Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/286

 what you have done for law and literature and in general advancement in your private councils and your public address is proved by its conferring the highest honour in its gift on you to-day and amongst all those distinctions which you have received from the hands of Her Majesty and from other learned institutions, I doubt not you will in your own appreciation give a prominent place to this last, which comes from the University with which you have been so long connected. The unfortunate lot has fallen to myself alone of all Governors of Bombay to deliver as Chancellor two of those valedictory addresses. Unfortunate in that during my tenure of office the State has lost the services of two men of such distinguished attainments and public careers so eminent that this University has accorded them the highest honour it is in its power to give; and my regret is by no means selfish, for whilst I feel personally these breaks in friendships, of no long existence truly but still not the less sincere, I deplore still more that this Presidency of Bombay loses at such a short interval public servants who have set such high examples as have Professor Wordsworth and Sir Raymond West. But if we have reason to deplore your departure we have much to congratulate ourselves upon. It is impossible for a public servant to live five-and-thirty years in this country passing through the various grades of the service to the highest position, and through all that time keeping an unswerving gaze on the path of probity, virtue, assiduity and impartiality — without good effects resulting from such a career. There are times in the history of peoples when it is well that the careers of public servants should illustrate for their instruction the homely adage that honesty is the best policy. Sir Francis Bacon prefaced his maxims of the Law with these noble words : "I hold every man a debtor to his profession : from which as men of course do seek to receive countenance and profit; so ought they of duty to endeavour by way of amends to be a help and ornament thereunto." You can leave us. Sir Raymond West, convinced that the universal feeling is that, even where you have not secured agreement with your views, you aimed at this or that object of policy, not because it suited your ambition, but, maintaining an attitude of pure single-mindedness because in your opinion it was the right. By following that undeviating course you have been a help and an ornament to the service you are about to leave. I can conceive no higher aim than yours has been : I can imagine no prouder epitaph on the career of public servant.