine or to discuss its merits, or to suggest amendment.

It may be worth while to notice the argument put forward on behalf of the Board, that the candour with which they offered every information to the Royal Commissioners proves that they do not shrink from publicity, and contrasts favorably with the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Now many of the Colleges in these Universities did give full information to the Commissioners; and those which refused did so on the ground that they were private foundations, and forbidden by their founder's statutes to acknowledge the Commissioners authority. Trinity College, Dublin, is a royal foundation, governed by royal statutes, and wholly subject to the royal authority, to refuse information asked by the fouader would be absurd.

No; that would interfere with the object of the Board which was, seeing that the University was likely to obtain some constitution, to secure for themselves alone the power of framing it, and thereby of neutralizing by subtle clauses, any apparent privileges which might be granted. The measure which resulted from this notable policy, was characterized by the clearness and exactness familiar to all students, of board-room literature. As to the grammar of it, we should like to know whether the Civil Service Commissioners would consider a man qualified to be secretary to an important board, who after two years devoted to preparation of his exercise, should write of "all such power as to the Provost, Fellows and Scholars, have been given granted or possessed." But there is a more serious fault. In the opinion of a great lawyer, the letters patent, if understood in the only sense which the words naturally can bear, would be of necessity wholly void. The words must be taken in a non-natural sense, if they are to have any force at all. In this a device intended to familiarize the Dublin Students with "non-natural" construction? But in whatever sense the words are taken, the letters patent, according to high legal authority, do not accomplish what they were intended to do, but something wholly different, and what they have done has been executed in such a manner as to leave unsettled the most important practical points of detail. To complete the insolence (we can call it no less) of this proceeding of the Board the letters patent when obtained were not communicated to those concerned; we daresay the Junior Fellows of Trinity College were favored with a copy, but the members of the University Senate or those entitled to become such, were left in ignorance of the new law affecting them.

Another instance less noticed is the Queen's letter of 1851, giving compensation for renewal fines. It is probable that the renewal fines were divided by the Provost and senior fellows, at an early period; the fact is, the amount was formerly too small to cause any dispute, and moreover, from the secrecy of the Board, no one else could know what estates were leased, or what fines were received. We cannot discover in the statutes any justification for this distribution, other than the negative one that it is not prohibited. The Statutes provide " in order that the intention of increasing the salaries, may be carried into effect," that in all College leases, "the Statutes of

Ireland in such cases made and provided be fully observed, namely, that one half of the annual value be reserved as rent. Now the statute of Charles I., here referred to was enacted with regard to all colleges, hospitals, ecclesiastical corporations, and bishops, for its intention is expressly stated to be, to prevent the future revenues of such corporations from being anticipated; to prevent, for example, a bishop from leasing the see lands in such a manner as to leave to his successor only an insignificant annual rent. It was not implied so far as we can judge, that governors of hospitals, or of colleges, had the right of appropriating the fines to their own private use. If it had been so, the intention expressed would have been, to preserve a sufficient revenue for the general purposes of the respective corporations. And the very same observation applies to the intention expressed in the college statute, which is to provide for future increase, and to prevent the Senior Fellows from absorbing the entire of the College revenues. The reader may naturally ask, how is it in other foundation. In Trinity College, Cambridge, which in many respects resembles Trinity College, Dublin, the fines are divided according to a fixed proportion among all the fellows. In Brasenose, Oxford, the senior fellows divide the fines, but the commissioners state that they do not consider the arrangement justified by the statutes. The Dublin statutes make no special mention of fines, but they provide that if the revenues of the College should admit of an increase in the salaries then enacted, the same proportion should be preserved. Whether this clause determines the distribution of the fines, as well as the rents, let the reader judge. However, that may be the Board put the matter, as they supposed, beyond question, by obtaining in 1851, (while the University Commissioners were sitting in England,) a Queen's letter, granting them £800 per annum each in lieu of the fines which they resigned to the common chest. Of course, nobody stepped forward to say to the Government, Let not the question of the legality of the distribution of the fines, be prejudiced by this commutation,† for the whole matter was arranged

It may be worth notice that the Senior Fellows of Brasenose, are, at least some of them, actually junior in College standing to the non-tutors of T.C.D.

