A letter to the citizens of Aberdeen, on the improvement of their academical institutions / [John Stuart Blackie].

  • John Stuart Blackie
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the citizens of Aberdeen, on the improvement of their academical institutions / [John Stuart Blackie]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    whether you find equally good reason to congratulate your¬ selves on the healthiness and vigour of the indwelling soul; thanking you most heartily as I do for the substantiality and elegance with which you have erected the garden wall, whether I may not have good reason to apply to you for a hoe and a spade to break the clod, and a little manure to stimulate the soil. Do you ask why /, in particular, come forward to make this public question, and why I direct it to you rather than to any other body ? To the first point it might be sufficient to reply that I feel moved to speak, that I am speaking on a sub¬ ject on which I possess good information, and that I consider public discussion on public matters to be a public benefit; but I may add, also, that my opinion on the great matter of Aca¬ demical Reform in Aberdeen, valeat quantum valeat, as the lawyers say, was not, and could not have been, registered before the friends of education in this quarter, at the time when most of my brethren in both Colleges stated their views to the University Commissioners, and that therefore it is my special privilege to have it publicly registered now. To the second point the reply is equally plain ; I address these words specially to you, the inhabitants of Aberdeen, not only because you above all others have the most vital interest in the matter, but because I see no other quarter in which I am likely to find a more ready ear. I see no minister of public instruction — no royal commission making (according to the reasonable wish of one of my colleagues) an academical visitation every ten years *—no education board—not even a Town Council (as in Edinburgh) that possesses any supreme, controlling, and regulative power over the Academical Institutions of this place. I see a Rector, an intelligent man whom I respect ; but an efficient Rectorial Court is a thing of which I know nothing. I see a Senatus Academicus, composed of most re¬ spectable Professors in New Aberdeen, and I see another body constituted in the same way in Old Aberdeen ; but I look in vain for a hearty or even a formal co-operation of these two learned bodies for the purpose of achieving any great or even any small object of Academical Reform in this part of Scot¬ land. To whom, therefore, can I apply ? Who is the su- preme and moving power in this country ? Not the Queen, not the Premier, not the Ministry, but the Public having a * “ I think it would be of great importance to the Scotch Universities j to be visited by a royal commission once every ten years.”—Dr, Cruickshank. Evidence, 1827, p. 97.
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