On a point of Order. Will it be convenient, Mr. Speaker, for you at this point to give a ruling as to the various Instructions that appear on the Paper?

I think it will. There are three Instructions on the Paper. The first, in the name of the hon. Member for Seaham (Mr. Webb)—

"That it be an Instruction to the Committee that they have power to insert a provision enabling the Commissioners for the University of Cambridge to provide that women should be admitted to membership of the university and to degrees, scholarships, and fellowships on the same conditions as men "—

and that in the name of the hon. Member for Cambridge University (Mr. J. R. Butler) and other hon. and right hon. Members—

"That it be an Instruction to the Committee that they have power to insert a provision instructing the Commissioners to give effect to the recommendations of the Cambridge Committee of the Royal Commission in relation to the position of women at Cambridge "—

are out of order, because they are unnecessary as Instructions, and what is desired can be obtained by Amendment in Committee on the Bill. In regard to the Instruction in the name of the hon. Member for Oxford (Mr. F. Gray)—

"That it be an Instruction to the Committee that they have power to insert provisions repealing existing legislation conferring powers and privileges upon the said universities and affecting persons other than members of the said universities "—

that is out of order, not being relevant to the subject matter of the Bill.

Notice taken that 40 Members were not present: House counted, and 40 Members being present ——

I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

I do not think it will be necessary for me to take any unduly long time in asking the House to give a Second Reading to this Bill. It is, as the House will appreciate, a Bill that has been before the public for some little time, inasmuch as it is in substantially the same form as the Bill introduced by the right hon. Member for the English Universities (Mr. H. Fisher) in the last Parliament; moreover, the Bill for which I invite a Second Reading to-day is a Bill that may, I think, fairly be described as a consequential Bill, following upon the very full and careful examination of the subject with which it deals by a Commission singularly strong in qualities, set out in a Report to which I shall have occasion to refer; and the third reason why I do not think I need detain the House unduly long is because I think, with the exception of one substantial point of controversy, which is responsible for one or two of the Instructions on the Paper, the Bill is a substantially agreed Bill.

Hon. Members will, no doubt, have in their minds an outline of the history of recent events that have led to the introduction of this Bill. After the War, all universities alike found themselves compelled to review their general position, more particularly with regard to the financial conditions in which the War had left them. The review ultimately led to a representative deputation on behalf of British Universities, in which Oxford and Cambridge were included, being received by the right hon. Gentleman who preceded me in my present post and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer. As a result of that, these Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were invited, and agreed, to submit statements of their financial position and their needs, with a view to those being examined from the point of view of their then financial situation, and that led to the establishment of a Royal Commission, presided over by the right hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith), which had as its principal object the conduct of an inquiry into the financial resources of the universities, to see whether they could or could not, by their own resources, unaided, make such provision as was necessary in the altered conditions of the day.

That Report has been in the hands of the public for some considerable time, and I hope that hon. Members, or a great many of them, have had the opportunity of familiarising themselves with its contents. I do not think it is possible to exaggerate the debt of gratitude that the House and the public owe to the right hon. Member for Paisley and those who collaborated with him in the production of a Report that is a wealth of learning and information and a great repository of wise sense and judicious conclusions. The history of university development in this country is, I venture to think, one of the most, if not the most, fascinating chapters of our national history. In the Report there is traced from their foundation in the Twelfth Century to the present day the growth and evolution of the idea of the universities; reference is made to the degree and the manner in which they were fashioned upon the earlier Continental Universities that in those days were famous and older than they, and, like all other institutions, they have drawn, in their inception and throughout their long history, liberally upon those springs of public spirit, and charity, and love of learning, and loyalty to spiritual ideals that have been always, and are to-day, powerful to release the purse-strings of private generosity, and, like all other institutions, of course, they have had their good times and their bad, their storms and their calms, their ups and their downs. In those days, when theology and politics were more closely connected than, happily, they are to-day, the reaction of one upon the other was not infrequently to the disadvantage of both, and it thus came about that at times these universities were found languishing in academic backwaters, but not unseldom they were, by that connection to which I have referred, thrown into the full glare of public and acute controversy. However, all those are matters of history and are open to hon. Members to study for themselves. Therefore, I will not detain the House longer with regard to them.

The report itself is a long document, as, indeed, it was bound to be, if it discharged the duty that was laid upon its compilers of exploring and putting under the microscope every detail of an exceptionally elaborate university organisation; and while there were no recommendations that are not absolutely or relevantly important, it is inevitable that they should enter into a great wealth of detail, into which, I think, at this stage the House would not wish to follow them. But one thing, is, I think, remarkable; that is, that the personnel of a Commission that represented every shade of view, and a great variety of experience and judgment, should, with the exception of one principal matter, to which I shall refer in a moment, have reached complete unanimity of conclusion. That makes the task of this House considerably more simple. It is evidently beyond the power of Parliament to legislate, or even have the wish to attempt to legislate, upon all the matters which would be required to be legislated upon if it were to attempt itself to bring every one of the statutes of the universities or colleges into harmony with the Commission's advice, and in this matter as to procedure we are not without precedent to guide us. Hon. Members will remember that just 50 years ago there was a Royal Commission on the same subject which led in due course to the establishment, as this Bill proposes, of two bodies of Commissioners to give effect to the recommendation of the Royal Commission of that day, and we on this occasion follow the same procedure of establishing statutory Commissioners to give effect to the recommendations of my right hon. Friend's Commission, as was done on that occasion, with one important difference. In 1877 the Commissioners were left entirely free. On this occasion, we give them a somewhat more limited charter, as I shall show in a moment, but in that respect we follow the more recent precedent of the University of London Act, 1898.

May I drew attention to some of the more important features of what is really a very simple Bill? We establish two separate Commissions to give effect to the recommendations. That is, obviously, necessary on account of the distinctions and differences between the two universities. That also follows, of course, precedents. The personnel of those Commissions, I hope, is such as will command assent and support, and for their chairmen I am able to congratulate myself, and I think the House will congratulate itself, upon having been able to secure the services of two distinguished sons of universities in the persons of Lord Chelmsford and Lord Ullswater, familiar to this House, whose advice and experience will be of no little value. Clause 5 establishes the powers of the Commissioners up to the end of 1925, but His Majesty in Council, on the application of the Commissioners, may extend their period of activities for a further two years, if that be found necessary. The duties of the Commissioners will be found in Clause 6. It is there laid down that they may make regulations and so on for the universities, colleges and halls, and I want to draw attention to the concluding words of that Clause which will govern the run of the Commissioners' activities. They are instructed to act

Clause 8 deals with the questions of trusts, and that again, follows, with two important variations, the provision of 1877, and those two variations are these. In 1877 it was laid down that no trust could be altered that was less than 50 years old at the passing of the Act, that is to say, no trust could be altered that was not older than 1827, with the result that, inevitably, the lapse of time has caused some departure from the original intention of the provision. The original intention was, of course, to protect trusts that were less than 50 years old. By the fact of having a fixed date established, that Commission would now operate to protect trusts almost 100 years old, and it is for that reason that in this Clause that fixed period of 50 years is changed into a running period of 50 years, that will be calculated in each case from the date of the creation of the trust. That is-governed by paragraph 14 of the Schedule, which says that

The other variation that is introduced in Clause 8 is one that says:

That they had not considered the question of a pensions scheme for servants as they have no desire to interfere with the discretion of the universities and colleges in that matter.

In view of that passage it has been held that the establishment of a pension scheme for servants would be somewhat outside the scope of the Commissioners' recommendations, but it is thought desirable to make it quite clear that the universities and the colleges have power to make such a scheme, and, in fact, the University of Cambridge has made such a scheme for its own people. Therefore the effect of the Clause is to enable universities or colleges to proceed with the matter independently of the Statutory Commissions. I do not know that I need take hon. Mem- bers through the Schedule which is in the same form substantially, or with very slight alterations, as the Act of 1877. The Schedule has reference to the manner in which Statutes may be made, and deals with the opportunities for reconsideration and appeal, and of power in this and the other House to move an Address on a particular matter on which they may feel moved to disagree with the University Authorities.

The right hon. Gentleman uses the word "appeal." Are there any means in the Bill for regulating, or reversing, any Statute made by Commissioners otherwise than moving an Address?

If the Commissioners make a Statute and there is an appeal against it, the appeal is heard by the Universities Committee of the Privy Council, and they may either disallow the Statute or may refer it back to the Commissioners for reconsideration. The Commissioners, no doubt, will always give proper consideration to it. If eventually it passes, it is outside the purview of the Universities Committee; it is laid on the table of both Houses, and either House has the privilege, if need be, of moving an Address to His Majesty.

One word in regard to finance, which is not an unimportant or easy subject. While the Commissioners were sitting the Treasury was able to give assistance to the universities to the extent of some £30,000. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) and his colleagues recommended that an additional £70,000 a year should be given to each university, and in addition a certain sum allotted to the women's colleges for a period of years with a certain sum for extra-mural teaching. In addition a capital sum was suggested in order that the finances of the universities should be put into a better condition. In connection with this scheme, I am afraid I cannot for the moment give the House any further idea as to the figures of the financial assistance that the Government will be able to make if and when the Bill receives the approval of Parliament. These figures are still under consideration by the University Grants Committee and the Treasury, but, of course, as stated in another place when the Bill was under consideration there, the times are somewhat changed since the Royal Commission reported, and it is not likely, or, I fear, possible, to give the full measure of assistance which the right hon. Gentleman recommended should be found.

I am, however, able to say that if and when the Bill has received the approval of Parliament it is the intention of His Majesty's Government to extend further assistance to the universities, and in such measure as will, I think, be sufficient to meet the more pressing and immediate needs. I have only one thing more to say before I conclude, and that is a question of urgency, that is, the admission of women to membership of the universities. I noticed that my right hon. Friend's Commission was unanimous in their finding that women ought to be admitted to full membership of the universities. They were, however, divided, I think—and almost equally divided—as to the method by which effect should be given to the recommendations.

Not the Commission but the Cambridge Committee!

I have in mind the original recommendation by which, I think, the whole of the Royal Commission was unanimous. The statement in the Report of the Royal Commission I think states that they were equally divided as to the method in which effect should be given to that general recommendation. Hon. Members are aware that this subject is exciting no little controversy inside Cambridge and outside Cambridge, and if I may judge by the Order Paper it may possibly excite some little controversy in this House. I observe that there is on the Paper a reasoned Amendment on the Second Reading dealing with this matter. I do not know whether it will or will not be moved. I hope it will not.

Why?

For reasons which, had my hon. Friend not interrupted me, I was proceeding to give. They are that the proper place, in the opinion of the Government, for this matter to be discussed, as we have just heard from the ruling of Mr. Speaker, is in Committee. It will not be possible for me or for His Majesty's Government to accept an Amendment that attempts to raise a matter of this kind on the Second Reading when a full discussion on the point can take place in Committee if the Bill passes its Second Reading as I hope it will do. I should like to make my position on this matter as plain as I can. I do not attempt here, and I do not see that it is necessary at this stage, to argue the merits or the demerits of this proposal. I know that there are powerful arguments which can be advanced on each side, and if an Amendment is moved, as no doubt it will be in Committee, it will be possible for the Committee to examine with care and in detail all the relative force of the cases of the respective controversialists, and having heard that case it will no doubt be possible for the Committee to come to a wise decision. Therefore I would respectfully suggest to the House that that would be the convenient and proper course for the House to pursue.

Will the Committee be left free?

The decisions of a Committee are universally free. It is the duty of the spokesman of the Government to explain to the Committee what in his judgment are the reasons that lead to a particular course being in his judgment the wiser course to pursue, and those reasons I shall be quite willing to state when the proper time comes. I do not think the hon. Member (Mr. Trevelyan) can have had great experience on Committees if he is not aware that those discussions are generally conducted with freedom in the expression of opinion, and the decisions are arrived at after hearing the arguments on both sides. That is common in all discussions in this House.

When this matter comes before the Committee, will the right hon. Gentleman give a noncommittal guidance as to the way the Committee should act? Usually when the Minister in charge of a Bill indicates which way he wants his followers to vote, they vote that way. I would like to ask if on this question the right hon. Gentleman will undertake in no way to force his followers to vote for or against.

I have no means of forcing my followers to vote for or against, but I am perfectly prepared to tell the hon. and gallant Gentleman what advice in general I shall give to the Committee. It happens to be my own personal view that the admission of women to full membership of Cambridge University is both inevitable and right. I hold not less strongly by the doctrine of the autonomy of universities, and I also know that interference by Parliament in such a matter of vital importance and controversy within the university, even from the women's point of view, is not unlikely to lead to undesirable results. Therefore it will be my duty to indicate to the Committee that I think the balance of advantage consists in leaving the rule as it stands and allowing Cambridge to make its own reforms. Perhaps that is all I need to say at this stage on that point.

I think I have said enough to commend the Second Reading to the House. It is true that in a generation which is increasingly alive to the value and the need of higher education these ancient universities are daily proving themselves capable of adapting themselves to the necessities of modern demand. I think it was not without reason that the Royal Commission reported its opinion: the scholars and students who have achieved these university distinctions. It is because I know, and anybody who has studied the Report of the Royal Commission must know, that at the present time universities are handicapped and hampered by the lack of material resources in the conduct of their work, and it is because as a son of Oxford I am so sensible of the advantage of what Oxford gave to me, and because I regard this Bill as the essential preliminary to enabling these universities to continue and develop their work, that I confidently invite the House to give this Bill a Second Reading.

We have just heard a comprehensive statement by the right hon. Gentleman who has just sat down, and as I had the honour to be Chairman of the Royal Commission to whose Report this Bill seeks to give effect, perhaps the House will feel that I ought to make a few observations of a general character. I cannot speak too highly of the time, the pains, and the ability which my colleagues on the Commission brought to bear upon an exceptionally complex and difficult task. My Presidency over that Commission was one of the pleasantest public duties which I have ever been called upon to perform. There were men on the Commission from Oxford on the one side and from Cambridge on the other, and the House will be astonished to know with what little difficulty I was able to keep the peace between them. They all worked together with a common spirit and for a common purpose. I think the right hon. Gentleman is quite justified in saying that this Report conclusively shows that during the last 50 years the process of self-reformation and self-development, without stimulus from outside, and until the last few years without any assistance from the State, which has gone on in both these ancient universities, is one of the most remarkable records in the educational world. The fiction that Oxford and Cambridge are places where the children of the well-to-do are offered a fossilized curriculum in more or less obsolete subjects in the intervals between boating and cricket and other forms of recreation—a notion which I believe is still held in many quarters—ought to be completely dispelled, not by rhetoric, but by the facts and the arguments put forward in this Report.

There is no subject to which the Commission gave more attention, as the right hon. Gentleman has acknowledged, than how best to promote and increase the accessibility of the universities to all classes of people. The figures which he has cited show that that process has already attained very considerable dimensions, and the new system of State scholarships, instituted in 1920, will enable poor boys and girls, if they elect so to do, to carry on the higher and later stages of their education at Oxford and Cambridge. All the same, there is no doubt that there is a considerable distance along this road still to travel. We examined most carefully and in great detail, with the aid of outside experts what I may call the economic side of university life, with the object of seeing whether some better system could not be devised both with regard to lodging, catering, and the other normal and necessary expenses, so as to open the door wider to all His Majesty's subjects. I believe I may say that, from the practical point of view, not the least valuable of the recommendations of this Commission will be found to be those which we have embodied in the report under this head.

