t every
part of Europe arises principally, first, from the large
salaries which in some universities are given to professors,
and which render them altogether independent of their
diligence and success in their professions; and secondly,
from the great number of students who, in order to get
degrees or to be admitted to exercise certain professions,
or who, for the sake of bursaries, exhibitions,
scholarships, fellowships, etc., are obliged to resort to
certain societies of this kind, whether the instructions
which they are likely to receive there are or are not worth
the receiving. All these different cases of negligence and
corruption no doubt take place in some degree in all our
Scotch universities. In the best of them, however, these
cases take place in a much less degree than in the greater
part of other considerable societies of the same kind; and I
look upon this circumstance as the real cause of their
present excellence. In the Medical College of Edinburgh in
particular the salaries of the professors are insignificant.
There are few or no bursaries or exhibitions, and their
monopoly of degrees is broken in upon by all other
universities, foreign and domestic. I require no other
explication of its present acknowledged superiority over
every other society of the same kind in Europe.

To sign a certificate in favour of any man whom we know
little or nothing about is most certainly a practice which
cannot be strictly vindicated. It is a practice, however,
which from mere good-nature and without interest of any kind
the most scrupulous men in the world are sometimes guilty
of. I certainly do not mean to defend it. Bating the
unhandsomeness of the practice, however, I would ask in what
manner does the public suffer by it? The title of Doctor,
such as it is, you will say, gives some credit and authority
to the man upon whom it is bestowed; it extends his practice
and consequently his field for doing mischief; it is not
improbable too that it may increase his presumption and
consequently his disposition to do mischief. That a degree
injudiciously conferred may sometimes have some little
effect of this kind it would surely be absurd to deny, but
that this effect should be very considerable I cannot bring
myself to believ