statute made by any such founder, whereby the grant or election of the governor or ruler with the assent of the most part of such corporation should be in any wise hindered by any one or more being the lesser number
(contrary to the common law), shall be void.The corporation consists of a head or master, fellows, and scholars. Students, not being on the foundation, residing in the college, are not considered to be members of the corporation. The governing body in all cases is the head and fellows.
It is considered essential to corporations of an ecclesiastical or educational character that they should have a visitor whose duty it is to see that the statutes of the founder are obeyed. The duties of this officer have been ascertained by the courts of law in a great variety of decided cases. Subject to such restrictions as may be imposed on him by the statutes of the college, his duties are generally to inter pret the statutes of the college in disputed cases, and to enforce them where they have been violated. For this pur pose he is empowered to " visit " the society usually at certain stated intervals. In questions within his jurisdic tion his judgment is conclusive, but his jurisdiction does not extend to any cases under the common laws of the country, or to trusts attached to the college. Generally the visitorship resides in the founder and his heirs unless he has otherwise appointed, and in default of him in the Crown.
The fellowships, scholarships, &c., of colleges were until a comparatively recent date subject to various restrictions. Birth in a particular county, education at a particular school, relationship to the founder, and holy orders, are amongst the most usual of the conditions giving a preferential or conclusive claim to the emoluments. Most of these restrictions have been or are being swept away. See Universities.
The colleges of the English universities are large land owners. A royal commission in 1874 reported the external income of the colleges of Oxford to be 307,369, 17s. 2d., and of Cambridge 264,256, 17s. 10
At Oxford, in addition to the colleges, there are four or five halls, which differ from colleges mainly in not being corporate bodies. Their property is held in trust for them by the university.
In England the colleges have through their tutors and lecturers supplied nearly all the teaching of the univer sities the lectures of the professors being either super numerary or merely ornamental. Of late- years colleges have combined their forces for the purpose of establishing common systems of lectures, and there has been a strong desire to reconstitute the teaching power of the universities. Commissions are now being proposed for Oxford and Cambridge, which will have to settle these and other problems of the higher education.
Most of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge are old foundations only a few dating from times posterior to the Reformation. Among recent foundations are Downing College at Cambridge, Keble College at Oxford (which is governed by a board or council of trustees), and the restora tion of Magdalen Hall at Oxford, now endowed and incorporated undar the name of Hertford College.
Among educational corporations under the same title elsewhere, Phillimore (Ecclesiastical Law) mentions King s College and University College, London, Sion College, St Bees, St David s, Lampeter, &c. The distinction between college and university is found also at St Andrews, and in the more recently founded university of Durham and tho Queen s University in Ireland.
divine, was born at the rectory of Langford Magna, near Sarura, on 12th October 1680. There is no account of his childhood and early youth ; but it is probable that, after receiving some rudimentary instruction at home, he went to one of the grammar schools at Salisbury. He entered at Pembroke College, Oxford, in July 1697 and remained there till October in tho following year, when he and his brother William became members of Balliol together. His father died in 1697, and as the family owned the advowson of Langford Magna, it was arranged, after some difficulties raised by Burnet, then bishop of Salisbury, that the benefice should be held by a clergyman until Arthur was old enough to be inducted. He was accordingly presented to the benefice in 1704, and continued in it till his death in 1732. Although a bold speculator in theology, his sermons intended for his parish show no traces of his peculiar notions, and he seems to have been faithful in the discharge of his duty. He was of ten in pecuniary difficulties, from which at last he was obliged to free himself by selling the reversion of Langford rectory to Corpus Christi College, Oxford, a misfortune which his biographer attributes to his " habits of abstruse speculation, which seem to have unfitted him for all considerations of worldly prudence." Collier s philosophical opinions took shape early in his mind. They grew out of a diligent study of the writings of Descartes and Malebranche. N"orris of Bemerton, a neighbouring clergyman, also strongly influenced him by his Essay on the Ideal World. It is remarkable that Collier makes no reference to Locke, nor shows the least sign of having any knowledge of his works. As early as 1703 Collier seems to have become convinced of the non-existence of an external world. There is among his MSS., under date January 1708, an outline of an essay in three chapters on the question whether the visible world is external or not. In 1712 he wrote two essays, which are still in manuscript, one on substance and accident, and the other termed Clavis Pkilosopkica. The work on which his philosophical reputation depends appeared in 1713, under the title Clavis Universalis, or a New Inquiry after Truth, being a Demonstration of the Non-Existence or Impossibility of an External World. It has been favourably mentioned by Reid, Stewart, and others, was frequently referred to by the Leibnitzians, and was translated into German by Professor Eschenbach in 1756. Berkeley s Principles of Knoivled je and his Theory of Vision preceded it by three and four years respectively. Although there is no evidence that they were known to Collier before the publication of his book, a passage in a letter written by him in March 1713-14 proves that he was acquainted in some measure with Berkeley s opinions at that date. In this letter and other four, which are given in Benson s Memoirs of Collier (1837), there are some further remarks in defence of his philosophical views ; but they are merely a repetition of the arguments in the Clavis. These are grounded on two presuppositions first, the utter aversion of common sense to any theory of representative perception ; and second, the opinion which Collier held in common with Berkeley, and Hume afterwards, that the difference between imagina tion and sense perception is only one of degree. The
former is the basis of the negative part of his argument ;