That brings me to say a word of a general character as to the finances of the Universities. As I have said, they have hitherto, with the exception of the grant of £30,000 which they have had during the last two or three years, dispensed entirely with extraneous assistance from the State. They have relied upon the pious founders and the benefactions in succeeding generations of their worthy successors for the funds with which they have provided the higher education of the country. I am one of those who entirely share the view, to which I think the right hon. Gentleman gave expression, that the autonomy of the universities ought to be preserved and that anything in the nature of State interference or control is very much to be deprecated. On the other hand, if you ask, as they have been constrained to ask, the State for some assistance, the State, of course, is entitled to know and to be assured that the money which it is asked to spend is going to be spent legitimately, economically, and solely for educational purposes. I cannot help expressing a certain amount of surprise at the contrast, the striking contrast, in this matter between the state of things which prevails here and in the United States. America now boasts, I do not know the precise number, but a very large number of the most highly equipped universities in the world, where teaching of the very best quality and description is given, and where the apparatus, what I may call the technical apparatus, of education both on the scientific and every other side is developed to a point nearly approaching perfection. The American millionaire is often criticised, perhaps legitimately with regard to some aspects of his character, but these men are the lineal descendants of the Wykehams and Wainfletes——

And Henry VIII.

Henry VIII. also, who stole the idea from Cardinal Wolsey. Do not let us go too closely into then-antecedents. Some of their records do not bear very close investigation. But, whether these benefactors proceeded from a disinterested love of learning, or whether they had in their minds indirect methods of insurance is immaterial, the result is the same. I cannot help hoping, when this really very exiguous grant is made by the State, simply to fill up the yawning gaps in the present apparatus of Oxford and Cambridge, that a sense of public duty will be revived in our midst, and will lead to the rise of a new set of benefactors to carry on the work which has been done by rich men in the past. I will not enlarge or labour that point, but I will just ask the House to consider the grounds upon which we have made this request for a further grant from the State. The figure is £100,000 a year for each University. At present they are getting £30,000. We have clearly pointed out in our report that £100,000, in our opinion, is by no means sufficient, and that £150,000 is almost the minimum of what ought to be provided, but we recognise the financial exigencies of the country, and for the reasons given here we confine our recommendations within the narrowest possible limits. What are the purposes for which this enhanced grant is asked? They are set out in general terms in the report. Perhaps I may summarise them. The first is that the present salaries of the university teachers and administrators are wholly inadequate. That is a very serious matter. Even some of our own provincial universities are able to take men away from Oxford and Cambridge by the higher salaries which they offer.

Why not?

I am not complaining of it. I am very glad that the teachers and administrators of the provincial universities have them. It is still more the case with America. There is great temptation to men who hardly get a living wage, bearing in mind the enhanced prices—there is still a great temptation, which I am glad to say is as a rule very strenuously and loyally resisted, to leave their own university and to go to places where their services are better remunerated. It is one of the most crying demands both at Oxford and Cambridge that salaries should be revised and the services of these men retained. Then an adequate pension scheme is wanted. Further, assistance is required for the libraries. The Bodleian Library at Oxford is a great national institution. It exists for the whole world, and it is absolutely in need of assistance. The Bodleian Library at Oxford and the University Library at Cambridge are both in urgent need of money even for the elementary purposes of binding, lighting and heating. It is one of the primary necessities of this essential part of university equipment. These are some of the needs of universities to supply which this grant is recommended, and I think the House will feel that the proposed outlay is a very productive form of expenditure and that it is not excessive in amount.

12N.

With regard to the question which was raised at the close of the right hon. Gentleman's speech, and which is put forward as an issue in this Debate in an Amendment on the Paper, respecting the position of women at Cambridge, I must say that I, as an Oxford man, cannot but be amazed that this subject should have been raised at this stage. At any rate Oxford is totally free from reproach in this matter, as, for some years past, women there have had an absolute equality with men. They are on a level footing and therefore our withers are entirely unwrung. If this Amendment is carried, of course, it would mean the rejection of this Bill, which proposes to do so much for blameless Oxford and a great deal as well for peccant Cambridge. It seems hardly right that that should be because Cambridge is lagging behind, as she sometimes does, and is displaying an ultra-conservative spirit. The Oxford members of the Commission viewed this as a domestic matter with which they are not concerned, but they join in the recommendation made by the Commission that as a whole women should have full participation in the life and work of the universities. This is the unanimous recommendation of the Commission. I believe when the question was discussed by the Cambridge members there was an almost equal division of opinion, not at all on the question of principle, but as to the method in which, under the peculiar circumstances, it should be carried into practical effect. My hon. and gallant Friend beside me appears to be apprehensive of what may happen if women are given this equality at Cambridge, but I can tell him that personally I am in favour of giving at Cambridge the complete equality which exists at Oxford. I do not, however, consider that is a question which can be raised with profit on an Amendment to the Second Reading of this Bill, or which could now be profitably discussed. I have felt it my duty to deal with these various points in order to explain the attitude assumed by the Commission, and I hope the Bill will be given a Second Reading and that, as a result of its passage, the universities will become in every sense more national that they are at present.

It is interesting to compare the reception which the appointment of the first Royal Commission received at both universities, rather more than 70 years ago, with the feelings which are raised to-day. At that time all the Colleges in Oxford and Cambridge Universities were up in arms and filled with blank dismay at the thought of the profane finger of the State being laid on the universities with a view to conducting an inquiry into the manner in which they did their work. The appointment and report of this present Royal Commission have been received in an entirely different spirit, and, speaking for the university which I have the honour to represent, there was a strong desire that the Commission should be appointed, and there was but a very modified apprehension as to any danger that might accrue to the universities from the Report of the Commission. We trusted to the wisdom and loyalty of the Members of the Commission, and we were perhaps not uninfluenced by the fact that we were in need of money. We also felt some kind of consciousness of virtue, to a certain extent, and we were not afraid of an inquiry being made into our work. It is generally admitted that the universities at the present day are much more in touch with public opinion than they were 70 years ago. This confidence on the part of the universities has been amply justified by the Report of the Commission. That Report is an extremely sympathetic document, and we have welcomed its appearance. The only thing, perhaps, that we regretted was that there were not more of the political friends of my hon. Friend the Member for Central Edinburgh (Mr. W. Graham) on the Commission. We should have liked very much to have more Labour representatives on that Commission, in order that they might see for themselves how the universities are run, and we believe that, had there been more of them on the Commission, they would have shared the opinions of my hon. Friend.

We are particularly grateful to the Commission because they respected what I may describe as three, at any rate, of the articles of faith that we hold. In the first place, the Commission has recognised all through that the universities are not merely places of education, but that they also exist for the purposes of research. The suggestion is often made that the universities are wasting their time, that people there are idle, because they are not engaged for the whole of the year in education in its simplest aspects. The Commission have realised that it is impossible that education of university standard should be supplied unless time and leisure are also supplied for the carrying out of research. Research, equally with education, is a function of the university. One sometimes sees the view put forward that the university terms are ridiculously short. One hears it said that the college buildings are being wasted during a large part of the year. All of us would be glad to see the fullest use made of the university buildings all through the year. Many, if not most, of the colleges of both Oxford and Cambridge, are delighted to lend their buildings for the purposes of conferences of all sorts during the vacations. We are delighted that summer schools for various educational purposes should be held in the universities. At the same time, however, we have to realise that it is impossible to expect teachers to keep themselves fresh and useful if they are to be engaged in teaching during the whole year. It is absolutely necessary that they should have an adequate amount of time for their own reading and research, and we are most grateful to see that that truth is recognised by the Commission.

There is another article of faith with us which the Commission has recognised, and that is the essential part that is played by the colleges in university life. In the past, it used rather to be the custom to contrast the welfare of the university with the welfare of the colleges, to speak as though they were in some way opposed, but I do not think that anyone in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge holds that view at the present day. Everyone recognises that the colleges are an essential part of the life of the University. What mainly gives to Oxford and Cambridge their distinctive character is the fact that they are residential universities, consisting each of a federation of some twenty colleges, and it has been proved up to the hilt that those colleges are well-springs of initiative. Very often, individual colleges have led the way in beneficent reforms which the university as a whole has taken up later. The colleges, also, are very valuable fields for experiment. It is possible to make an experiment on a small scale which later if found to be good may be tried on a large scale. Also, of course, the colleges are really the heart and centre of that devotion and loyalty without which university life and education would be a very small thing.

The last of these three articles of faith which the Commission has respected is that of the freedom, the autonomy of the universities. No one can believe more strongly than myself in the necessity, if the universities are to fulfil their proper duties in the life of the nation, that they should retain freedom from anything in the nature of continuous administrative control. However wise, however brilliant a Board of Education might be, we believe it would be disastrous that it should interfere continuously with the administration, and still more with the educational curriculum, of either University, and certainly, so long as my right hon. Friend the present President of the Board of Education is in his place, we have no fear of such interference. That principle of freedom for the universities has been amply respected by the Commission. Further, the Commissioners have very wisely, if I may presume to say so, confined themselves in their recommendations to matters on which there is, at any rate, a substantial amount of support in the Universities themselves. I do not intend to take up the time of the House by enumerating all the proposals, but I might, perhaps, allude to one or two.

The charge is sometimes made against the older universities that there is an idle section of the population there, who have failed to pass examinations, and come up and spend one, or, possibly, two years in leisured ease. The Commission have recommended that in future there should be a university entrance examination, which everyone should have to pass before he is allowed to come up and commence residence at all. The Commissioners have, moreover, recommended that the principle should be accepted, that at any rate the emoluments of entrance scholarships should be confined to those who can show that they are in financial need of them. They have accepted the principle that honour should be given to whom honour is due, and that the name and rank of scholar should still be maintained, with, perhaps, certain academic privileges; but they have insisted that the money should go where it is needed. I think that many of the critics of the present arrangement would be surprised if they realised what is the present fact. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) has pointed out that, as a matter of fact, a very large part of these emoluments does go only to men who have need of them, but still I think it is sound that the principle should be laid down and receive statutory sanction. I will not spend time over one other point, extremely important though it is to the life of the universities, namely, the further development of the faculty system. It is proposed in the Report that, alongside the organisation of the university as a group or federation of colleges, there should be a parallel organisation of the university as one of faculties. That is in accordance, I think, with general opinion at the universities. They have gone further in that respect at Oxford than we have at Cambridge, but it is a matter on which there is more or less agreement. Lastly, the Commissioners have recommended a redistribution of powers and functions between the resident body and the general body of graduates all over the country. I certainly would not say a word against the value and importance of keeping some kind of voice on university affairs for old Oxford and Cambridge men. I am not going into details on the matter, but I think the Commissioners have done wisely and well in recommending that there should be a reconstitution of powers in that respect.

I now come to the question of money. The Commissioners have made it abundantly clear that the salutary reforms which they propose cannot possibly be carried out on the present financial basis of the universities. They have scrutinised the various sources of income which the universities have, and they have come to the conclusion that they are not sufficient. In fact, they have said that it is impossible for the universities to carry on and remain efficient unless they receive a substantial subvention from the State. I am not going to labour that point. Obviously, since the War, the costs of living have increased, wages have greatly increased, salaries have lagged behind, and, of course, the costs of repairs have very greatly increased. The universities are now being called upon to do more work than they did before, to educate more men, to teach more subjects, and at the same time the purchasing power of their revenues is very much reduced. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Paisley spoke of the libraries, and I should like if I may, to rub in that point even further. I wonder if hon. Members realise what an enormous task it is to maintain the life of a great university library. I wonder if they realise that at Cambridge there is a shelf space of 19 miles of books, meaning about a million volumes and 500 volumes of catalogue. Every year about the number of 15,000 new books come into the library, and space has to be found for them. Books have to be bound if they are going to last and it is necessary to keep periodicals up to date, and if we get books printed in England free we do not gets books published on the Continent, and they have to be bought. The same applies to museums and laboratories. It is lamentable to read the annual reports of these institutions and to realise in what desperate straits they are and how their efficiency is being diminished.

If a university is to keep up to date there are continually new subjects which it has to try to teach and provide for, and often this means a considerable expense. In 1861, when the first Professor of Chemistry was appointed at Cambridge, he found himself in two empty rooms without any scientific plant at all and found he was expected to provide them himself. The other day a distinguished gentleman who has been secured for Cambridge from the Survey of India to start teaching the new subject of geodesy expected to find some kind of plant with which he could start working, but he simply had a couple of Army huts and no plant at all. Funds do not exist to start these important new subjects. Then there are Chairs in various subjects for which professors are urgently needed and for which we have no funds. We have no professor of Economic History at Cambridge. I saw it suggested in a letter in a periodical the other day that any concern which needed a government subsidy was therefore obviously inefficient. I think the writer of that article had forgotten that universities are not profit-making institutions at all, and it is absurd to judge them by arguments which would apply to concerns which exist for making a private profit. I regret that owing to the allocation of days to Supply it has been impossible and will, I understand, be impossible to bring up the Treasury grants to the universities of the United Kingdom. I think it would have been desirable to point out how in the last two years that general grant has been reduced by £300,000. To confine myself simply to the grant to Oxford and Cambridge, I should like to emphasise again the point that the £100,000 recommended by the Commissioners was a minimum grant. It was remommended by them at a time of great financial stringency when economy was in the air, and when they had to cut down everything they could. They recommended that sum as the barest minimum to keep the universities in working order. I am grateful and delighted to hear from the President of the Board of Education that the Government hope to see its way to increase the present grant, but I would urge upon them that they should do everything they can to depart as little as possible from this minimum figure of £100,000 which was recommended by the Commission.

The right hon. Gentleman spoke on the question of the accessibility of the universities to the working classes, and of course that figures very largely in the Report of the Commission. It seems to me a lamentable thing that national institutions like the universities should be largely restricted, on tests not of ability but simply of wealth, to a comparatively small part of the population. The only test for a university ought to be the test of ability and not of wealth at all. Certainly there is a large body of opinion in the universities in favour of greatly increasing the extent of the population from which applicants admitted to the universities are drawn. When once in the university, anyone who has been there will agree that you have a true democratic commonwealth in being. I do not think there is any place in the world where less attention is paid to social distinctions or to wealth, and surely in the present state of affairs that is something to be most profoundly grateful for and something one ought to do everything one can to increase. We are proud in my university of having a very well loved professor who started life as a basket maker and is proud of it himself, and I think many hon. Members would be surprised if they realised to what an extent the universities are, even at present, democratic institutions. The idea of a university being mainly a preserve of the idle rich, or anything approaching to it, is absolutely absurd, as is proved by the facts. There is nothing which so tends to break down social distinctions and bitterness in the commonwealth as the common pursuit of some great end, and it is because the universities exist for the pursuit of truth that they are able to break down, and may in the future break down still more, such distinctions more than perhaps any other institution in the State. The Commission make it clear that if the community wants to extend university advantages to a larger proportion of the population the community has got to pay for it. Funds at present are not sufficient to make that possible. But the Commissioners lay very great stress on the importance of the continued provision of State and local education authority scholarship. In 1920 and 1921, I understand 200 State scholarships to the universities were provided. Those now, alas, have been cut off, and I would urge my right hon. Friend to take the first opportunity to reintroduce them.

