al establishments under the immediate
protection of the Pope, a degree from one of them gave all
over Christendom very nearly the same privileges which a
degree from any other could have given; and the respect
which is to this day paid to foreign degrees, even in
Protestant countries, must be considered as a remnant of
Popery. The facility of obtaining degrees, particularly in
physic, from those poor universities had two effects, both
extremely advantageous to the public, but extremely
disagreeable to graduates of other universities whose
degrees had cost them much time and expense. First, it
multiplied very much the number of doctors, and thereby no
doubt sunk their fees, or at least hindered them from rising
so very high as they otherwise would have done. Had the
universities of Oxford and Cambridge been able to maintain
themselves in the exclusive privilege of graduating all the
doctors who could practise in England, the price of feeling
the pulse might by this time have risen from two and three
guineas, the price which it has now happily arrived at, to
double or triple that sum; and English physicians might, and
probably would, have been at the same time the most ignorant
and quackish in the world. Secondly, it reduced a good deal
the rank and dignity of a doctor, but if the physician was a
man of sense and science it would not surely prevent his
being respected and employed as a man of sense and science.
If he was neither the one nor the other, indeed, his
doctorship would no doubt avail him the less. But ought it
in this case to avail him at all? Had the hopeful project of
the rich and great universities succeeded, there would have
been no occasion for sense or science. To have been a
doctor would alone have been sufficient to give any man
rank, dignity, and fortune enough. That in every profession
the fortune of every individual should depend as much as
possible upon his merit and as little as possible upon his
privilege is certainly for the interest of the public. It is
even for the interest of every particular profession, which
can never so effectually support the general merit and real
honour of the greater part of those who exercise it, as by
resting on such liberal principles. Those principles are
even most effectu