undertake it; but when they came to look at certain figures, and the deductions that lay in those figures, they felt that it would be idle to think that Parliament could abstain from interfering, or that the Government could conscientiously recommend Parliament to do so.
The figures in question, hostile figures, as he calls them, but hostile he candidly avows because the view taken of them is superficial, are supposed to have a bearing on the clause to which reference had been made earlier in Lord Salisbury's speech, and which occurs towards the end of the Duke of Cleveland's Commission's report.
There is one point (that report runs) brought prominently out in the result of this enquiry, the great disparity between the property and income of the several colleges and the numbers of the members. When that number is small, the expense of the staff and establishment is necessarily large in proportion. We do not however consider that it lies within the scope of the commission entrusted to us to enter further upon this subject.
What the Commissioners meant by the number of its members does not clearly appear. It is possible that they meant Undergraduate members (as Lord Salisbury seems to think), but perhaps the Professors who are endowed from college revenues, the students who frequent the libraries, the researchers whose studies may be forwarded by grants from these revenues, the University which may be helped from the same source, may have something to say as to the determination of the utility of the colleges by the number of Undergraduates they attract to themselves.
