George Peacock

Observations on the Statutes of the University of Cambridge George Peacock

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1841 Excerpt: ...system of collegiate education or discipline. An intermediate course, which has sometimes been recommended, would adapt a system of statutes to the cotemporary practices of a college, reserving to the governing authorities the power of making such changes in them as they may, from time to time, deem to be necessary and expedient. But it may be very reasonably objected to such a plan, that statutes which are thus alterable at pleasure, or without the necessity of a formal appeal to an external and superior authority, are in no essential respect different from college orders; and that the union of dispensible and indispensible1 statutes in the same code has a natural tendency to confound, in the minds of those who are required to obey them, the great distinction which exists between them, and to cause them both to be regarded with equal neglect and VrreveTeii.ee 1 This distinction is frequently re-university of Oxford; it is wett known. ferred to in the Laudian statutes of the that it has long ceased to to regarded. In conformity with these principles, codes of statutes, designed for perpetual obligation, should describe, in very general terms, the duties of officers, as far at least as they are distinct from personal rights'; prescribing the course of education no further than may be considered necessary to define its general object and character, and leaving the details of discipline, and of domestic administratration, to be arranged, from time to time, by the cotemporary authorities of the college. They would leave the regulation of the periods of graduation, and of the exercises and examinations for degrees, to be determined by the statutes or graces of the university at large8; they would omit all statutes which prescribe domestic disputations3, and woul...