1. A lecturership shall henceforth be established and maintained in the University of Oxford to be called the Herbert Spencer Lecturership, and the lecturer to be appointed shall be called the Herbert Spencer Lecturer.
2. The sum of £1,000 Victoria Government Stock, and the stocks, funds, and securities for the time representing the same, and any additions made thereto by accumulation or otherwise, shall form a fund, to be called the Herbert Spencer Lecturership Fund.
3. The capital of the fund shall be invested in the name of the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of Oxford, hereinafter referred to as ‘The University’, in government securities or in other securities in which trustees are by law allowed to invest trust money, with power for the University from time to time to vary such securities for others of a like nature.
4. The administration of the fund, and the application of its income, shall be the responsibility of the Board of the Faculty of Philosophy.
5. Each lecturer shall deliver to the Vice-Chancellor his or her lecture or a verified copy thereof, which shall be retained in the Bodleian Library.
6. The Vice-Chancellor may arrange with individual lecturers for the printing and publication of their lectures in some form within two years of their delivery, and from time to time as part of a collected volume of Herbert Spencer lectures; and shall have power, in consultation with the board of management, to apply, if necessary, surplus income of the fund towards the cost of such separate or collective publication.
7. The board of management shall have power, at its discretion, to suspend the annual delivery of the Herbert Spencer Lecture until sufficient income shall have accumulated for the financing, in its place, of a course of lectures to be delivered by one or more Herbert Spencer Lecturers, or of a conference or colloquium in memory of Herbert Spencer.
8. Any surplus income of the fund shall either be invested or applied from time to time in manner hereinbefore authorised or shall be applied in such other way consistent with the object of the founder, as may be determined by the board of management.
9. If at any future time it shall appear to the board of management that the founder’s intention (which is to devote an endowment to the honour of the name of Herbert Spencer) can be better carried out by the establishment of a prize to be called the Herbert Spencer Prize, the board of management shall have power, subject to the founder’s consent during his lifetime, to establish a Herbert Spencer Prize in lieu of the lecturership.
10. In the event of this power being exercised, the Herbert Spencer Prize shall be awarded to members of the University under regulations to be made by the board of management, provided that the prize shall be awarded for the encouragement of research in Philosophy or Science, and that the successful competitor shall be required to expend the money value of the prize in the purchase of books or apparatus, or in travel for the purpose of research.
11. It shall be lawful for the board of management, if it thinks fit, to arrange for the printing and publication of any dissertation or report of research for which a Herbert Spencer Prize shall have been awarded, and the rules hereinbefore made respecting the printing and publication of Herbert Spencer Lectures shall apply so far as may be practicable to any such dissertation or report.
12. This decree shall not be altered during the lifetime of the founder without his consent, but, after the lifetime of the founder, Council shall have full power to alter it from time to time, provided that the Foundation shall always bear the title of the Herbert Spencer Foundation, and that its main object, namely, the perpetuation of the memory of Herbert Spencer, shall be kept in view.
