Copy of a letter to George Aitchison, Esq. College Bailie, containing some remarks on a communication from the Senatus Academicus to the Patrons of the University of Edinburgh / [John Thomson].

  • Thomson, John, 1765-1846.
Date:
[1831]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Copy of a letter to George Aitchison, Esq. College Bailie, containing some remarks on a communication from the Senatus Academicus to the Patrons of the University of Edinburgh / [John Thomson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    I think it due, likewise, to the two Administrations from which I have had the honour to receive Commissions as a Professor in the University, to state, that, in creating these professorships without consulting the Town-Council or the Senatus, they have not deviated from the practice pursued on similar occasions by other Administrations. I was in¬ formed by the late Professor Dalzel, in 1806, that no re¬ ference to the Town-Council or the Senatus was made by Lord Loughborough, when he procured for Dr Hugh Blair a commission to be Begius Professor of Rhetoric, nor by the late Lord Melville, when Dr Robert Blair re¬ ceived a commission to be Regius Professor of Astronomy; and the records of the University will shew, whether any 1 emonstrances similar to those of which I have unhappily been twice the subject, were made by the Senatus Acade- micus upon these occasions. It would be easy, were it ne- cessaiy, to adduce, from the history of other Universities in Scotland, additional examples of the creation of Profes¬ sorships by the Crown, without any previous reference being made to the existing professors. There are other points in the Communication of the Se¬ natus upon which I do not feel myself called on to express any opinion; as, whether the Senatus is degraded by any regulations respecting the Course of study required of Can¬ didates for Medical Degrees proceeding from without its own walls; whether the disagreement between the Town Council and the Senatus, which led to the late long and expensive litigation between these two Bodies, was, as the Senatus assert, only on a point of comparatively little im-