I have dealt so far with the question of the needs of young men coming to the universities at the ordinary age, but in addition to that, there seems no reason why the university should not go further and make greater provision than it has in the past for adult education. Schemes have been submitted to the Commissioners and largely accepted by them by which it would be possible for social science studentships, to give them that name, to be provided for a certain number of men every year who have spent a certain part of their life in industry, who have already received training in industry and who may be anxious for a university education. In the past it has been the great boast of Oxford and Cambridge that they have provided education for men who were destined to take a prominent position afterwards in the State. One sees the number of Prime Ministers who have been educated either at Oxford or Cambridge. In the future it seems obvious that the ruling class, the class from which our governors are to be drawn, is not to be so limited as it has been in the past, and it is highly desirable, even simply on national grounds alone, that those men and women who in the future are to play a part in governing the State should have had the best possible education that can be provided, and for that reason we at Cambridge would be very glad to see any provision bringing the universities and the labour movement into closer touch in that way. But it is clear that it is not possible for everyone to go to a university, in view of the present number of universities, and still less for everyone to go and reside at Oxford or Cambridge. They are small city communities which cannot be indefinitely extended. That makes all the more important the need of extending the educational activities of the universities outside their own borders. Cambridge, I am glad to say, does not always lag behind the senior university. We have it to our credit that Cambridge, 50 years ago, was the first to start on the path of extra mural education. The University Extension Movement began at Cambridge 50 years ago, and in a few weeks we shall have the honour of welcoming the President of the Board of Education to the first jubilee of the University Extension Movement. Oxford led the way in another form of extra-mural education by establishing tutorial classes. As a tutorial class tutor myself, I should like to bear witness to the extraordinary value of those classes. Perhaps it is not for me to say what is their real value to the student, but I can testify to their value to the man who tries to teach, and to the university at a whole, and particularly in those subjects in which labour has an important contribution to make to knowledge. I cannot say how grateful I am, not only for the friendships I have made among members of the tutorial classes, but also for the instruction that I have received from them. They are a very valuable experiment in education, and I hope that everything possible will be done to extend their scope.

At the present time we are largely limited by financial difficulties. These tutorial classes are, for the most part, maintained by private subscriptions among individuals at the universities and the colleges. It is not right, when the educational work is so important, that a valuable experiment of this kind should be allowed to depend largely upon individual and college subscriptions. Therefore, I welcome the proposal made by the Commissioners that there should be a yearly grant of £6,000 to each university for the purpose of extra mural education. At Cambridge we have never failed to provide tutorial classes where there has been a demand for them, and I would appeal to hon. Members above the Gangway representing the Labour party to stimulate the demand for these tutorial classes and other methods of education in which the university can help them. We shall be only too glad to co-operate in any such work, and, speaking generally, the more the working classes make demands upon the university, the more pleased the University will be, and the more grateful we shall be for the stimulus which Labour can supply, and for the contribution of Labour to education and to research.

I come to another point, which I regret to say is a controversial one. The Royal Commission have proposed that for ten years a grant of £4,000 should be paid to the women's colleges at Oxford and Cambridge. They have had the position of the women's colleges very much in their eye. It is common knowledge that at the present day Cambridge is unique among the universities of the United Kingdom, and with one exception among the universities of the British Empire, in not admitting women students to membership. The view has often been put forward that it is desirable that there should be one solely man's university in the United Kingdom. [HON MEMBERS: "Hear, hear!"] That may be an extremely good thing, and it may be an extremely good thing also that there should be a university for women only. It is extraordinary, having regard to the experience of other countries, that we have no such university in the United Kingdom. But it is impossible that Cambridge University should ever be regarded as a man's university in this sense, since women students have been present at Cambridge for over 50 years, and nobody has suggested that they should be removed. They have their buildings, their traditions, and no one proposes to tear them up by the roots. Women have for many years attended lectures along with men, and they have entered for and passed the same examinations as men. A few months ago Cambridge University admitted them to titles of degrees. Surely that makes it perfectly clear that Cambridge is not a man's university alone in the sense that there are no women there.

For good or ill, women are at Cambridge and are going to remain there. This has been recognised by Parliament, because in 1918, by the Representation of the People Act, the vote for the university was given to qualified women students who had passed the age of 30, although they were not members of the university. That is to say, that at the present time the women students at Cambridge who have qualified and who are over 30 can vote and do vote for Members for the university, although they are not allowed to vote in regard to questions affecting the academic curriculum. In spite of these changes, in spite of the fact that titles of degrees which were refused in 1897 were granted in 1921, women are not members of the university, and they have no voice in the conduct of its affairs. I do not propose to dwell on the sentiment or feelings with which women undoubtedly are affected, by the fact that although women may have lived three years at Cambridge and have passed their examination there, they are not entitled to call themselves members of the university. Lectures have to be advertised as for members of the university and members of Girton and Newnham Colleges. All this must be rather irksome for the women. Alongside that, there are serious practical disadvantages. In the first place, a woman, however well qualified, has no right to enter for the great majority of the university prizes and scholarships, and no woman, though she may be the best person, can be appointed a professor. Further, women are excluded from all the Boards of the University, the Boards of Examiners, the Boards of Studies, and all those Committees by which from day to day the work of the university is carried on.

For the last four years I have been in the position of trying to teach young men at Cambridge; and, undoubtedly, speaking from my own experience, it is a very valuable part of one's life and one's opportunities there that one is called upon every now and then to examine those entered for the university examinations, and to take part in one of the Boards of Studies, and to hear one's colleagues discussing as to how examinations should be conducted in the future and, generally, as to what are the best lines of development. From all these Boards women are at present excluded. It is not merely that it is irksome to them, but it puts a real hardship and a real grievance upon the women students. It is impossible that women teachers who are excluded from examining, and excluded from the discussion of educational matters in the university, should be able to give such good teaching to their students as they would be able to do otherwise.

Lastly, the action of our sister University—people sometimes call it our more sisterly University now—has undoubtedly affected things at Cambridge for the worse, because when women students or their advisers are going to choose between going to a university where they are given full equality of status, or to a university where they are not, apart from any particular personal reason for wanting to go to Cambridge, the best girls, who are likely to be the greatest credit to the university, will, obviously, choose Oxford. It is bound to be so, and it applies not only to students but also to teachers, and even within the past few months that has almost become a matter of experience. The House has been told that the Cambridge Commissioners unanimously recommended that women should be admitted to equal membership at Cambridge University, subject to certain unimportant limitations. The question, of course, is as to what method should be adopted to bring that about. The Cambridge Commission were equally divided. The Noble Lord the Lord President of the Council said in another place that the Government did not greatly care by what method the change came about. I would urge that this matter should be settled by Parliament one way or the other and not left to the Statutory Commission. It seems to me that, where there are already so many controversial points which will come up to be decided by the Statutory Commission, it would be most unfair to leave them this additional burden of deciding that extremely controversial point which should be decided by Parliament. The exact position of the Amendment which friends of mine and I propose to move later on is a matter for the Committee, and I will not trouble the House with it at present. We propose to move that there should be a charge to the Statutory Commission to give effect to the recommendations of the Cambridge Commissioners, which, as I have said, were unanimous.

On the question of interference with the universities, every son of Cambridge, and obviously every representative in this House of one of the universities, always feels bound to insist on the supreme value of autonomy to universities and the principle that they should not be interfered with in their administration and curriculum by outside bodies. But as against those who say that Parlia- ment should never interfere in academic matters, may I point out that, by the very fact of this Bill being brought before the House to-day, Parliament is taking upon itself, if it passes this Bill, to make itself responsible for the complete remodelling of the constitution of the whole university. It is not as if in a time of complete calm with no cloud in the sky it was suddenly proposed that Parliament should enforce the admission of women to Cambridge University. It is the very reverse. Our opponents say that at a time when Parliament and the Commission are definitely dealing with this question of the university they are to be excluded from dealing with this question which is of all others the most controversial, and one perhaps most closely affecting the public generally; whereas they would then actually be discriminating against those recommendations of the Commission which have reference to women.

One point which is extremely important is the distinction which should be drawn between general interference by the Board of Education or by Parliament in the administration and day to day work of the university, and Parliament simply stepping down and opening the door to a new class of applicants. I submit that the whole history of Corporations bears this out. However admirable they have been they have continually shown extreme reluctance to open their doors to any new class of applicant for entrance. Not only that, but there is a good precedent in the University Tests Act of 1871 when Parliament took such a step as we are asking it to take to-day. The preamble states that whereas it is expedient that the benefits of the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Dublin should be rendered freely accessible to the nation and whereas by means of divers restrictions, tests and disabilities, many of Her Majesty's subjects are debarred from full enjoyment of the same, and whereas it is expedient that such restrictions, tests and disabilities should be removed, be it enacted that those tests shall be done away with. I submit that that precedent really governs the case, that it is a fact that the full enjoyment of the university is being denied to a certain section of His Majesty's subjects, and that it is clearly within the province of Parliament to step in and say, in future those tests shall be swept away and the National Universities shall be open to-both sexes of the nation.

A matter which may be raised in more detail in Committee, but which is of importance, is the question of delay. The Commission cannot begin making Statutes by this Bill until January, 1925. Its powers are to end at the end of 1925 or possibly 1927. After that there is still an opening for appeals to be made against the recommendations of the Commission. It is only after that, say, in 1928, that the university will have an opportunity of dealing with this matter itself at all. Even then, under the recommendations of the Royal Commission, resident members of the university, supposing there is a majority there, may not be able to pass any measure, though they may have a strong majority for one or two years. If the matter is to be left to the university it means a long period of delay. Nobody can say how long, because the position is very uncertain and nobody can say that the Statutory Commission will give effect in detail to the recommendations of the-Royal Commission.

On this question of the constitution of the university it is not only that you are condemning the women to labour under these disadvantages for a considerably increased number of years, but you are leaving the whole question in the melting pot and in a state of uncertainty. Meantime the interest of women students will be suffering. There is one further point. This matter for months has caused much friction in the university. It has drawn away the best university teachers and professors, men of world-wide reputation, from their laboratories and libraries, and driven them to write fly-sheets and indulge in all the horrible processes of academic controversy. If this matter is not to be decided by Parliament it will mean that you will have all these flysheets and all this controversy over again. I believe certainly that a very large body in the university—I cannot say the exact proportion—would hear with the greatest relief of a decision once for all by Parliament settling the question. I would not think of proposing any such step as this if I believed that it was not in the interests of the university. But I believe that in this case, as in all cases, the interests of the university and of the nation are one and indivisible, and I believe that, in the interests of both, Par- liament, after all this delay, should now step in and say that a national university shall be open to both sexes.

After the very interesting speeches to which we have listened, I do not propose to intrude on the time of the House for very long. The problem upon which we are engaged is of great importance in our national life, and in some respects unique. We all recognise, I suppose—those who are most anxious for reform and those who are most satisfied with the existing state of things—that the two ancient universities have a unique position in this country. They differ, though it is rather hard to say how, in their educational atmosphere from the new universities, and that very circumstance must give rise to some anxiety at the prospect of any far-reaching change. I remember hearing a witty gentleman say, in connection with Trinity College, Dublin, when there was some proposal in reference to that anachronistic institution,

I am glad that, under the very wise leadership of my right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith), the proposals of the Commissioners, which are to be carried out with modifications, are not of a revolutionary kind. There are one or two things which it is vitally important to bear in mind. First of all, the colleges are really, from an educational point of view, the most valuable part of the university. Naturally, the university is in dignity and associations, and to some extent in its more formal teaching, the superior body, but practically everyone who has been to Oxford or Cambridge knows that the great educational benefit he received was mainly from his college. Therefore, any reform which did not recognise the value of the collegiate system and the autonomy that must be left to the colleges, so that each college might, if it wished, take a slightly different line from the others, would be purely mischievous. It has been brought out already in this Debate that no mistake could be greater than to suppose that the ancient universities are places where well-to-do young men get undeserved benefits from ancient endowments. It is not so. There are, I think, very few idle undergraduates. College discipline is now, at Oxford certainly, very rigid indeed in such matters. Everybody is expected to pass the university examination in reasonable time.

But, apart from that, it is not true that the well-to-do undergraduate gets more out of the university than he gives to it. The university gets a great deal more out of the undergraduate than the undergraduate gets out of the university, unless he is wise enough to use his opportunities to the full. It is not often realised that the well-to-do undergraduate pays a great deal of money, which the college uses with great benefit for educational purposes, and this money largely enables the college to go on. There are two or three colleges that are so richly endowed that they could exist without undergraduates, but all the other colleges depend on undergraduates, and if they had not any they would have to close their doors. The doctrine of a wasteful vampire sucking the blood of ancient endowments in order that he might amuse himself with games and sports is a pure delusion. If there is any battening it is done by the university.

The President of the Board of Education and other speakers have dwelt on the extreme importance of not interfering with the independence of the universities. I am sure that they are perfectly sincere. I have heard my right hon. Friend the late President of the Board of Education say just the same thing. But I cannot help remembering, in connection with previous education reform, that great assurances were given which have not in fact turned out to be trustworthy. Mr. W. E. Forster, in a memorable speech, said that the education rate would never amount to more than 3d. That has turned out to be untrue. I cannot help feeling some anxiety lest the financial relation between the State and the ancient universities should sooner or later drift into control. The danger of control is very great indeed. I commend this to the Labour party, because they are more likely to be the victims than the organisers of such a danger. I can imagine a Government which was anxious to form public opinion exercising a very powerful control on opinion by ensuring that the universities took particular lines in education. The University of Oxford would not pay the slightest attention at present to whatever the President of the Board of Education thought about questions of economic teaching, the relations of supply and demand, and the like. But it might not always be so. There is the example of Germany staring us in the face, where the old Prussian system depended mainly on control, extending over the whole education of the country from the time when the youngest child entered the elementary school to the highest degrees of the universities. It was a scientifically worked system of State control which completely swayed opinion from one end of Germany to another.

It led to the birth of the Social Democratic party.

That party has been on the whole a very inefficacious body. It would be a catastrophe if such a thing happened here. You may be emancipated from such a system, by such a disaster as the Great War, but that is a gloomy prospect to which to look forward. I say that by way of caution. I would rather that the universities relied upon benefactions, which do not come so freely on this side of the Atlantic as on the other, than on the State. But we ought to take all possible care, both by expression of opinion and, if possible, by positive enactments, that the State should not exercise any educational control over the ancient universities. For that reason I would like to see that in the making of these Statutes the power of the statutory Commissioners should not be quite so extensive as it is in the Bill. As the Bill is framed, if the Commissioners make a Statute and the Statute is objected to, the Commission may be over-ruled by an appeal to Parliament. I would make it the other way. Where the governing bodies of the universities or colleges object, the Commissioners should not have power to over-rule those bodies unless by an Address or Resolution of both Houses of Parliament. It would very seldom occur, if ever, because the governing bodies are anxious to carry out a great many changes and I do not anticipate any sharp difference of opinion between them and the Commissioners. If such a difference of opinion did arise, I do not think that the opinion of bodies which are now thoroughly enlightened and progressive, like the governing bodies of universities and colleges, should be overruled, except by Parliament itself. So much for independent autonomy.

Then there is the question of trusts. The right hon. Member for Paisley spoke of the need for obtaining more benefactions. I cannot think that you are going the right way to get more benefactions by giving no more than a period of 50 years. I know that the Board of Education believes that the Endowed Schools Act fell from heaven; that in that Act a period of 50 years is stated, and that since then it is rather impious to suggest that any other period might be the right one. We might really reconsider the limit of 50 years. It is a very short time; it is not more than the life of a benefactor and part of the life of his son. Suppose you have a millionaire who gives a large sum of money to some college or university. It certainly might be very offensive to the feelings of the son, who is the natural heir of the sum of money, if he not only loses the money, but in his own lifetime sees it diverted to some purpose quite distinct from that which his father intended. It is carrying interference with benefactors' rights too far. I would like to substitute a limit of 100 years for that of 50 years. I believe we should act quite rightly and encourage benefactions and have a better chance of getting benefactors to come forward with liberal endowments for the ancient universities.

I think the Statutory Commissioners should be given the largest opportunity of dealing with the suggestions contained in this very valuable Report. No one admires more than I do the great ability of the Commissioners who, under the presidency of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Paisley, undertook that most difficult and arduous work, but though they were men of consummate ability and great moderation, they met at a very unfavourable moment. In the year 1919 almost everybody was a little mad; as I have heard it very well put, the whole country was suffering from shell shock. Though this was one of the sanest products of that insane period, I still think the Statutory Commissioners should not be too tightly bound to carry out all the suggestions that were made. They are, I think, a little bureaucratic, and some of them seek to go further than is reasonable, human nature being what it is. I hope, therefore, as the Bill goes through, every effort will be made to give the Statutory Commissioners a tolerably free hand in dealing with these recommendations. I confess I think we should be wiser in respect of the controversy as to the women—in spite of the ingenious arguments of the hon. Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Butler)—to leave that matter in the hands of the Commissioners, or, as I should prefer, in the hands of the University of Cambridge itself. These questions are always embarrassed by the dreadful cry of equality. In my view nothing could be more foolish than to suppose that the question of women's education is really now one of equality between the sexes, or rather, that the difficulties which stand in the way are to be removed by insisting upon that prinicple. Nothing in the world is more important than that women should have the best possible education that can be given to them, and, therefore, the fullest measure of university training. At present that can only be obtained—at any rate, this sort of university training can only be obtained—at Oxford or Cambridge.

