Chapter VIII - THE STATUTORY COMMISSIONERS AND THE COLLEGES

Summary

The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act of 1877 gave less favourable terms to the colleges than the Cambridge University Act of 1856. The latter measure directed the Commissioners to communicate to a college the statutes they had drafted for it; and if within two months two-thirds of the College Governing Body had stated in writing that any of these statutes were prejudicial to the college as a place of learning and education, the Commissoners were obliged to withdraw those to which objection had been taken, and to submit others in their place. It might not always be easy, particularly in a large Society, to obtain the requisite two-thirds majority; but the Commissioners were powerless against it if it were secured. The Act of 1877 however neither provided this safeguard nor any adequate substitute for it. As has been earlier mentioned, the Act prescribed that the Commissioners should inform a college when they were about to draft statutes for it, and that on receiving this information, the College Governing Body might elect “three persons to be Commissioners to represent the college in relation to the making by the Commissioners of statutes for the college”. In the making of statutes for the college these College Commissioners had the same powers as the Statutory Commissioners; but they could not be counted for the purpose of forming a quorum, and this placed them at a serious disadvantage. The Act required a quorum of three Statutory Commissioners, and even when only this minimum number were present, the College Commissioners could never prevail against their united opinion, as the chairman had a casting vote which he invariably used. And it was very rare for either set of Commissioners not to present an unbroken front.