Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/167

 Louis the XV by that prolific genius St. Pierre. He communicated his ideas to many of the Governments of Europe, whose Statesmen, however, received them with but an academic approval. Leibnitz, who wielded at that time an almost imperial sceptre in the world of thought, replied to the humbler philosopher's claim for approval and support in a half-cheering and yet half-jeering tone : "I trust, my good friend, you will live to see your noble plans carried out," and to another friend he wrote: "In one place I have seen the proclamation Pax perpetua, but that was over a cemetery. Till people reach that last retreat they still must go on fighting." Yet the plans and visions of the philanthropic speculation though hitherto it has been found impossible to give them any direct effect in the international concerns of Europe, have not been fruitless, as great and humane ideas seldom are fruitless. In several ways they have permeated the minds of Statesmen and the miseries of wars which have occurred in more recent times have been alleviated very much by the ideas which were put forward by the thinkers of two centuries or more ago. I feel certain that as he recollects the events of his active life, when he approaches the end of his distinguished career. Lord Ripon will look back upon no part, no transaction in this career with greater satisfaction than on the part he took in the settling of the Treaty of Washington. For many of his acts and much of his work he will occupy a distinguished place in the history of his country and of this great dependency; but with the Treaty of Washington he takes a high and distinguished position, one never to be lost, in the history of the progress of mankind. That progress, gentlemen, as we must hope, must involve at no very distant stage a universal or at any rate far more widely extended peace than has hitherto been known. As a messenger of peace, as a negotiator of a great international arrangement, Lord Ripon may congratulate himself on the position he has won in history.

With, these antecedents, and with these claims to public respect and confidence, Lord Ripon accepted in 1880 the post of Viceroy in India. He landed here at the end of May 1880. You will all remember who were here at that time, that it was the end of a somewhat troubled and depressing period. We had had during the preceding years a war which could hardly be pronounced aught else but inglorious in spite of some brilliant episodes. We had incurred a great increase of burdens consequent on the war, and there was a generally spread feeling of unrest and craving for some new departure in politics, some