1.0 P.M.

I share with the hon. Member for Cambridge University his regret that women cannot have a university of their own, for reasons which I am about to explain, but the circumstances being as they are at present, I agree with other speakers that it is probably better that they should enjoy full membership of the university as they do at Oxford. But it is not true that there is nothing to be said in favour of the other point of view, which cannot be set aside by an appeal to the principle of equality between the sexes. Are you going to have Oxford and Cambridge, universities in which either you keep up by sedulous care and exact regulation a separation between men and women students for all purposes except the purposes of study, or else truly mixed universities in which they can freely associate together? I am quite sure that a really mixed university would be disastrous to the education both of men and women. Segregation of the sexes for educational purposes is indispensable to good education. Otherwise you do not get that strenuous mental activity which is so much to be desired. You do not have young people falling in love with one another, though that is a factor which must be considered. People at that age, of course, do not so much fall in love with one another as get into an association which is indescribable except by the colloquial term "pals." They like to be "pals" with one another, but that is not of any educational value. It is, no doubt, a delightfully easy and recreative relationship, but it does not stimulate the brain, whereas if you get young men shut up with other young men they will discuss all sorts of problems of philosophy, theology, politics and economics. I have spent whole Sunday afternoons at Oxford arguing at the top of my voice over the nuts and wine, which I am quite sure I should not have done had the party included some delightful young women students. Their company would be much more pleasant, but less stimulating. I have no doubt it is just the same with regard to the women students themselves. It is not possible for us to judge whether with women the mind is more stimulated by keeping the sexes separate, but I have no doubt that is the case. Therefore I believe it is vitally important that the undergraduates of both sexes should not have that association, but how long will you be able to go on at Oxford and Cambridge, with a large number of men and women undergraduates, keeping them separate by regulation? I quite agree that it is done now and that there is no association at all except an insignificant association at lectures—when both men and women are supposed to be listening to the lecturer, but I doubt whether you will be able to maintain that system permanently. You are drifting towards the mixed university. It was a plausible suggestion—it is not a suggestion which we can treat with contempt—that the present arrangement is only a makeshift, that it is desirable women should have a university of their own and that we should make this a temporary arrangement by not extending the full membership of the existing universities to women. The hon. Member for Cambridge University has rejected that consideration. Whether it should weigh over the other considerations, at any rate, that is the argument put forward. Is the case so clear and still more are the considerations so important as to justify what ought to be considered as essentially a revolutionary step, namely, the direct interference of Parliament, not through a Commission which hears both sides and considers the whole matter quasi-judicially, but by direct legislative enactment.

The hon. Member quoted the University Test Act. I suggest that that was an immensely more important and far-reaching question and, also, that that is just the danger of which I am afraid. Our ancestors fifty years ago overruled the universities on the question of university tests, and now, fifty years afterwards, that precedent is quoted as a reason for doing something utterly and entirely different, namely, to interfere with the question of whether women should have degrees or not, or should have full membership of the university or not. May we not be setting up a precedent which a few years hence will be used to justify some other interference with the autonomy and independence of the universities until, precedent following precedent, what was originally regarded as an extraordinary remedy for an extraordinary grievance becomes part of the ordinary practice? Is not that a danger which should be strenuously and carefully avoided? Personally, therefore, I should be opposed to any direct interference by Parliament with this decision of the University of Cambridge, but I am persuaded, as is everybody else, that the particular position which the university is taking up is not one which will endure. It is perfectly true that if you are to treat the women students as temporary you ought to have stopped long ago. You should have made the change long ago and emphasised the temporary character of their residence forty years ago, and now it is a great deal too late, merely by withholding full membership, to try to maintain the principle that sooner or later they must withdraw and form a university of their own. Therefore I do not believe that this exclusion from full membership can continue.

That only increases my conviction that the matter should be left to the decision of the university itself. We shall be in that way setting a very healthy precedent We shall be saying: "We think you are quite wrong, we think you will change your mind, but so great is our reverence for the principle of university autonomy we expressly refrain from interfering." We shall thereby set a precedent which may be referred to later on as showing the importance which Parliament, when it started on this new plan of State assistance for the universities, attached to the principle of university independence. The most attractive and the most interesting aspect of university reform is not connected with this subject, but with the hope that a larger number of able young men, now not rich enough to take part in university life, may be brought up to the universities. Everyone, I think, will sympathise with that hope. It is most desirable that ability, wherever it may be found, should receive the best education that can be given. Nothing in the national life matters more than the education of very clever people, and I am afraid I must also say that very few things matter less than the education of very stupid people. Ability is the most precious of the national assets, and we cannot take too much trouble in gathering it up and improving it to the utmost.

Therefore, while I am most anxious that the way should be made perfectly plain and easy for the clever young man, in however humble circumstances he may be born, I do not at all want to bring up a lot of young men to the universities who are not really at all suited for university training and will never get great good out of it, but will, perhaps, be unsuited for walks in life in which they might be useful. Therefore, while I want to have a ladder, according to a time-honoured metaphor, leading up to the universities, I do not want the ladder to be mechanical in its character, like an escalator at a tube station, which carries you up without any effort on your part. I want to make it quite easy for any able young man, wherever born, to get to the university, but I do not want to make it easy for young men who are not so suited, and therefore would not derive very great benefit from the training they would receive.

I have detained the House quite long enough. I hope we shall pass this Bill. I hope we shall, in short, proceed to assist in the reform of the universities on sound, conservative lines, and I hope we shall act in the spirit of Burke and that, while not excluding changes, we shall carry through the reparation in the style of the building, that we shall remember that what we have received is very precious, that it is a unique tradition, that in adding to it and in improving it we shall best do our work if we saturate ourselves with that tradition, if we venerate those who originated it, and if we hand it down to posterity unspoiled and undimmed, not only as good as we received it, but the better for our wise, prudent, and reverent handling.

I hope hon. Members in all parts of the House who have been associated with either Oxford or Cambridge University will not consider it irreverent on the part of one whose only connection has been with the Scottish Universities to intervene in this discussion; but I do so because I had the opportunity for nearly a year of being a member of the Royal Commission on Oxford and Cambridge Universities. I desire to make it clear that it was only comparatively late in the day that I was called to take the place of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Newcastle-on-Tyne (Mr. Arthur Henderson), who was obliged to give up membership of the Commission because of his then unfortunate ill-health, and I cannot profess to speak on the Bill with the longer knowledge and experience which members of the Commission throughout its whole course undoubtedly possess. But I think it is tolerably easy to-day to indicate the general policy which we, on these benches, at all events, should adopt towards a Measure of this kind.

I propose to begin, first of all, by saying a word or two about the financial provisions which I understand the Government have in mind. The bedrock of the whole problem of university education in this country is, of course, a matter of finance, and we were not very long members of the Royal Commission on Oxford and Cambridge Universities before we realised that it would be impossible to carry any adequate scheme of reform unless very much larger resources were placed at the disposal of the older universities. The Royal Commission, after full inquiry, recommended, as the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) has pointed out, that an annual sum of £100,000 in each case should be granted. I am informed that all that is proposed by the Government at the present time is to place on a more or less permanent footing the existing grant of £30,000 in each case, although there is a prospect of making some larger allowance, I hope, in the very near future. I take the view that we must press very strongly indeed for the £100,000 or more in each case at the earliest possible moment, because we made it perfectly plain in our Report that that £100,000 was not by any means an adequate sum for the obvious and urgent needs of the older universities, but only a minimum which could meet immediate and urgent requirements or fill those gaps to which the right hon. Gentleman has referred.

One of the greatest tragedies that confronted the members of the Royal Commission in making their inquiry in these universities was the practical starvation of important departments of research, and what I regretted most of all was the very great difficulty which confronted that research which had an almost immediate bearing on some of our industrial or economic problems in the State. Some of the witnesses were able to show that if they had had larger sums at their disposal, they could have made practical contribution without delay to the solution of some of the greatest difficulties of the time, but they were precluded from embarking on the additional investigation by the great shortage of funds. We, on these benches, take the view that it is no economy to starve research of that kind, and we also take the view that, however difficult the national financial circumstances may be, the aggregate sum which we are setting aside from State funds at the present time in the great task of assisting the universities is so small that we might well make substantial addition to it, if we only had a mind to do so, without very great difficulty at the moment. I earnestly trust that there will be no modification, on the part of the Government, of that part of our recommendations.

The second part of the recommendations of the Royal Commission in which we on these benches are very largely interested is that part which dealt with the extension or with the provision for what we call intra-mural adult education. It has been pointed out that our recommendation included an extra sum, or a sum of £6,000 annually, for extra-mural education, and by that, of course, we mean education on a university standard brought within the reach of all adults and others who care to avail themselves of it, irrespective of any artificial class distinction and certainly irrespective of any sex differentiation. We want to see that effort extended at both Oxford and Cambridge, but, side by side with the extension of such effort, we want also to encourage another proposal of the Royal Commission which fell within the sphere of the universities themselves, namely, the definite encouragement of the entry into university life of men and women who had proved themselves capable of benefiting by university education, but who had not the resources to undertake it on their own part or who, perhaps, were not able to avail themselves of existing provisions. That was called intra-mural provision. We made it plain in the Royal Commission that there is no desire in that recommendation to lower the standard of university education in the interests of a class, which had, perhaps, encountered difficulties in the outside world in availing themselves of the opportunity of university training. That was no part of our proposal. We simply meant that they should have the opportunity of entering the university, of getting the education of the university standard, and not in any way bringing down that standard. I should like to see both classes of that provision encouraged, and I very much hope, when the Commissioners come to undertake their task, they will keep these recommendations, as no doubt they will, very clearly in view.

The only other point to which I want, very briefly indeed, to direct attention is the difficulty which has already been discussed regarding the admission of women to full membership of Cambridge University. I think I am able to throw some light on that discussion from the point of view of membership of the Cambridge Committee, and I can, perhaps, give the House one or two additional details over and above the information that has already been supplied. It is quite true, as hon. Members have pointed out, that the Cambridge Committee were themselves divided, but the division was merely upon the method of completing this reform. The Royal Commission, as a whole, were united in the recommendation that women should be admitted to full membership of Cambridge University, subject to one or two small reservations regarding accommodation and other problems. There was no broad or general division of opinion on that point. The Cambridge Committee were divided upon the narrow point as to whether a definite recommendation should be made, in connection with this Bill, to give effect to the reform by legislative means, or whether it should be left to be overtaken within the University of Cambridge itself.

Let us, therefore, address our minds to what is really raised by that question. It has been pointed out that already a very great deal of time has been occupied by this controversy in Cambridge. The main difficulty which confronts hon. Members, apparently, on the other side of the House, is that any definite legislative provision to secure the admission of women to full membership of Cambridge University would be an interference with the university. The short reply to that, of course, is that all general legislation is more or less an interference. The further reply to it is that all other universities have conceded this right, and there is not now any distinction elsewhere. But the final, and, it seems to me, the commanding reply, is that if the University of Cambridge finds it necessary, as it does in common with other universities, to come to the State for a grant of £100,000 per annum, or whatever the sum may be, and as that money is raised from all classes of taxpayers, irrespective of sex, it follows there should be no distinction in its academic use. I think too little has been made of that argument as far as the Debate has proceeded this afternoon.

Is it not a fact that the contribution by women to the revenue of the country is very small? Most of the taxes are paid by men.

I think not, but, even if it were small, surely the right hon. Baronet will agree that we are dealing with one of the most important problems of taxation, and the use, irrespective of sex, of the revenue which is derived from it. The real strength in arguing this case is that, to a very large extent, Cambridge itself has already recognised the justice of the claim. The only controversy which divides us to-day is whether the full admission to Cambridge University should be left to some day in the future, and my submission is that it is wrong and undesirable to do so, because not only in the past has this distinction conferred injustice upon women who have been connected with Cambridge University, but it is a serious disadvantage to them in their present educational and other pursuits. The provision of a titular degree is no solution. We are asking, in the case of Cambridge University, for full admission to membership of the university, in order that we shall have in Cambridge what we have in all other university institutions in this country. I might be tempted to speak at greater length, but the ground has been so adequately covered by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge University, that I think it is unnecessary to say more. I only want to make it perfectly plain, that whatver the future course of discussion in this matter may be, we on these benches in the Labour movement will not support any distinction in this matter, and, if necessary, either now or in the Committee stage, we shall vote for the definite insertion of a legislative provision in order that this last anomaly may be removed.

I shall not detain the House long, as there is only one point which I want to bring out. We at the University of Oxford have been arraigned, as the right hon. Member for Paisley (Mrs. Asquith) very truly said, on vague accusations of idleness, of extravagance, of teaching a curriculum long out of date. We have been acquitted honourably by the Commission of any such delinquencies. I go into that no further. The Commission considered that the universities—I am speaking now for Oxford particularly—are worthy on account of the great efforts they have made, the good teaching they are providing, and the sacrifices they have endured, of a certain amount of subsidy from the State. The subsidy which was promised by the Commission, and which the Commission held out as probably adequate, was £100,000. That was in the days before the Geddes axe. We now hear of £30,000, or, as the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Education said, perhaps something more than the £30,000, which the Government will endeavour to screw out. The days of £100,000 are over.

The point to which I am coming is this. Whatever Oxford University gets in the way of Government allowance must be given on one condition. The first charge on that gift to the university is the raising of the salary of the teaching staff to something equivalent in purchasing power to their pre-war salaries. I may say to those who do not know the facts, that the present pay of the teaching staff of Oxford University was settled in definite figures by the Commission of 1877. In 1877, it was decided that £900 a year was the proper salary for a man at the top of the tree, a Professor, that £200 was enough for a Fellow, and that £80 was amply sufficient for the student who had obtained a scholarship. It may not be known to all Members of the House that those allowances have continued to this day without any bonus, increment or addition of any kind. So far from there having been any bonus during the War it was the other way about: there was a 10 per cent. "decrement" one year. At present the salaries of 1877 are being paid. The Commission see the need for reform here in view of the change of prices. At the present moment the whole staff of the university from top to bottom is lamentably underpaid. It is difficult to retain in the universities, as always used to be possible, young men of talent and ambition, seeing that at present the teaching is so entirely and miserably starved.

May I give an example, which I gave once before in this House, in a somewhat similar Debate, which occurred during the régime of the last Postmaster-General? It is only two years ago since the salary of the postmaster at Cambridge was heavier than that of any professor, Regius or otherwise, at Cambridge. The salary of a sorter of 14 years' standing was higher than that of a demonstrator at the museum or one of the staff of the university library. The salary of a telegraph boy who had recently been promoted at the age of 18 to be a sorter was £10 more than that of an £80 scholar at his college. I think I need only point out that the scale of prices still prevails. Owing to the fall in the Post Office salaries at the present time the contrast is not quite so strikingly in favour of the Post Office officials as it was a couple of years ago. But the whole scale of university payments is ridiculous. A man who, in the course of a long life, has attained European distinction as a scholar and learned man is rewarded with £900 a year, and is lucky if he can scrape together a little more by writing or examining. The contrast with the Civil Service with its growing salaries and handsome pensions is distressing. That state of things ought to come to an end. Salaries that were all right in 1877 ought no longer to be considered the correct thing for intellectual labour in the year 1923.

