Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/314

Rh wholly for yourselves. You must help to scatter, with a profuse hand, the intellectual wealth you have won. You must not take the miser for your pattern, who hoards and never scatters, nor must it be sufficient for you to keep your retainers in comfort and the destitute from starvation; of your wealth you must scatter to the good and to the evil, denying yourselves that others may abound.

Last, but not least, of the knightly virtue, was Justice. Without this no knight could be complete, he must hate a wrong, and love the right, and defend only that which was just. There are amongst you those who have armed yourselves with law, as your weapon. You are champions of Truth and must not forget the virtue of Justice; without it you are no true knights. Let the true knight only wield so dangerous a weapon. Rightly are those who take it in their hands, more narrowly watched, and more severely judged than others, if in the smallest degree they forget their honor. A chosen band of knighthood, admitted by a special initiation, their honor is their best possession. One mean device, one coward's trick, one unfair blow, and the whole brotherhood of these Knights Templars is disgraced. They live to battle with oppression and with wrong.

Recreant knights will you be; ten times scorned in the halls of your special brotherhood, if you use your weapon to give triumph to wrong doing; if you wield the sharp edge of the law, to obtain for yourselves, advantages which are not yours of right,—or if for base gain, as a hireling freebooter, you seek for others, possessions to which they are not entitled. Truth calls to you as her champions, guard your honor unsullied in its purity; but especially exercise justice. Truth needs your aid. It is yours to cleave the black armour, within which chicanery and perjury and treachery have encased themselves. It is yours to strip them of their false devices and on the dunghill of their lying inventions, to strike off the spurs of these false and base born knights.

Knights Bachelors, you are invested this day, brace yourselves for the conflict, the lists are ready, the champions of Error have sounded the defiance, I call upon you to go forth as true Knights, endowed with valour and loyalty and courtesy, and munificence and justice. Give them a fall on behalf of your mistress, fear not their blows; onward! try your new armour! try the mettle of your weapons ; and as the old enemies of Truth bite the dust, your victory is secured. You shall come again to the spot where you obtained the favours of your mistress, and in the sunshine of her smiles shall you receive the prize of the