If what has been said in former Chapters of this volume upon the relation of a University to its Colleges, be in the main correct, the difference between the two institutions, and the use of each, is very clear. A University embodies the principal of progress, and a College that of stability; the one is the sail, and the other the ballast; each is insufficient in itself for the pursuit, extension, and inculcation of knowledge; each is useful to the other. A University is the scene of enthusiasm, of pleasurable exertion, of brilliant display, of winning influence, of diffusive and potent sympathy; and a College is the scene of order, of obedience, of modest and persevering diligence, of conscientious fulfilment of duty, of mutual private services, and deep and lasting attachments. The University is for the world, and the College is for the nation. The University is for the Professor, and the College for the Tutor; the University is for the philosophical discourse, the eloquent sermon, or the well contested disputation; and the College for the catechetical lecture. The University is for theology, law, and medicine, for natural history, for physical science, and for the sciences generally and their promulgation; the College is for the formation of character, intellectual and moral, for the cultivation of the mind, for the improvement of the individual, for the study of literature, for the classics, and those rudimental sciences which strengthen and sharpen the intellect. The University being the element of advance, will fail in making good its ground as it goes; the College, from its Conservative tendencies, will be sure to go back, because it does not go forward. It would seem as if a University seated and living in Colleges, would be a perfect institution, as possessing excellences of opposite kinds.
But such a union, such salutary balance and mutual complement of opposite advantages, is of difficult and rare attainment. At least the present day rather gives us instances of the two antagonistic evils, of naked Universities and naked Colleges, than of their alliance and its benefits. The great seats of learning on the Continent, to say nothing of those in Scotland, show us the need of Colleges to complete the University; the English, on the contrary, show us the need of a University to give life to an assemblage of Colleges. The evil of a University, standing by itself as in Germany, is often insisted on and may readily be apprehended; and therefore, leaving that part of the subject alone, I will say a few words on the state of things in England, where the action of the University is suspended, and the Colleges have supreme and sovereign authority.
At the Reformation, the State not only made itself the head of the Anglican Church, but resolved to suppress, or nearly so, its legal existence. It not only ignored the idea of a central authority in Christendom; but it went very far towards ignoring the existence of a Church in England itself. I believe I am right in saying that the Church of England, as such, scarcely has a legal status. Its Bishops indeed are Peers of Parliament, its chapters have charters, its Rectors are corporations sole, its ministers are officers of the law, its fabrics have special rights, its courts have a civil position and functions, its Prayer-book is (as has been observed) an Act of Parliament; but, as far as I know, there is no corporation of the United Church of England and Ireland, though that title itself be a legal one. The Protestant Church, as such, holds no property, and exercises no functions. It is an aggregate of many thousand corporations professing one object, and moulded on a common rule. The nearest approach to corporate power lay in its Convocations, which were at least three in number, not one,—those of Canterbury, of York, and of Dublin; and these have been virtually long obsolete. The Protestant Church would be an imperium in imperio, considering the immense wealth, power, and influence of its constituent members, were it itself a corporation.
The same spirit which destroyed the legal incorporation of the religious principle, was the jealous enemy also of the incorporation of the intellectual; and the civil power could as little bear a University as it bore a Church. Accordingly, Oxford and Cambridge shared the fate of the Hierarchy; the component parts of those Universities were preserved, but they themselves were superseded; and there would be almost as great difficulties now in Protestant England, in restoring its Universities to their proper place, as in restoring its Church. It is true, that the Colleges themselves are important political bodies, independent of the civil power; but at the same time they are national bodies; they represent not the human mind, but sections of the political community; and the civil power is itself nothing else than an expression of national power in one or other of its aspects; whereas a University is an intellectual power, as such, just as the Church is a religious power. Intellect, as well as Faith and Conscience, are authorities simply independent of State and Nation; State and Nation are but different aspects of one and the same power: and thus the State and Nation will endure chapters and colleges, as they bear city companies and municipalities, but not a Church, not a University. On the other hand, considering the especially popular character of the English constitution, and how congenial to it is the existence of organs of public opinion and of representative bodies, it is not wonderful that the Collegiate system has not merely remained in these later centuries, but has been cherished and advanced.