But that is not the only thing upon which the Commissioners have given their opinion. They have numberless other schemes for the improvement of the university. I want to point out from the point of view of my constituents resident in Oxford that the first charge should be the bringing up of the salaries of the whole of the teaching staff of the university, from the Regius Professor of Medicine to the youngest demonstrator in geography, to something like a reasonable scale. There are all sorts of other schemes put forward. For example, schemes relating to bricks and mortar. There are many things requiring to be built. There are many laboratories which need to be enlarged. There are so many departments that need to be reconstructed. But I want to point out to the right hon. Gentlemen the Minister of Education that, as he knows very well, the Greek statesman said:

The second point in which I do not agree with hon. Members opposite is that I must protest against one penny going out from the university for external purposes before the university has itself a decently-paid staff. That is to say, all the external things, which may in themselves be very desirable—correspondence classes, university extension lectures, summer schools—can not be considered primarily the objects for which money, definitely allotted to the university itself, should be utilised. I should regret the fact that so long as the staff of the university is hopelessly underpaid, so long as the figures for 1877 for the intellectual labour of 1923 go on, one single penny should go out of the university finances for these external purposes. It is, of course, a very cheap and a very easy thing to bid universities to carry on missionary work everywhere at their own expense! Men are always very glad to make other people do missionary work at their expense! But I assert that it is not in the power of the universities to do anything of this kind so long as they themselves are not receiving their due reward for doing their own work. For that reason I sincerely hope that we may impress upon the Minister of Education that the first charge on all money given to universities, including the £30,000 given from the Government to the universities, should be the bringing of the garrison to its full strength and not the erecting of new outlying missionary centres, or the mere multiplication of bricks and mortar.

Apology has been made by one or two hon. Members who have spoken because they have not been to either university. I suppose I ought to apologise much more than some, in so far as I have not been a member of any university. I think, however, if there be any class which ought to have its aspirations upon matters of this kind expressed in this House, it is that great manual class which, in spite of those aspirations, is, in the main, almost absolutely cut off from any possibility of ever either personally, or through descendants, entering one of these two great universities. I have always thought of that picture we know, of one of our great universities where the painter paints the workman looking at the spires of Oxford from afar off, and regretting that that was as much of the university as he was likely to see. That is the experience of most of the intelligent and not uneducated workmen of this country.

I have been struck by the note here this afternoon, especially that of the hon. Gentleman who represents and spoke on behalf of Cambridge University (Mr. J. Butler), especially when he said that the universities were great democratic commonwealths once you were within them. It has been my lot to observe from the edge of the university, and I think there is a certain amount of truth in what the hon. Gentleman said. There is no "side," if I may say so, so far as I can see, in any of the members of either of the universities. Doubtless the university is a democratic commonwealth once you are inside, but the trouble is to get inside. There is less possibility of the workman's eon or daughter getting inside to-day than ever there was. I was hopeful when the Education Act, 1918, was passed that by means of scholarships, educational facilities, by means of maintenance grants, and so on, that the worker's son, or daughter, should have a greater opportunity than ever before to go into one of the universities. That is at an end. Those hopes and aspirations are dashed. While this movement began as an economy movement originally, it has been impressed upon me that it has not been conducted so much in the interests of economy as deliberately in the interests of maintaining class dominance in the great universities of this country.

There are members of the teaching staff who belong to the artisan class, and there is no attempt made to exclude the really clever boy, no matter what class he belongs to. If he is an ambitious boy who is really not clever, of course he gets knocked out; and it does not matter who he is, whether he is the son of a Duke, or the son of a pit man, if he cannot pass the Matriculation examination he is not admitted.

I am quite aware of that fact, and I made certain admissions in the opening part of my speech. I have no doubt that is quite true to a certain extent, but it does not alter the fact that the great hopes held out to the working classes of this country in the year 1918 have been dashed. Things are moving now not so much in the direction of economy or in the interests of economy as in the interests of maintaining class dominance in the great educational institutions of this country. The Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord H. Cecil) has pointed out the danger of the independence of the university being interfered with and he regretted that he had to take up the line of asking for State aid. Just before that the Noble Lord himself had been pointing out that apart from the old foundations the universities were dependent in the main upon the sons of the wealthy. I think a good deal more ought to be heard this afternoon about the old foundations under which they used to send the sons of humble toilers to the universities and even make arrangements for providing their clothes and food in the public schools. Now the Noble Lord tells us that these universities are dependent in the main upon the sons of wealthy parents.

My Noble Friend did not say "in the main."

He said, at any rate, to a considerable degree.

The hon. Member is misrepresenting my noble colleague, who said that as far as there were people of independent means who had their sons at the university they paid a great deal more for their education than the university paid for them.

I think it is within the memory of hon. Members that the Noble Lord actually said "battening on the rich." I take it from what the Noble Lord said that he would rather be dependent upon the wealthy classes to a certain extent than dependent upon the State.

My Noble Friend is being misrepresented in every sentence.

I am pleased the Noble Lord has found such an ardent champion, but he certainly laid considerable emphasis upon that fact. After all these people to a great extent determine the type of teaching, and they do affect the teachers and the outlook of the young men who are educated there. I have no doubt Oxford and Cambridge are affected by a great tradition, and they have written some very bright chapters in our educational history. Nevertheless, the fact remains that those who control these universities or any other university go far to determine the outlook and the attitude of the young people towards the affairs of this country. I heard a debate here last night in which hon. Members spoke, who had been influenced by university teaching, and I felt that John Stuart Mill was revolutionary in economics compared with the views of some of these men.

The ex-Minister for Education, in a recent debate, expressed the opinion that in Ruskin College they emphasise too much the teaching of Karl Marx, and that statement was received with cheers in this House. May I point out that there was a rebellion in Ruskin College because Karl Marx was not taught sufficiently? As one who was educated at Ruskin College, and as one who has had some experience of its great value, and who went back to the mine after I was there—I think it would be a good thing if some of the teachers in our universities, and particularly some of their products, had a course in the mine or the workshop included in their education—I can say that my experience was that after hearing some of the advocates of the present system it almost made me go back to Karl Marx and have a fresh look to see if there was not something in him which I had missed. The Noble Lord the Member for the University of Oxford argued against the independence of these universities being interfered with, and against women becoming members of the university.

It strikes me that the Noble Lord does not know what he has lost by not having a pal. At the age of 12 I began working in a mine, and for 13 years I worked 10 hours a day. I was then 25 years of age, and fortunately for me there came an opportunity of going to Ruskin College, and I could not have gone there but for the efforts of one of the best pals I ever had, and she suggested that we should sell every stick we had while I went there. I suggest that if the Noble Lord had had an experience of a pal of that kind his attitude on this question would probably have been somewhat different. No, Sir, no one who has had an all-round experience of life can by the cleverest arguments legitimately exclude women from all the avenues of life commercially, or educationally, or our social life, any more than they have been able to do so politically. The hon. Gentleman who made an informing and interesting maiden speech to-day referred to the difficulty of making any contact between the great universities and the working classes of this country. That has got to be done. If the universities are to survive and fulfil their great purpose in our national life, they must get into even closer contact with the great working masses of this country. There are men who have done a great beneficent work as teachers under the Workmen's Educational Association. They have done splendid work, and I am pleased to see that the founder of that association, Mr. Albert Mansbridge, is to be one of the Commissioners. After all, it is not a question of turning out professional men. The first thing is to get full value out of the institutions which have grown up under the wisdom of our people, and, if those institutions are to be adapted to the great onward democratic march, that great body of people who are now cut off from the universities must play their part in writing even yet more glorious chapters in the educational and political history of our country. If that is to be done, then, instead of giving merely a donation, this House has to see not only that ultimately Oxford and Cambridge and all the other universities have open doors, but that the great masses of our people are encouraged by financial help to send their sons and daughters to those institutions.

I have followed with interest the speech to which we have just listened, and I hope the hon. Member will not think that I despise it in any way if I do not follow him in great detail. I think he will admit, however, that in the last 50 years there has been great progress made in the universities towards what I gather to be his ideal, namely, the opening of the door to clever boys of the working classes to an extent that has never occurred in any similar space of time in any educational institution, whether in England or any other part of the world. We have to look on the credit side as well as on the debit side. The only point that I could not follow was his suggestion that my Noble Friend (Lord H. Cecil) had said something to the effect that, whereas the universities at the present time were, of course, spending money on scholarships for the poorer type of men, the richer type of men to a certain extent were a benefit to the universities. All I understood my Noble Friend to point out was that if rich men sent their sons to the university the university did not make a loss upon keeping them there, but, if anything, a slight profit, owing to the fact that the rich man paid full fees for his tuition and for his rooms, rates and taxes. It can hardly be said that the university is fattening on the profits made from the rich people going there, which is what the hon. Member's remarks really came to. I take this opportunity of saying that we owe a very large debt of gratitude to many of our rich members. Many who have been students at Cambridge have since then made benefactions of a most handsome kind to allow of the advantages which they have received being extended in greater efficiency to those who come after them both rich and poor alike. Surely, if we throw open the doors of the universities freely to poor men, we must not slam them in the face of rich men. The hon. Member ran perilously near saying that when he said if he had his free will he would not allow such men to the university for fear their views might influence those around them.

I hope I did not leave that impression at all. My argument was that the rich man's son ought not to be admitted to the university because he was a rich man's son.

I think the hon. Member went a little further, but I make no point of it. It is very valuable to have people of all sorts at the universities, as it is in this House, and I agree with my colleague that there is no society where the possession of money makes less difference than it does in the University of Cambridge. I say that unreservedly. I would ask the House to bear with me a few moments while I deal with the main portion of the Bill. It is not a Bill to have a roving Commission to reform Oxford and Cambridge, if they so need reforming. It is merely a machinery Bill to carry out certain recommendations of the Commission. A Commission was set up, and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) was chairman. It is commonly called the Asquith Commission. They worked for a considerable period to find out what alterations are necessary in the two old universities. It would have been possible to have put those suggestions into a Bill and to have had it discussed in Parliament. But that has never been the custom in dealing with matters connected with the universities, and the system which has been carried out before is carried out in this small Bill almost word for word. The Bill sets up a fresh Commission to carry out as near as may be the recommendations of the Commis- sion which has already been set up, and it is merely a machinery Bill to give power to the new Commission to make university Statutes to carry out those recommendations. If hon. Members are to be allowed to put in Amendments that it should be compulsory to admit fully women to Cambridge University, there will be nothing to prevent a very large number of other Amendments being made as well. I personally differ from some of the recommendations of the Commission, and many things have not been dealt with by the Commission at all. Therefore, if we are to take up all these highly debatable points, I cannot help thinking that the Committee stage of the Bill will be an exceedingly long one. I therefore appeal to the House to carry through this machinery Bill intact and to allow the reforms, which the hon. Member wishes and other people may or may not wish, to be left to the new Commission which is going to be set up in the universities in a very short time.

I would like to remind the House of the history of this question. The present governing body of the university has declared twice very definitely against this proposal. It has indeed declared more often than that against the principle, but against this particular proposal it declared by large majorities in 1921 and 1922. Therefore the present governing body is against it. The undergraduate population has not votes, but I think no doubt they too would have been against the innovation by a very large majority. That is a matter which should carry weight with this House. It has often been said in this House that the people whose vote defeated the proposal were the country parsons. I could never understand why the vote of a country parson is not as good as the vote of any other educated man. It was suggested that there might be a feeling on their part because Newnham is the only institution which has not a place of worship for its students. As a matter of fact, however, the majority of the clergy voted on this question in favour of the change and not against it. It was not the clergy who prevented its taking place, because as I have said the majority of those who did vote voted in favour of it. The people who turned the proposal down were the scientific men and the medical men who made great sacrifices of time, which is valuable, and of money which was im- portant, for they are not always rich men, to come up and vote on this particular subject. We all know that on this subject scientific and medical people have formed very strong views indeed.

They are the best trade unionists in the country.

I do not know if that is a slur upon them.

It is a slur upon us.

2.0 P.M.

I do not know that I need pursue that point, but I would like to suggest that these scientific and medical men were the people who had seen the new proposal at work more clearly than any of us. They had seen it working in the laboratories at the universities and in the hospitals, and they had watched men and women working together there. That is a point which the House ought to bear in mind. May I go a step further? The hon. Member for Central Edinburgh (Mr. W. Graham) said that Parliament was entitled to deal with this question because State money was being granted. He urged that the people who paid the money included women as well as men, and that it was inconceivable that the House should make a grant to a male university which excluded women from its portals, when the money that was being voted was equally contributed by women and men. I think if the hon. Member has taken the trouble to read the recommendations which this Bill asks permission to carry through, he must have found that, in addition to recommending the grant of a considerable sum to the universities, the Commission also recommends the grant of a specific sum of £4,000 a year for 10 years to both the women's colleges. I am fully in favour of that; I do not say a word against it, but if the argument of the hon. Member is correct, surely one might equally protest against a sum of money, to which both male and female taxpayers contribute, being devoted to a women's college to which men cannot be admitted. It would be as absurd for me to put forward that argument as it appears to me it was for the hon. Member to suggest it. The truth is, the only justification for the Government making the grant proposed is to be found in the ability of the college or university to do the work which is required, and inasmuch as the women's colleges are doing good work with inefficient means, the Commission very properly recommended that a grant be made to those colleges. After all, there is this to be said to the credit of Cambridge. It may be an obscurantist university, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) suggested, but the right hon. Gentleman forgets, apparently, that Stevenson has spoken of Oxford as the cradle of Puseyism and the hotbed of Toryism——

Cambridge as a matter of fact was a pioneer in assisting women to get the benefit of university education. What have been the steps along the path? Keen supporters of education at Cambridge were quite willing to follow the example of America which started universities for women in many parts. One suggestion was that the university lectures should be thrown open to women, and that was done many years ago with the result that women have received very material assistance in that way. Then it was claimed that they ought to be allowed to go into the examinations with men not to obtain degrees but to see how they stood by comparison. Certain people protested against that on the ground that it would lead to further demands, but it was allowed and for many years women were examined alongside men in order that they could ascertain exactly their scope. Next came a great agitation demanding that the ladies who had been educated in the same way and had done exactly the same work as the men should be entitled to their degree, it being pointed out that where they had to earn their living by teaching it was very unfair that they should not be entitled as well as men to have conferred upon them the particular degree for which they had shown themselves qualified. That too was conceded not so long ago, with the result that some 70 or 80 women have obtained the degree of M.A. or B.A., as the case may be, and are entitled to wear the cap and hood in the same way as any male graduate. That great concession has been given. They have been admitted also to the laboratories and libraries of the university, and there are provisions in this Bill whereby the existing custom is made more of a right than it has been before.

We are now asked to go a step further. Is it quite a fair step? They have come to Cambridge and said, "Help us over our difficulties." Now they are saying, "You have gone too far. You have now made it a women's university, and, therefore, you must hand over the reins of government, and have a mixed Joint Board of men and women." That is the gratitude, if I may say so, which comes from past favours. We are now asked quite frankly that the university shall be forced, not only to admit women to the position of members of the governing body, but also to admit them to scholarships, professorships and other posts of emolument in the university. I quite agree that that is a very material claim from their point of view. It is asked from outside that this university, in future, shall be governed, and its different curricula determined, by women as well as men. I have no hinterland behind me to justify me in laying down the law on questions of scholarship and so on, but I think most educationalists will tell us that, while the ability of women is undoubted, the methods of examination required for men and women frequently differ very largely. I remember that one professor of history, who is often quoted, used to say that, where a subject required hard, plodding industry women were frequently better than men—I am speaking of the higher grades of study—but that where originality was required, say, in research work, men were better. I am not making any particular point of that, but I think it is admitted that there is a difference.

