Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/318

 to no mean praise. We bid you press on and repeat the fight; seek to strengthen the weak places, and to supply the deficiencies which the results of your examination have pointed out, and renew another year, with fresh hope, and more enlarged knowledge, the struggle for a degree.

To those who have been unsuccessful candidates for a degree in Law, we admit that the presence at the Mofussil Bar of even such candidates as have failed this year, would effect an improvement in the order of Pleaders. We do not under-estimate the great importance of throwing practitioners with more legal acquirements and more general education into the ranks of our Provincial Pleaders; but as Examiners and members of the Senate, we have felt that even that object ought to be sacrificed to the paramount expediency of not lowering the standard or the value of the degree of Bachelor of Law.

The Bachelors of Law must remember that they have taken upon themselves heavy responsibilities. The Advocate not only holds himself out as of ability to protect his client's interests by advice and advocacy, but it is in no small degree to the Advocates who are Bachelors of Laws, that the State and the Profession must look for the elevation of the character of the Native Bar, and that better administration of public justice, which is one of the most important consequences of such an elevation.

Let every Advocate set his face against, strive with all his might and main against, the hydra-headed crime of perjury.

I am far from imputing to every individual Native a want of truthfulness in all his ordinary dealings with his fellow-men. We know too little of Native society to justify any so sweeping conclusion; and indeed, society could not hold together under such conditions. Truth, as Bentham has well remarked, is easier and more natural to man than falsehood.

I believe that the success that attended perjury before the East India Company's Courts of Justice has fostered its growth, and there is not wanting plenty of high reliable English authority for asserting, that the simplicity and truthfulness of Native character has degenerated in consequence of the introduction of our tribunals and institutions. But whatever the cause, the fact remains, that the records of our Courts of Justice contain little better than one long catalogue of forgery and perjury.

It is to education that we must look for the final eradication