Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/129

114 NINETEENTH CONVOCATION. .

Mr. Vice-Chancellor and Gentlemen, Members of the Senate, Graduates and Under-Graduates of the University,—Since I last addressed you from the Chancellor's Chair on the 2nd February 1878, some changes have occurred in the Vice-Chancellorship. You have had to regret the departure of Mr. James Gibbs, and the consequent loss of that assistance, which comprehensive intelligence, judicious considerateness, and lengthened experience, were so well able to afford. But in his successor, Mr. Raymond West, we have secured for you an executive chief, eminent by reason of his varied culture and liberal sympathies. During his absence, again, I have, with the concurrence of my colleagues, and, as we hope, with the approbation of the University, nominated Dr. Hunter to be Vice-Chancellor, the head of our medical profession which is so distinguished for the attainments of its members in many studies cognate to their own department,—whereby we pay some tribute of acknowledgment to that cultivation of physical science and to that technical education which are fast gaining ground amongst us.

The object of my last address, delivered in February 1878, was to bespeak the continued, even the augmented, attention of the University to certain principles which, as we believe, command the general assent of its members; namely, the maintenance and development of our higher education in arts, including philosophy, logic, history, law, political economy, literature; the better regulating and systematizing of education in natural and physical science, with a further view to the promotion of that technical instruction which forms, year by year, a larger and larger part of the public education amongst the most advanced nations; and lastly, the reverent study of that moral philosophy which, as being the science of human duty, must be common to the pursuits of all students in all departments of knowledge. Experience has recently shown, and doubtless in future will continue to show, that these principles need to be constantly inculcated, because, notwithstanding their manifest importance, and despite all our care, it is but too often seen that they are imperfectly observed. Without repeating on this occasion anything which I said on these three main principles in my last address, I will now offer some additional remarks on each of them.