4
in the question, apparently considering it as one merely professional, and as best understood by the Faculties to which it respectively applies; and may passively allow the rash hands of speculative innovators to level the venerable fabrics of our Almae Matres.
It may be well, therefore, to expend a few moments in investigating the nature of those abuses which are assumed to exist, and to contemplate the consequences of the remedies by which it is proposed to remove them;—perhaps it may be found, that, as in some other points of certain professional practice, the indications of cure are accurately defined, while the nature of the disease is purely conjectural.
It would, of course, be unfair to impute personal or selfish bias to these innovators—to insinuate that some of them, having perhaps little interest in upholding existing establishments, or possibly the contrary, may be disposed to abet academical change and revolution—that others, having passed the ordeal of graduation, reposing on the velvet of comfortable practice, and enjoying a liferent lease of high places, may be desirous to diminish the facilities of future rivals, and anticipate a wealthy and sinecure old age, unruffled by collision with numerous, energetic, and able competitors—and that, hence, they insist on multiplying the penances of candidates for academical honours, roughening the sackcloth of professional study,
