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This was the solution proposed and adopted by two eminent Chancellors, and carried into effect for thirty years. During the years 1858-1863 the average revenue was L7,460 8s. 2-3/4d. Of this sum the Master, Brethren, and Sisters absorbed with their buildings L4,102 8s. 2-3/4d.; the management expenses Were L909 5s. 6d.; the chapel cost L211 17s. 11d., sundries amounted to L141 6s. 10-3/4 d.; and the useful portion of the expenditure was represented by the sum of L554 9s. 7-1/2 d. Absolute uselessness--for the chapel was by no means wanted--is represented by L6,904, and usefulness by L554--a proportion of very nearly 12-1/2:1. Yet another opportunity occurred of dealing rationally with this large property. In the year 1871 a Royal Commission was appointed to examine 'into several matters relative to the Royal Hospital of St. Katherine near the Tower.' The question might again have been raised how best to apply the large revenues for the general good. The Commissioners had before them quite clearly the way in which the seven thousand and odd pounds a year was being spent; they could arrive as easily as ourselves at the proportion above set forth, viz.: Waste : usefulness :: 12-1/2 : 1. They threw away this opportunity; they could not tear away the ecclesiastical rags with which the new foundation of 1827--the mock St. Katherine's--has been wrapped in imitation of the old. In an age when the universities have been secularized, when the Fellows of colleges are no longer required to be in Orders, when every useless old charity is being reformed, and every endowment reconsidered with a view to making it useful to the living as, under former conditions, it was to the dead, they actually proposed to increase the uselessness and the waste by adding a fourth Brother (which has not been done), and raising the stipends of Brothers and Sisters. They also recommended the establishment of an upper school, with 'foundation boarders.' Considering that the upper and middle classes have already appropriated to their own use almost every educational endowment in the country, this proposition seems too ridiculous. The whole Report is indeed a marvellous illustration of the tenacity of old prejudices. Yet it did one good thing; it recommended that the accounts of the Hospital should be submitted every year to the Charity Commissioners, thus distinctly recognising the fact that the new foundation is not an ecclesiastical institut
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