Are we to be forced by Parliament, not only to throw open every advantage we can give to those who are to a certain extent outside the university, but also to hand over the governance of what is a man's university to a joint board of men and women? We are frequently asked to look at precedent, and we are pointed to America, where there are women's universities and mixed universitise. If, however, I were suddenly to ask in this House—leaving out the experts, of course—as a sort of examination question, whether any hon. Member could tell me the names of three American universities of any sort or kind, they would probably all answer, "Yes, Harvard, Yale and Princeton." Probably those are the only three of which most hon. Members would have heard with any frequency, but those three, leading universities as they are, are all men's universities, and they have jealously kept the right of control for men, and men only. Is not that a matter of which we should think before taking this last step? Cambridge is said to be the last man-governed university in England? Is it necessarily extremely wise to put an end to its being the one man-governed university before you know the result of the experiment in the other university? The experiment which was made at Oxford a year or two back has not yet had time to fructify. Should we be so wise in destroying the one man-governed university, after the experience in America, where it has been so extremely clearly kept?

I should like to add one word upon what I may call illusory safeguards, and to remind the House of the suggestion that has been made as to throwing open the doors of the university to the children of working men. That would mean their being thrown open to working women. It is suggested that there should be what amounts to a monopoly for the existing colleges. The two colleges of Newnham and Girton are to remain, and every woman who wished to become a member of the university would have to choose between those two colleges. But when you have women, fit to govern the university, coming forward to take part in the university, how can that possibly be confined to the members of Newnham and Girton alone? Some colleges are rich, although the university, of course, is exceedingly poor. My own college, in addition to being the best and largest in the world, is, I believe, one of the richest, and is exceedingly strong. At present no suggestion is made that the colleges should be touched, but I have been told, though I cannot vouch for it, that a Fellow of my own college, in the middle of this controversy at Cambridge, went and got some document signed by the heads of Newnham and Girton saying that in no circumstances would they think of laying sacrilegious hands upon the emoluments of, say, Trinity or any other college. I do not know whether that is true or not, but, if it be true, I hope the document will be kept in a museum, to show that at all events, while there is wisdom, there is a certain amount of the simplicity of the dove as well at Cambridge.

There is a large number of people who believe that it is possible, if this reform is once carried as far as is proposed, that, sooner or later, people will say that it must be thrown open, not only to members of those colleges, but to fellows and residents of Cambridge whose scholastic qualifications are sufficient to enable them to take advantage of and take part in the affairs of the university. We have heard a good deal to-day, and to me it is an important matter, about the evolution of Cambridge. The history of Cambridge has been one of evolution for many years. It has been a very slow evolution. I remember my right hon. Friend who was then the Leader of the Labour party coming up to Cambridge once with me, on the occasion of the installation of Lord Balfour as Chancellor, and I remember how impressed he was by the surroundings of the place. We have changed very much during the last 50 years at Cambridge, but the last generation has not made Cambridge. Cambridge, if anything, has made us.

God help them!

The hon. Member has referred to the Almighty. I hope the Almighty may carry out what I gather to be a prayer on his part. But, whatever it may happen to be, they have done a very great work, and it is those surroundings, which have not been brought about in a day, from which the university has been evolved as it is at the present time, possibly with defects, possibly with vices as well as virtues. Should not we hesitate before we interfere with that very intricate machinery? A child of four or five can always knock over a house of cards that you may put up for it, but he will have great difficulty in reconstructing it. Is this House quite sure that it knows sufficient about the facts of this case to intervene in this quarrel, if I may so call it, and to say definitely to Cambridge, "You do not know your own business; you have got to change your whole governing body, and alter its composition as it is at the present time"? It is possible you may be right, but all I am asking is that you hesitate before you do that. Under this Bill you are altering very considerably the constitution of some parts of Cambridge. You are going to have a new house of residents who are to have considerable power. The electors to and members of these houses of residents are all members of the present body. There is to be an appeal to the senate, a truncated appeal somewhat similar to that under the Parliament Act, which only gives a possibility of delay for one or two years. That body of residents will be confined merely to the workers at the university. Those who are in favour of women's degrees in that body will probably find in their favour. It may or may not be so, but is it not infinitely wiser to leave it to them to determine? If they determine in favour of the women having full power the matter will be done peacefully and quietly and will be settled once and for all. I have no doubt the matter will be carried through quietly if the governing body carry it through. But if you do it by Parliament, whether here or in Committee, does the hon. Member really think it would engender good feeling? For the sake of the women themselves, of whom he is so strong a champion, would not this mere delay for a year or two be to their benefit? After all Cambridge has done for them would it not be better for them to get this right on the authority of the local tribunal rather than have it forced upon them by Parliament? I most strongly appeal to my hon. Friend to take that view although it is in the nature of a compromise, which never appeals to him or to me with any great strength. I appeal to the House not to intervene in this quarrel rashly or lightly, but to remember that a tribunal has been set up which can deal with this at the proper time. If it decides in favour of the women the matter will be settled quietly. If, on the other hand, the rank and file of the women are satisfied with the rights which were granted to them some six months ago, surely Parliament ought not to interfere with the decrees of the governing body. I ask the Government most strongly to leave the matter to be determined, if at all, by the tribunal they are setting up and not by the interference of Parliament.

At the commencement of his speech the senior Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Rawlinson) made a very strong point of the desirability of all sorts of people being represented at the university, and par- ticularly emphasised the necessity of the poor attending as well as the rich, but I regret that he did not carry out the idea by suggesting that women should be admitted. He also said it was not a case of admitting men to a women's college or women to a men's college, but what the women want is admission to membership of the university and not to the college itself. I think the case for the admission of women was excellently put by the junior Member for Cambridge. The universities are recognised as national institutions. They represent all classes, all religions and both sexes. Women are already there. It is not, as the Noble Lord suggested, only a temporary arrangement and I differ from him in saying that the presence of both sexes is anything but stimulating. My experience in the House of Commons shows that the presence of both sexes is extremely stimulating to Debate. I think the university must reflect the modern state of things and must welcome all students who are capable of profiting by the education. Public money is spent in maintaining education at universities and public control is exercised. Women contribute in a great measure to the taxes of the country, and one feels that they ought to be allowed to be admitted to membership of the university. I congratulate Oxford on the step it has already taken and I commiserate with Cambridge. With the exception of one university in Canada I think Cambridge is the only university in the British Empire which has refused the admission of women. The Royal Commission was set up to give advice in regard to the university. The Minister of Education said many arguments had been used for the admission of women and many against. It is so with all reforms, and one always has to break down prejudices before they are brought about. I want to make a plea that women shall have the full participation in the life of a university which is so unanimously recommended by the Royal Commission.

With regard to the method of considering this question Oxford has been progressive enough to carry out this reform without any pressure from outside. Two methods are suggested, one by putting into force the Statutory Commission and the other through the action of Parliament. I strongly advocate legislative action through Parliament because it is more certain and I think it will be quicker. The delay involved by the Statutory Commission making inquiries and drawing up a Report would be fatal for Cambridge. Parliament has acted before in this matter with regard to the Tests Act, with regard to the Statutory Commission itself and also with regard to bestowing the Vote in 1918. It is a matter of great regret to me that the Statutory Commission does not include any women. It has been appointed to carry out the recommendations of the Royal Commission. The Minister of Education expressed himself satisfied with the personnel. I have no quarrel with the personnel except that it is not quite comprehensive enough. You have representatives of divinity, and medicine, of masters of colleges and of adult education. But one regrets that there is no inclusion of a woman on the Committee. It is not really fully representative if women are not included on it, because there are women at the universities, and seeing that Oxford has admitted them to full membership one wonders why there is not one or more representatives on this Committee. The present Bill allows nine members for Oxford and nine for Cambridge. The students at Cambridge are 2,000 men and 400 women, and one feels they ought to have someone to represent them on the Committee. The University Grants Committee, which is a permanent body appointed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to do the work in relation to the finance of the colleges, has a woman representative. I consider the work of this Statutory Committee is really more important, and I hope the Minister of Education will see his way to add one or more women. The University Grants Committee, which has done such splendid work, has women there to help the woman's side of the university, and I hope the Statutory Commission will have a woman representative put on.

I hesitate to intervene in this Debate, after the informing speeches delivered, especially by the hon. Members for the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. But perhaps as a humble Member of the University of Cambridge I may venture to say a few words. I regret this Bill, or, rather, I regret the need for the Bill. It seems to me that what is needed—I know hon. Members opposite will not agree with me in this—is a society of far-seeing millionaires for the additional endowment of Oxford and Cambridge. It takes a generation or two to produce a Cecil Rhodes, and so the universities have had to fall back upon State aid, and this is the price that Oxford and Cambridge have to pay for State help. I have no doubt that the President of the Board of Education would be very glad to play the part of fairy godmother, showering benefits upon the two universities, but, unfortunately, our straitened national circumstances oblige him to be a somewhat stingy step-mother. Two years ago, the total grant for all the universities of this country was £1,500,000, but this year it is only £1,200,000. One recognises the necessity for this, but regrets it a great deal, and one hopes that in the near future the right hon. Gentleman will be able to restore the grant to its original, or even to greater, dimensions.

We have this Commission—I speak now of Cambridge—going down to Cambridge at a very interesting moment, when there is this domestic question which has been decided by the university, after prolonged discussion. After the prolonged discussion there was a vote of the Senate, which turned out to be much more decisive than was expected. I would also remind the House that at the recent election in November something like 5,200 votes were given in favour of that decision, and about 3,400 votes against it. The junior Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Butler) represents the minority of considered opinion in the University of Cambridge. That is a fact that the House ought to take into account. I stand here as a university man to plead for freedom and ask that the question should be left to the considered opinion of the university itself. There is nothing more important—and I think in this everyone who has had the benefit of going through Oxford or Cambridge will agree with me—and there is nothing more necessary than that the thought and the life of the universities should be free.

Upon this vexed question I am not against the women, but I am strongly in favour of the power being left to the University of Cambridge to decide the question in its own way. Cambridge may say, and is saying, that there may be some educational advantage in there being one university for men, managed by men and administered by men, and in that belief the great American universities agree, as has been pointed out by the senior Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Rawlinson). He has told the House that when we speak of American universities the three names that spring to our minds are those of Princeton, Yale and Harvard. Princeton is altogether a university for men. Yale is a university for men, but it admits women to degrees and to the research and graduate schools, but they do not take part in the ordinary work of the university. Harvard, which was founded from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, conducts that part of its life much in the same way as Cambridge does to-day. The Radcliffe College for Women has the privilege of obtaining degrees at the University of Harvard, and its graduates take part in the research and graduate schools of that university.

Like the senior Member for the University of Cambridge, I plead that we should be given time to see how the experiment works out at Oxford. Oxford and Cambridge are on a very different footing from the modern universities. They were founded for men and have been administered for men during the centuries, and it is a very rash thing to try to force upon these ancient institutions any external decision such as may be taken by this House. I was much interested in the pleading of the junior Member for Cambridge University, who said that he was altogether in favour of freedom and autonomy in his university, but the first thing he does after being returned to this House is to ask Parliament to curtail the freedom of the university. This is a most interesting question, and one might say a great deal about it. I would ask: "Is it the considered opinion of the women of this country that women should be forced into this position in the University of Cambridge, against the will of the university?"

Let me give one small experience of my own. In my election campaign my opponent and myself were invited by the Women Citizens' Association to appear on a platform at Maidenhead, and there to answer two-and-a-half closely printed pages of questions. I admit that I looked forward to this ordeal with great apprehension. One question was: "If you are elected to Parliament, will you support a Measure obliging Cambridge to admit women to the university on the same terms as men?" I answered that I could be no party to the coercion of my university. Anyone who has had any experience of public meetings can generally tell how opinion in the meeting is going, and there was no doubt as to the opinion of those whom one might call the sensible women in the room.

The dull old frumps!

They were the mothers of families, whose opinion, in my view, is entitled to the most respect. The audience was almost entirely composed of women. There was a very stern lady in the chair, and there was a shorthand writer, and I felt very nervous. There was no doubt as to the opinion of the majority of women in that room, and I hold that if this question were put to the women of this country: "Are you in favour of forcing upon this ancient university a new order of things against its will, or will you leave to the university the power of working out its own salvation?" the overwhelming majority would say, "Leave it to the university." The right hon. Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) painted an amusing picture of a peccant Cambridge lagging behind a progressive Oxford. I am reminded of an epigram which was quoted by the senior Member for the combined English Universities (Sir Martin Conway) at a Graduates' dinner at Trinity College, Cambridge. He said that like all epigrams it was only half true. "There is one university—that is the part that is not true—there is one college, Trinity College, Cambridge—that is the part that is wholly true." And you can understand with what pleasure that was received by the Trinity College members. It is true that Cambridge is the home of poetry. It was the home of Milton, Byron and Wordsworth, but it was also the home of an Isaac Newton, and all down the years to recent times, when Cambridge did such great work for agriculture and for the development of aviation in its most necessary branches, Cambridge has been the home of progressive scientific thought and achievement. I ask the House, is it right to force on this great institution, against its will, even a reform? Universities are seekers after truth. Truth and thought are things of the spirit, and in such things the universities say with Wordsworth, the poet of Cambridge:

"We must be free or die."

I hope that it will not be considered by this House, and particularly by the hon. Members who are concerned to represent the University of Oxford, that it is presumption on my part, as representing that city, to intervene in this Debate warmly to support the Bill before the House. A very large number of members of the University of Oxford have the privilege of voting for the hon. Member for the City of Oxford, and there is substantial evidence that very many of them exercise that privilege. But there is another reason. The fact that there is this double voting shows how inseparately involved are the interests of the two great bodies the City and the University of Oxford, and that what constitutes a success for the University of Oxford redounds to the benefit of the City of Oxford, as does any progress of the city to the benefit of the university.

But if it was a matter of benefiting the University of Oxford, or, indeed, the City and University of Oxford and the University and Borough of Cambridge, we should not, perhaps, be justified in our action in passing this Bill. But the interest is much wider. The recruits of both Oxford and Cambridge are drawn from no locality, but from every part of the Kingdom. Indeed, their influence is even more than a national influence. It is an international influence, because Oxford—I speak particularly of Oxford because I know Oxford best—is a gathering centre for representatives of every nation of the world, and it is by that means that education is spread to all the corners of the earth, as we believe in the great interest of the world itself, spreading a knowledge which is calculated to tend towards peace rather than towards war. And, again—and this I say in answer to, and in great deference to, hon. Members—it is not a place reserved for one particular class.

I have no doubt that many hon. Members sitting on that side of the House would be forced to admit that they have been enabled to enrich Debates in this House by what they have acquired at the university, but if you look at the benches on my right and examine the origin of hon. Members who adorn those benches, you will find, I believe, an even larger percentage of these Members who have had, if I may say so, the great benefit of being at either Oxford or Cambridge University. It is too true that there is a large number of persons who, through the accident of birth, did not get the opportunity of going either to Oxford or Cambridge and for them—and here I share entirely the feelings of those on my right—we have the greatest sympathy, and we desire that there should be steps whereby large numbers year after year and generation after generation may have the opportunity of going to Oxford or Cambridge, but at the same time if you examine the origin of junior members of the university at the present time and others in the university some of those members are proud, and justly proud, of the very humble origin which they have had, while all their friends are extremely proud of it, and recognise in that a matter of great pride for democracy in general, having regard to the proportion who with no original advantages at all have been able to secure a footing and an important footing in the university.

With regard to the question of women, I am one of those who hold a very strong view that women should have ample opportunity, but if it was put to the test of whether they were to decline a Second Reading to this Bill, because of the attitude of Cambridge, right or wrong, then, notwithstanding the view which I hold, I should vote in favour of the Bill because, whether Cambridge was right or wrong—and I am not at all sure that it is not a matter entirely for Cambridge to decide—it is certain that, even if Cambridge is wrong, Oxford should not be sacrificed in its benefit under this Bill, nor, indeed, do I believe that it would be the desire of anybody interested in Cambridge, however he might desire to see women having equal rights, to refuse, when under the acid test of voting for or against the Bill, to support the Bill.

