29 - The Cowper Commission

Summary

The Government lost no time in setting up a new Commission. Cranbrook sent off letters of invitation on 29 March, and, though there were clearly one or two changes in his original list, the membership was completed, handed to the Home Office for drafting by 9 April, and announced three weeks later. There are only a few letters which throw light on the choice of Commissioners. Cranbrook had consulted the Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Spencer, who had both pushed the claims of Sir Henry Roscoe, as a scientist and as a spokesman for higher education in the North of England: the Duke of Devonshire passed on the opinion of C.D. Liveing of Cambridge that Professor George Forrest Browne, Canon of St Paul’s, should be appointed, and Devonshire himself felt that Browne would be a better representative of Cambridge than Sidgwick. As it turned out, both Browne and Sidgwick were included, but not Roscoe. J.L. Goddard, who had been Secretary to the Selborne Commission, was appointed Secretary, on the recommendation of Lord Selborne himself.

The 7th Earl Cowper agreed to be Chairman of the new Commission. As Gladstone’s Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in 1880–82, he had been strongly opposed to the conciliatory policies of the Liberal Government, and in 1886 had taken a prominent role as a Liberal Unionist. He was, therefore, similarly placed, politically, as Lord Selborne, who had presided over the previous inquiry. Unlike Selborne, however, he was not to report to the same Government as that which appointed him. Within a few weeks of that appointment, there were significant political developments.

The Commissioners’ first spell of asking questions coincided with the last weeks of Conservative/Unionist Government. The General Election of July, 1892, returned a majority of Liberals and Irish Home Rulers, and Salisbury resigned early in August, to make room for the octogenarian Gladstone. Lord Herschell and the Earl of Kimberley, Fellows of the University of London, became Lord Chancellor and Lord President respectively. Kimberley simultaneously held the Secretaryship of State for India, which took much of his attention. H.H. Asquith was Home Secretary, and for the first time, the Vice-Presidency of the Council, whose holders had for many years been the Ministers principally involved in the Governments’ concern for school education, was included in the Cabinet. The new Vice-President was A.H.D. Acland.