Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/210

 We have this year, as in past years, had many expressions of the general confidence of the great community, in which we are placed, in this institution. To them it is, as it ought to be, the pillar of the people's hope and the centre of this little world's desire. Wherever the resolution exists in the breast of a cultivated member of our community to connect his name with some benefit to his fellow-countrymen, we find now that as a rule he resorts to this University, and we have some bounty, some blessing to acknowledge in the speeches which are annually delivered from this place. This year has been no exception to that rule, or if an exception, it is an exception which is far from being a disappointing one. To begin with, an endowment was presented to the University in honour of the late Mr. James Greaves, a gentleman who, after carrying on the mill industry with very great success, devoted himself in his later years a good deal to the advancement of education in the place where he acquired fortune, and whose memory is now rightly preserved by those who witnessed his benevolence and shared his toils, in the institution of a scholarship in this University. Then there was another great friend of the natives of this country in the days when they needed friends more than they do now. He also has passed away from active life, not from life wholely, but merely into the autumn of retirement in which, I hope, he will long continue his benevolent existence —I mean Colonel French—the late chairman of the B. B.& C. I. Railway Company. A subscription having been raised in his honour, a scholarship has been founded in this University. Colonel French, it may interest you to know, gentlemen of the Senate, felt as long ago as 1828 or 1829 so strong an interest in the then infant institution, the Elphinstone Institution, which had not at that time been divided into a school and a college, that being an Adjutant to a regiment he brought his moral influence to bear upon it, and obtained all round from the men a day's pay for that institution. That is an example which in our days might be followed with great advantage by many Adjutants or even Colonels of regiments. Then we have further a scholarship founded in honour of Rao Bahadur Lukshman Jagannath, an eminent administrator of the Native State of Baroda. These have been realised some little time ago. But yesterday another additional bounty was placed in my hands, which gave me no little pleasure, and which will give you, too, no little pleasure to hear. A fund has been raised to commemorate the services rendered to this University especially, and in other departments of public life, by our distinguished fellow-