I would not like to appear before this House as being inconsistent. That is a privilege which, I think, probably applies to those who have followed the Coalition. There have been occasions when I have thought it right to bring before the House privileges enjoyed by Oxford University, and I desire to point out that, whereas this Bill purports to confer further privileges, it is not at all in conflict with the views which I have previously expressed. The privileges and powers to which I have objected, unlike these which are confined to members of universities, are those privileges and powers which extend to others who are not members of the university, and extend to an area far beyond the jurisdiction of the university institutions. I can understand that the House will not be interested in this question if it could be taken to be a purely parochial question. I would like to give an instance to show the curious way in which this works out. I noticed in the Estimates for 1923–4, Class 6, this curious item, which will probably be of interest to Members of the House:

There is a delightful air of cloistered seclusion about this Debate as if we were discussing something that really mattered—so different from the turmoil of yesterday. We are discussing the vital question of the education of the English master class. We have to realise, first, that, in dealing with Oxford and Cambridge, we are dealing with the special education of a special class of people. We have to look at this question from a different point of view from that which should apply to any general educational measure. There are certainly some members of the working class who go to Oxford and Cambridge. We have been told to-day that 40 per cent, of the scholars are of working class origin. Of course that does not amount to a very large percentage of the whole undergraduate class. I presume that if we said 3 per cent, it would be about all of the undergraduate class that come from working-class surroundings. Under these circumstances we have to look at this Bill with rather more critical attention than that which has been applied to it by hon. Members opposite. They remember their own education. They speak as members of their own colleges, as though they were representatives of their colleges and not representatives of the people at large. I would commend this to the hon. Member for Windsor (Mr. A. Somerville). He is a Member for the people of Windsor as well as the pious son of an ancient foundation. For that reason we must lay special emphasis on the fact that it is public money which is now going to assist these ancient foundations.

Every plea to which we have listened—eloquent pleas from the hon. Member for Windsor, even more delightful pleas from the Members for Oxford and Cambridge Universities—every plea for freedom for the universities, finds a natural echo on all sides of the House in all our hearts. We are all in favour of freedom. But if you have public money it is an ancient principle, I believe of the Liberal party, that with public money must go some degree of public control. It is because that is recognised by the Government that we have this Bill to-day. I believe that the Noble Lord (Lord H. Cecil), whom I am very glad to hear once more, would appreciate that point of view, if applied, for instance, to other institutions. There is no man less Erastian than the Noble Lord. How gladly would he see his own Church of England disestablished, provided at the same time that all control over that Church by the State could be eliminated.

The hon. and gallant Member does not understand my point of view.

The Noble Lord's point of view on this question I understand thoroughly. It is that public money, which is admittedly coming from the pockets of the taxpayer, does not justify the taxpayer in asking for an account how that money should be spent. There I think he is wrong. We have to see whether, in using this public control, we can use Oxford and Cambridge to be of greater service to the common people who have not the chance of going there now. Attention has been drawn already to the excellent work done by the tutorial classes and the extension lectures. That has all been in the right direction. I hope that, if and when this Bill comes into force, it is that side of the work which will be strengthened by the Statutory Commission. On those lines there is improvement possible. But I warn the House against this danger: I see the greatest possible objection to looking upon this extension of university culture for the working class as though it were a question of taking some particular members, the cream of the working class, the people who have brains, the clever people whose education is important—taking them out of their ordinary ranks and enlisting them in the master class in order to support the domination of that class.

That is the danger. Too often the man who has climbed the ladder is the most ready to kick away the ladder as soon as he has got to the top. We have to be sure that the education given shall be an education to make a good sound working class and not to make a bad, imitation master class. I had not the advantage of being either at Oxford or Cambridge; in the Boat Race I have always favoured Cambridge, although I have never attended that interesting event. The principal feature of the master class education which I would like to see extended to the working class is what we get, I do not know whether at school or college or by training—the determination not to submit to injustice, which is really one of the foundations of the strength of the British master class throughout the world. A hatred of injustice, a refusal to lie down under it, has been the making of our master class. So, too, a determination that it is better to be dead than a slave is the education which you get. I suppose that you get it at Oxford or Cambridge; certainly we get it at our public schools. That sort of education is really of great value, not only to the upper class, but to all classes. If you want a nation of free people you must have people who will stand up for their rights. You must not try to smuggle clever individuals from the other class in order to convert them into your own, and leave the rest as stupid people whose education does not matter. An education in freedom can be given to people, whether they are clever or stupid. I would like to see the revised and reformed Oxford and Cambridge moving in the direction of spreading ideas such as that, although they may be to some extent dangerous to existing society; I would like to see them take the lead in education that at present is carried on by the Labour party and the Labour party alone. "Think for yourselves and stand up for your rights." That is the sort of education we want to see coming, not from the Labour party platform only, but from the great universities who have led in the past.

Does the hon. and gallant Member mean that everybody should go to the university?

No, but those are the ideas which I would use the university extension lectures and the tutorial classes to spread. I want these to be real missionaries among the working class, in order to spread real light and real learning, instead of merely collecting individuals from that class and putting them out of their place in the master class.

Then there would be no Labour party.

3.0 P.M.

On the contrary, there never will be a Labour party in the country until people learn to think for themselves, and to resent the injustice of being exploited by the right hon. Baronet. Autonomy for the university is insisted upon, but then autonomy so very often means "keeping it in the family." If you have in any university a particular line of thought or of instruction, it is so easy to continue in the groove, to take the next generation through the same gateways and over the same stiles as we passed in our youth. We have got a vested interest in the old working of the machine and I think in a university which pretends to be progressive, an autonomy administered by people who have been educated in the machine is probably the very worst thing that could be for the progressive teaching of that university. The danger, as was pointed out by the Noble Lord, is that if the State gets control, sooner or later the State will come along, just as the German State did, and have the people educated in the ideas which suit the State and see that their heads are filled with ideas which their rulers think are ideas they ought to have. If control is introduced he thinks that is a danger we should have to face, not from the Labour party, he was good enough to say, because we are too stupid, but from some other malign party which would fill the heads of the people with anti-Socialist views or whatever they might be, in order that when they saw a red flag they might behave like red bulls. That I quite agree is the danger in some sorts of control over education. But is the Noble Lord quite sure that he has not got some such control over education now? What happens when the multi-millionaire in America endows educational institutions? The education which goes on in those institutions, particularly education in econmic history or economics, tends to become an education which aims at preserving things as they are at all costs. I am afraid that does not apply only to America but applies here. The pious founders in this country are very anxious for what they call the stabilisation of society, as are the pious founders in America. As long as you rely for your educational institutions upon private funds, you have that almost instinctive control of what is taught in the college or the university, which to my mind is infinitely more dangerous than control by the State. I quite agree that for the State to use its position in order to fortify itself by having certain ideas potted and, so to speak, canned in the heads of a helpless electorate is quite wrong, but at the present time you cannot hold up your hands in horror at the idea of its being done by the public instead of by wealthy men. The hon. and learned Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Rawlinson) seemed to know his speech almost by heart. He must have used those arguments over and over again. He probably used them when the Test Acts were repealed or in a previous incarnation. He certainly used them with regard to Cambridge University at every single step. Every step was pointed to as the disastrous result of, the previous step and in every case his argument as to the dangers involved in making the change has been proved futile. How much longer is the hon. Member going to go on supporting an ancient system which is founded really not upon freedom but upon privilege? How much longer is he going to preserve the privilege of the male as against rightful and instinctive justice to the female?

I know that being Member for a university it is extremely difficult to get the hon. Member to change. He considers that he is the child of Cambridge and is made by Cambridge—and a very good product, I may add. But is he aware of what the people who run Cambridge at present are making of Cambridge? Surely he must know that the great Cambridge tradition has always been that it is more liberal than Oxford. Cambridge made the bishops and Oxford burned them. Advanced views have been held in Cambridge from time immemorial, and they have always looked down upon conservative Oxford. Is the hon. Member to allow that tradition to be destroyed now in the 20th century because, for the moment, there happen to be a number of reactionary dons in charge of Cambridge University? It is a purely temporary phase, believe me, but it is a phase which is extremely dangerous to the historical traditions of that great university. It is unfortunate that owing to the War or some reason of that sort you have had at Cambridge since the War a reactionary crowd of dons and senators who have given that university, for the first time, the name of being the most reactionary university in the Empire.

More so than Oxford?

I cannot expect you to be too far ahead of Oxford. That would be asking too much.

Are we always to follow Oxford?

I am afraid in future it will be following Oxford instead of leading Oxford, and that to my mind is the Cambridge tragedy. I pass from that to the point raised by the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord H. Cecil). May I say that when the Noble Lord next gives us a peroration both we and posterity would prefer his own rather than Burke's. He took once again the monastic point of view about women in Cambridge University, that they should be a class apart. He said that if they came into our lives, they distracted our attention from really serious discussions over nuts and wine, on anarchism and socialism. That is all very well, but the Noble Lord knows perfectly well, although there are women at Oxford and Cambridge and although there are no university laws to keep men and women students apart, yet natural custom forbids them mixing together. Surely when you have that natural custom you do not need to be too much terrified as to what will be the result of some extension of the power of woman in the control of the university.

I did not say that the University of Cambridge would be unwise. On the contrary, I think they would be wise to make the reform suggested, but what I meant to argue was that there was a case on the other side, that it was not quite the obvious thing which every sane person could have only one opinion about, that there was an argument which had nothing whatever to do with the equality of the sexes or the equality of rights before the law.

There has always been a case on the other side, and there has generally been a party on the other side, and I am delighted to find that on this occasion the case and the party are so weak that although hitherto it has been the Tory party that has opposed anything in this direction, that party does not now include the Noble Lord. I think he is quite right. He may view with a certain amount of fear the possibility of men and women mixing and not being attentive to their work, but, as they have had the opportunity of mixing for so many years now and the disastrous results have not followed, I think the right hon. and learned Member for Cambridge University might take courage in this matter.

I thought Cambridge had deteriorated so terribly since the War!

Perhaps they may yet recover, if the right hon. and learned Member will pay attention to their education. The question before us now, in view of the proposals put forward by the Government, is: What is to be the attitude of the Labour party towards this Bill? The right hon. Gentleman in charge of the Bill knows very well that we attach enormous importance to education. If the money that is going to be spent on education at Oxford or Cambridge can be shown to be of real assistance to the education of the people, we shall certainly be anxious to see this Bill passed into law, but we are also extremely keen on seeing that justice is done to women at Cambridge. The question will, no doubt, come up on the Committee stage. I hope we shall have the support of the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University in making that change, just as I am afraid we shall not have the support of the right hon. and learned Member for Cambridge University, but certainly we shall consider the attitude that the Committee take towards this Bill as our guide on the question of how to treat the future stages of the Bill. We want to see that the women at Cambridge get the same rights as they have at Oxford. We want to see also that women are put on these Statutory Committees. It is perfectly monstrous that you should have these Statutory Committees now without one woman upon them; indeed, only one representative of the Labour party is on them. They are solely for the master class, I suppose, and that is the reason why these Statutory Committees are confined to that class, but there you have the opportunity of widening the constitution of your bodies. If we could have such a woman as Miss Clough added to the Cambridge Committee, you would immediately not only strengthen the Committee, but add to the confidence which the women all over the country would have in that Committee.

When the Committee stage of this Bill is through, if we find that the Bill is really of no interest to the Labour party, we shall certainly oppose it, so far as we can, in order to secure the admission of women on equal terms. I think the right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that a contentious Bill of this sort will be found very difficult to pass at this late stage in the Session, and, therefore, I do hope that he will be able to meet us on these two points, that is to say, the extension of the benefits of this education more to the working-classes, by representation of the working-classes on the Statutory Commissions, and also the admission of women to the University of Cambridge on terms equal to men. That being the case I think we should be well advised to give this Bill a Second Reading without any opposition, and I hope the Bill will go to a Committee, where the points can be thrashed out, and that we shall be able to have an agreed Bill when it comes down to us for Report.

In listening to the last speech, I confess I seemed to be listening to a lecture being delivered by a new professor—an inaugural lecture on what Oxford or Cambridge ought to be, or, perhaps, for a Chair of Control of Politics called independent, but strictly controlled by what he calls the Labour party. But it was a disappointing lecture. Hitherto I always thought the hon. and gallant Member was a university man, and, being a Cambridge man myself, I thought he had been brought up at Oxford. Unfortunately, he has been denied the university, and he has, apparently, taken so little interest either on one side or the other, that he has not even been to the University Boat Race. I should be happy to take him there at the earliest possible moment, because as soon as he goes there he may learn something of the fringe of Oxford or Cambridge. But I will be frank with him. I thought at first he was an Oxford man, and when the Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University (Lord H. Cecil) was speaking of that class of rich person belonging to a good family which goes up to the university, yet derives very little knowledge indeed from the University, I thought that he was the very man who illustrated that class.

If the hon. and gallant Gentleman will forgive me for saying so, his speech revealed that he knew nothing whatever about either Oxford or Cambridge, or about the University at all. The right hon. Gentleman the senior Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Rawlinson) rendered great service by recalling the House to what is done in this Bill, and what is not done in this Bill. As he pointed out, it is merely a Bill for the purpose of giving statutory effect to the recommendations of the Royal Commission. It does not introduce—certainly not directly, and only somewhat remotely —the question of which we have heard so much during the discussion to-day, namely, what should be the attitude of Cambridge towards the education of women, and it is well to remember that when we are asked to pass the Second Reading of this Bill, all that we are asked to do is to give an opportunity for statutory provisions to deal with the recommendations made by the very important Commission over which the right hon. Member for Paisley presided.

Let me also get rid of another point. It is suggested that by reason of the fact that a sum of public money has been paid to the universities that that, therefore, gives the right to this House immediately, and, apparently, directly, to control both the government and the future of these universities. I think that is a trivial and a banal argument. Is it really supposed by this House that the two great universities, with their mighty foundations, their splendid colleges, and their honourable traditions, are really to be controlled, or even to be influenced, in their future operations and in the rendering of those great services which they have given in the past—are really to be controlled because they are given £30,000? Let us have some respect to good sense in this matter. Because £30,000 is given to the great University of Oxford and the equally great University of Cambridge, is that to justify, or, if they are worthy of their name, would they be content to be controlled for a sum so comparatively small; to depart from their great traditions and submit to dictation? I speak of £30,000.

But that is not all.

It may possibly be increased, for the demand is for £100,000 which has been turned down, and I am not unfamiliar, may I remind the hon. Gentleman, with the figures. I have spoken of the great traditions of Cambridge, of the immense expanse which they give to any young man's education, and the thrill which he receives on going up to Cambridge. Is that really going to be dominated or brought under some departmental control because the sum of £30,000 is given? It seems a trivial proposal and a banal argument. I say more: is it supposed by the last speaker who paid tribute to what he called the "master class" and their determination to die rather than to be dominated; does he suppose that a great university, in which lives the spirit of Bacon, Milton, Newton and Macaulay, is really going to be brought under departmental control? You are really going beyond an appreciation of the great traditions which are the dominating factor and the real institution of Cambridge, and similar claims may be made on behalf of Oxford. I think the Labour party have struck a very false ring and note in saying now that interference is justified. I do not think it is justified—certainly not if you keep your sense of perspective—that interference is justified because of the comparatively small sum to be paid to benefit education in both the universities.

