The undergraduate population is decidedly conservative, as the university has always been. At the present moment both sides of the fiscal controversy are represented, the distinguished Cambridge economist Dr. Cunningham advocating tariff reform, while the Professor of Political Economy is a free-trader.
[Sidenote: The university settlement in Camberwell.]
The "slumming" movement made an early appeal to the younger members of the university. Their present work in south London was begun over twenty years ago, and "Cambridge House" has existed for ten years in a district which has been called "the largest area of unbroken poverty in any European city." The workers are all laymen, 11 out of the 17 colleges being represented by resident Cambridge men, while an undergraduate secretary in every college assists in furthering the movement.
We saw at the beginning of this chapter that the aspect of the university had changed with the marriage of fellows, tutors, and officials; and in time this factor must greatly modify the conditions of life at our universities. Both of these are now overrun with children's schools, and there can be little doubt that all the boys (and many of the girls) will go to college. The natural profession for many of these, owing to the father's influence with his college and the son's inherited inclinations, will be academic. It would certainly not be to the advantage of our seats of learning if they became in this sense close corporations. It is obvious that this would mean less movement of ideas and less opportunity for the outside world to affect the university; and if a large number not only of the teachers but of the scholars belonged to such a caste as this, if the profession of teaching were handed down from father to son, the situation would not be unlike that which threatened Europe when Gregory VII. interposed and made the Christian world his executor in enforcing clerical celibacy. A new tuitional field would be open to the young graduate in the numerous schools of Cambridge and Oxford, but this would only accentuate the vicious circle of an education which might come to suggest the ecclesiastical seminary rather than the English university. Perhaps, too, a young man loses more than half the social and worldly advantages of a college life if when