Abstract
THE long expected Scotch Universities Bill has at last made its appearance. As no explanation of its provisions has yet been offered in Parliament, and the Scotch newspapers have shown the caution characteristic of their country in declining to commit themselves to an opinion about it till they learn what its authors have to say in its favour, it may be interesting to our readers to know what the Bill proposes to do and how it proposes to do it. So much at least can be stated in a few sentences. The Scotch Universities derive a considerable portion of their revenues from Parliamentary grants. The Bill proposes to give them a sum which is estimated at about 8000l. a year, or 25 per cent., more than they now get; to remove the whole of their payment from public moneys from the annual estimates to the Consolidated Fund; to settle this sum of 40,000l. on them “in full discharge of all claims past, present, and future,” and to cut them adrift. They now get really about 28,000l. annually, the other 4000l. going to two institutions—the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, and the Botanic Garden there, which are in future to be handed over to the University of Edinburgh and to be maintained by it out of the portion of the 40,000l. to be allocated to it. The allocation of this sum as between the Universities is to be made once and for ever by a new Executive Commission, with whose judgment, except in the form of a somewhat complicated and expensive appeal to Her Majesty in Council and the usual formal laying of their ordinances on the table of Parliament, the State will not farther concern itself.
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The Scotch Universities Bill . Nature 27, 573–574 (1883). https://doi.org/10.1038/027573a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/027573a0