I rose, however, not really to deal with these matters, but I wanted to say a word or two on the question which has bulked so much in our Debate. It has been said by some hon. Members that it would be very unfortunate if we forced upon Cambridge the duty of admitting women to the privileges of the university. It is quite clear that it is very important to have an idea of what you mean by "the privileges of the university" when you are seeking that women should be admitted. I think the hon. Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Butler) who spoke earlier in the Debate put his finger upon a very important point, and that is at the present time there is reason to believe that the education of women at Cambridge does suffer from the fact that a very incomplete membership of the university is granted to them. We have to also remember that they have, by the passing of the Representation of the People Act, got the right of a vote for the university Member. I want to draw attention to the fact that in this Bill provision is made by Clause 6 as to what the duties of the Commissioners are to be. It provides that, subject to the provisions of this Act the Commissioners shall make Statutes and Regulations for the universities, colleges and halls in general accordance with the recommendations contained in the Report of the Royal Commission. So that the very purpose of passing this Bill is to see that the Commission do make Statutes in general accordance with the recommendations contained in the Report. The Report of the Commission, in general accordance with which these Statutes are to be passed, says that there ought to be a provision for the education of women, and, as I understand it, subject to certain limitations and certain clauses of the Report, the Commissioners are in favour of that course being adopted.

The Cambridge Commission are in favour of remodelling their system so as to give women a greater opportunity at Cambridge and make them more clearly members of the university. I use a phrase which is necessarily vague because those matters must be left to the Commissioners. As a Cambridge man myself, and one who owes more than he can express to that university; and as a member of Trinity College, that great foundation, and owing as I do a very great deal to that college, I want to make this appeal. I hope that it will be made plain if not by actual amendment at any rate by expression of opinion that it is expected of the Commissioners that they will, in general accordance with the recommendations contained in the Report, give greater facilities for the education of women at the University of Cambridge. I think this question has got into a very unfortunate position. Time and again I have been at Cambridge to vote in respect of various graces. The questions have become so complex and so much debated and entangled that it would be a happy thing for Cambridge if some outside body could solve this problem and disentangle it from its present embarrassment.

The House itself, on the Second Reading, need express no opinion on these matters, although amendments in Committee may be necessary in order to make quite clear the recommendations with which the Commissioners are expected to deal. They embrace those sections of the recommendations which deal with the position of women at Cambridge. I hope that in Committee it may be possible to make that clear, and I believe it is quite unnecessary to give any instruction to the Commissioners, or to say that they are to deal with it on particular lines. I think that would provoke resentment, and would have an unfortunate result. I do not think that it is going beyond what the speeches of hon. Members have indicated and who have spoken in favour of the advancement of education and freedom at Cambridge if we ask that it should be made quite plain that the Commissioners shall undertake to make arrangements for the position of women, at Cambridge in accordance with the general recommendation contained in the Report. The Commissioners, with a very great deal of controversial matter to deal with, might find themselves in the unhappy position of not being able to deal with that particular subject. For my part, speaking as a Cambridge man with a desire, not less sincere than the desire of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the senior Member for Cambridge University (Mr. Rawlinson), to serve all that is good at Cambridge, I hope that this matter will be dealt with by the Commissioners. It is regrettable, I think, that the colleges of women at the present time should be placed under a somewhat unfortunate ban. It is almost impossible to expect that the best professors or teachers will go to Cambridge when they find a partial, and only a partial, interest and opportunity in the full educational advantages that are there offered. I hope therefore that we shall not only pass this Bill, but that by some means it may be made clear that Cambridge itself would welcome the assistance and determination of the Commission in general accordance with the recommendations contained in the Report.

As I have a semi-paternal interest in this Bill, and also in the Royal Commission, the recommendations of which it is the object of this Bill to bring into force, I think, perhaps, that I ought not to allow the Bill to receive a Second Reading without a few observations. In the first place, I should like to associate myself with the words which fell from my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Education in the course of his most interesting and admirable speech in praise of the work which was done by the Royal Commission. The Royal Commission was a very strong body. It was presided over by my right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith), whose name alone is sufficient to give weight to the recommendations of any body over which he presides, and it contained a number of distinguished members drawn from every section and quarter: and I think that no Commission dealing with university affairs, and I doubt whether any Commission dealing with public affairs, has ever produced a Report which has met with such general acceptance from those whose interests are concerned.

This Bill proposes to set up two Statutory Commissions to give effect to the recommendations contained in that Report. It will not be the task of the Statutory Commissions to invent a new constitution for the university, or to advise a new policy for the university, or to do over again the work which has been already done so effectively by the Royal Commission. The work of these two Statutory Commissions will be of a limited and technical character, and for that reason, among others, when I had to consider the composition of these Commissions, I did not think that it was very necessary, the work being very largely of a legal and technical character, to make the Statutory Commissions as representative of all the different interests concerned as the Royal Commission originally had been. I doubt, indeed, whether it would be necessary to have women on the Statutory Commissions, although, of course, I would raise no objection to that.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Leamington (Sir Ernest Pollock) did, I think, very considerably clear the air by the weighty speech to which we have just listened. He pointed out that according to the terms of this Bill it is competent for the Statutory Commission dealing with the university to give effect to the recommendation of Royal Commissions in favour of women being admitted to full membership of the Cambridge University. It will be competent for it to do so, and I should imagine that the Commissioners, in view of the unanimous recommendation of the Royal Commission, would start from the point of view that, unless there were very strong reasons to the contrary, it was a task imposed on them by Parliament to give effect to that very important recommendation. Still, having regard to the division of opinion on the Cambridge Committee, and having regard also to the fact that the restricted Senate of Cambridge may give effect to the recommendation of the Royal Commission, they might take the view that it would be a more desirable course to leave the matter to be settled by Cambridge itself. But in any case under the terms of this Bill they have ample power, and it will be for the Committee to consider whether any additional provision should be imported into the Bill with a view of directing their attention to the recommendations of the Commission.

The Noble Lord the senior Member for the University of Oxford (Lord H. Cecil), in the course' of his delightful and brilliant speech, gave vent to the view that education was only for the clever and that it was practically wasted on the stupid. I have had a little experience in education, and I take just the opposite view. I take the view that education is more often wasted on the clever and that the clever undergraduate is not often apt to have a great respect for his tutor. On the other hand, I believe it would be true to say that by education a great deal of good can be done to the moderately stupid or the moderately clever person. Do not let us disparage the influence of education on the ordinary human mind. After all, the business of the educator is to educate ordinary men and ordinary women, and it is the ordinary man and the ordinary woman who gets most good out of the educational process.

The Noble Lord was, I think very justly eloquent on the great necessity for preserving the autonomy of the universities. He spoke of a university being like a cheese, and he thought that the flavour of a cheese was diminished by any incursion into it. I doubt, however, whether the analogy was perfectly correct, because it has never occurred to me that the flavour of a cheese is diminished by an incursion from outside. Certainly, if we consider the history of our universities, we are bound to admit that they have from time to time greatly benefited by the external acts of the State. At what period in our educational history were the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge enjoying the fullest measure of autonomy? It was during the later half of the eighteenth century, when Gibbon and Adam Smith were undergraduates, the one at Magdalen and the other at Balliol, and when the dons at Magdalen, by their thought it worth his while to give him five minutes' instruction. Those were the times when our two ancient universities were left absolutely alone in the enjoyment of full autonomy. Everything has changed since then, and I fully admit that the universities now, which in the time of Cardinal Newman were making no contribution whatever, or only a very slight contribution, to the learning of Europe, when they were—

They transformed the Church of England.

I am speaking of learning. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are now in the forefront of European learning, and I associate myself entirely with the Noble Lord in thinking that we should be very careful as to how we deal with the structure of these two venerable institutions. The hon. Member for Windsor (Mr. A. Somerville) spoke of this Bill as the price at which these two ancient universities were receiving money from the State. If I may say so with all respect, that is not the way in which this Bill presents itself to me. The recommendations of the Royal Commission, which these two statutory commissions are to be appointed to carry into force, are recommendations, made after very careful inquiry by the Royal Commission, for the purpose of improving the efficiency of the two universities. The Royal Commission was simply governed by the desire to make the two universities as efficient for their great purpose of furthering education and research as it is possible to make them. I think there is general agreement, both in Oxford and in Cambridge, that the Royal Commission has done its work well, and I am assured that in each case the statutory Commission will receive a great deal of friendly support, both from the colleges and from the university.

It is, of course, true that the universities are now receiving State assistance. I very much regret the necessity that has led the two ancient universities to appeal for State assistance, but when I recall the fate of the appeals which were made by the late Duke of Devonshire on behalf of Cambridge, and by Lord Curzon on behalf of Oxford—and Lord Curzon is very vigorous when he takes up an appeal of this kind—when I remember the fate of those appeals, I realise that it is quite impossible at the present juncture for the two universities to go on doing the work which they are doing, and which they ought to do, without assistance from the State. Having some little experience of the work of universities which receive assistance from the State, I think I may say I have never found that the State has attempted to interfere with the internal working or the curriculum of those institutions, and consequently I do not think the ancient universities have anything to fear. The junior Member for Oxford University expressed the hope that the Commissioners would ensure that the first claim on the funds at the disposal of the two universities should be the salaries and pensions of the university staffs. That is not my view. My view is that the Commissioners should not interfere in the least with the allocation of the sums placed at the disposal of the universities. I think the University Grants Committee should proceed in the case of Oxford and Cambridge exactly as they proceed in the case of other universities. They should give the university a block grant and leave it to the university in its own discretion to apply those moneys in the manner which seems to it to be the most fitting.

The Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University expressed the hope that the Commissioners would have a considerable amount of latitude, and he gave notice of an intention in Committee of introducing words which would enable them to exercise a larger degree of latitude than is at present represented by Clause 6. I hope he will reconsider that attitude. It is very important, in my opinion, that the Statutory Commissions should not try to do over again the work of the Royal Commission. Their work is of a subordinate character, and I think the words in Clause 6 are quite sufficient for the purpose which the Noble Lord has in view. They enable the Commissioners to modify the recommendations of the Royal Commissioners, and I think it is possible they will find, when they come to look closely into their work, that there are points of detail in which modifications will be necessary. For instance, there are some recommendations of the Royal Commissioners applying to Oxford and Cambridge alike, which in the view of some Oxford, and possibly some Cambridge men do not take sufficient account of differences between the two universities. I take it that in such cases the Statutory Commissioners would be quite justified in making the minor adaptations which the occasion would demand. The Royal Commission did its work with such sagacity and such regard to the great traditions which govern Oxford and Cambridge Universities that I think we may look with confidence to the work which is to be carried out in conformity with their recommendations I do not believe that there will be any violent breach of continuity. On the other hand, I think that the recommendation of the Royal Commission, carried out as they will be by the two Statutory Commissions, will give to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which are now suffering from lack of financial support, and are unable to keep abreast with all their responsibilities, especially in the region of pure and applied science—departments of work which are becoming increasingly expensive—the ability to discharge their functions with greater efficiency. When we consider that it is on Oxford and Cambridge principally that this country relies, not only for the leaders of its learned professions—[HON. MEMBER: "No!"]—principally, not only for its chief contributors to original research—[HON. MEMBERS: "No—"]—I am sure that we shall be agreed that the additional financial resources which this Bill will put at the disposal of the universities will be an investment which the country will never regret. My right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley (Mr. Asquith) spoke of the sum of £100,000 mentioned in the Royal Commission Report as a modest sum. I think it is a minimum sum, and I was very glad to hear the President of the Board of Education say that the Government are prepared to make an advance upon the trifling sum of £30,000 which is now placed at the disposal of both universities. I hope very much that the Government will not lose sight of the great work that is being done by the two ancient universities, and will regard it as one of their duties to implement to the full the financial recommendations made by the Royal Commission.

I noticed that the last two speakers on the other side who addressed the House, announced, with all the pride which members of their foundation always show, that they were sons of Trinity; but it was an especial joy to me when the hon. Member for Windsor (Mr. A. Somerville) in giving a list of the distinguished sons of Cambridge, had to come to the ancient and poor foundation of which I was a humble member, in order to mention first, John Milton. I desire to speak from a point of view rather different from that mentioned by those sons of the ancient universities this afternoon, because I was one of those men who were somewhat lightly dismissed by one of the Members for the University of Oxford as "ambitious but poor." My poverty compelled me to take on things that were beyond my strength, and try to take a double course, with the result that my health broke down and I never managed to complete either course. I want to speak on behalf of that class. The senior Member for the University of Cambridge (Mr. Rawlinson) said, in reply to the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Lawson), that it might not be a bad thing if some rich men's sons were admitted simply because they were the sons of rich men. I am not at all sure that it would be a bad thing if certain poor men's sons were admitted simply because they were the sons of poor men. We might ask the hon. Member for Silvertown (Mr. J. Jones) and the hon. Member for South Poplar (Mr. March) to nominate a few boys from their constituencies who show aptitude rather than attainment. I think that that is the real answer also to the Noble Lord. What the universities educate is not attainment but aptitude. Aptitude is not mere cleverness.

This morning I had the pleasure of taking round the House, for my hon. Friend the Member for Bow and Bromley (Mr. Lansbury), who was otherwise occupied, a number of boys from his constituency, and I could not help thinking, when I went round explaining to those boys the frescoes on the walls of the Houses of Parliament, how intimately the lives of these two great universities are intertwined with all the history of this great nation. The Report of the Royal Commission emphasises the fact that these college foundations were originally designed to bring into the full life of this country those who were then the humblest section of the freemen, the sons of the small yeomen. The pious donors, though they may have founded these institutions to secure prayers for their souls, yet also had the idea that these children of aptitude were a very valuable asset to the State, and that the best the State could do was to give them their opportunity. There is one point which has not been mentioned which I would like to emphasise. On page 133 of their Report the Commission say: we shall not merely serve the women, but we shall serve the life of the university itself. The Noble Lord said that he would not have cared to have had ladies at some of the discussions which he had in his undergraduate days, but I am bound to say that my recollection is that on some occasions the conversation would have been improved by the presence of a lady or two. As one who has taught mixed classes for many years, in my opinion intellectual stimulus does come from a mixed education. I am only giving such experience as I have had as a teacher in various grades, and as one who was brought up under a mixed system as a pupil teacher.

I am sure there is a stimulus, not quite the stimulus that comes from the competition of men with men and women with women, but a stimulus equally valuable. Has not the great work of Sanderson at Oundle taught us that the stimulus on which we have relied is not the only, and not the most successful, stimulus? The Noble Lord the Member for Oxford University used once again the analogy of the educational ladder, against which I have protested before. We make a great mistake in thinking of education in the terms of a ladder. After all, the person who gets his foot on the bottom rung of the ladder first will be the first person to reach the top, unless there is a most undignified scramble on the way up. The proper simile for education is that of the river. We are dealing this afternoon with a great river that has enriched our national life through many centuries, and the most that we can do is to contribute a small tributary stream to it. It will merge itself in the great river. We shall bring down some alluvial soil, which will be deposited over each of the banks past which the river flows, and from which future generations will draw sustenance. The river will bear on its bosom, if we act wisely, the ship of state as securely as in days gone by. The river is a highway that moves; it is not the mechanical escalator of the Noble Lord, but a moving highway. It moves at differing paces, according to the bed over which it flows. And as our times change and civilisation alters with them, this broad river of university education will be one of the most precious things for the fertilising of our own and future generations. I hope that the result of this Royal Commission will be, not the mere niggardly £30,000 that the Government are prepared to give, but that we shall get into these two old universities a fresh spirit, a realisation that they have to adapt themselves to the changing needs of our time. Just as in the centuries after they were founded they enriched the small yeomen farmers' families by their education, so to-day, if they are to do what they should do for the nation, they will enrich all sections, and we shall get increasingly in these universities opportunities for all classes of the community to meet on common ground and do their part in securing the intellectual advancement of this great people that has for many centuries stood in the forefront of the culture of the world.

Question, "That the Bill be now read a Second time," put, and agreed to.

Bill read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee.