Page:A Catalogue of Graduates who have Proceeded to Degrees in the University of Dublin, vol. 2.djvu/17

INTRODUCTION. xi College could act with the Senate of the University in relation to the conferring of Degrees, without prejudice to the distinct character and constitution of the two corporate bodies of the College and the University. So far the intention is manifest that the University should be a distinct but not an independent body. With its appro- priate head, its succession of Doctors and Masters, its perpetuity of privilege, its proper Officers, its Senate, its Professors and Schools, and its leges Academise, it is (as it seems to me) a distinct incorporation. The late Lord Chancellor Blackburne, on the i ith December, A. D. 1858, when he was Vice-Chancellor of the University, communicated to the Senate a formal and deliberate opinion, in which he observed that " through the agency of the Chancellor or Vice-Chancellor, and other proper officers, for whose per- petual appointment the Crown had made ample provision, the power to grant Degrees was insured to continue for all time. The state of things " (he said) " that had continued for above 250 years was in exact conformity with the intention these provisions indicate. That, in addition to these and other consi- derations of a similar kind, it was to be kept in mind that the Legislature and the Crown, from the earliest period down to the time of the last Charter (21 Vict.), had recognised and treated the University as a body corporate ; but what was directly to the purpose was, that the Charter of the Queen recognises and perpetuates all the functions and duties of the University, and its means of exercising them in their full integrity." The authority of so eminent a Judge, whose attention had been specially directed to this subject, when he was Vice- Chancellor of the University, not only before but after the granting of the Letters Patent of 21 Vict., naturally led me at the time to accept this exposition as final. But as the learned author of the introduction to the Book of Graduates, published A.D. 1869, propounded a view of this subject which not only was at variance with this opinion of the late Vice-Chancellor of VOL. II. c