We of course, have not seen the letters patent, but we suppose that legally they do not prejudice the previous question.

privately. Now we do not want to have this part of the Senior Fellows' revenue disturbed; they ought to have a pretty good salary, and this is now the most unobjectionable part of their income. But there are one or two points to which we would direct attention; first, we have here a manifest confession, that the revenues of the College have admitted a very large increase in the original statutable salaries; but in violation of the statute, that increase has been, since 1758, wholly given to the Senior Fellows. Their fixed income has increased nine fold since that date, while that of all other officers in the College has remained the same. That increase, however, does not by any means represent the augmentation of their whole income. There are sundry other sources of revenue not yet sanctioned by Royal Letter. There are the Degree Fees, of which a good deal has been heard lately. There are the Decrements, under which head the Senior Fellows receive an amount which, doubtless to suggest its insignificance, they reduce in their answer to the Commissioners to a weekly sum. Each Senior Fellow, say they, is paid three farthings a week by each pensioner. They might, one would think, have done the thing respectably when they were about it, and made it a penny a week, with the customary sod of turf. Then there is an additional fee paid to each Senior Fellow in turn as Senior Lecturer, and passing over the minor fees, there is lastly, an income tax of five per cent. on the whole College revenues paid to each Senior Fellow in turn, as Receiver's Fees. All these fees are alike unsupported by the statutes, all alike were introduced, no one knows how, and all were condemned by the Commissioners. How soon it may please the Board to obtain a royal letter, granting them a fixed annual compensation in lieu of these fees, we cannot tell; perhaps they have done so already. We rather think, however, that the publicity which has been given to College affairs lately, will interfere with any comfortable settlement of this kind. A royal letter will hardly be granted, without some little inquiry; and if the compensation for renewal fines, had not been obtained by an able stroke of policy, before the Dublin Commission sat, it is probable that it would not have been tacitly submitted to, without some stipulation as to the other items to which we have referred.

We have observed that the period at which these several fees were introduced, is unknown, but unless we are mistaken,

we can point out at least, a limit, and not only so, but the event which probably led to the adoption of these innovations. The documents accessible to the public are but few, so that we are obliged to pick out and follow up the slightest traces, as much as if we were investigating the early history of Rome. It is not necessary, however, go back much more than a century.

We need not remind the reader of the clauses in the Caroline Statutes directing that when the College revenues should admit of it, an augmentation of the salaries of fellows, &c., should be made in the same proportion as was thereby assigned; the Board, with consent of the Lord Lieutenant and Visitors, having power to make such augmentation. Now the first recorded increase is that to which the Prince of Wales, as Chancellor, gave his assent in 1721. We should expect, therefore, that the salaries recited in his letter as then existing, should be the same, or at least, in the same proportion as those enacted by Charles I., or else that allusion should be made to some former augmentation. Not so: a reader of the letter would indeed necessarily conclude that it contained the very first augmentation, and that the salaries were those originally fixed, but on a comparison, we find that at some previous period, an increase had taken place doubtless by decree of the Board, in consequence of which the salaries of the Fellows now appear tripled, while those of the native scholars were not increased at all. Further, the salary of the Senior Lecturer had now reached four times its original amount, while that of the Sublecturers at first equal to it, had been only doubled. The Chancellor's letter augments all these salaries in such a manner, as to restore exactly (except in the case of the Provost,) the original proportion. In order to do this, it was necessary to add two pounds here; twenty-three pounds, six shillings, and eight pence there; twenty-five shillings to a third, and so on. That this shews a desire to restore the old proportion, is manifest, yet this intention is not stated. This rather looks as if the statute had been violated before, but that it was better to remedy the mischief quietly, than to take any notice. of the illegality. But who took the pains to have it remedied?

Most of the salaries of the officers had been doubled, except those of the Senior Lecturer, and the of Deans, which had been quadrupled; those of the Fellows, tripled; of the scholars, not natives, increased two and a-half times. The letter of the Prince of Wales, made all the salaries five times the original amount.

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