Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/411



swell and the country pine;" the men whom he calls "the left hands of Courts, persons who are full of nimble and sinister tricks and shifts, whereby they pervert the plain and direct courses of events, and bring justice into oblique lines and labyrinths," and, lastly, "the poller and exacter of fees, which justifies the common resemblance of the Courts to the bush, whereunto while the sheep flies for defence in weather, he is sure to lose part of the fleece." Much has been done of late years to improve the administration of justice in this country, but it is probable that some of the evils depicted by Bacon have not disappeared in the Mofussil Courts. I trust that some of you will become the right hands of those Courts, and that if, in course of time, you are called to higher functions, and have to preside over Courts of your own, you will emulate the example of some of your predecessors, and show that the natives of this country are capable of filling with credit posts which demand the exercise of the highest faculties.

I must, however, remind you that the main function of Universities is not to train men to become physicians, or engineers, or lawyers, but to discipline the whole moral and intellectual being. You all graduated in Arts before you were permitted to graduate in Law, and although a somewhat lower test in Arts is accepted at present as a preliminary condition for graduating in Medicine and Civil Engineering, the same principle is recognized in all the professional degrees. Every profession has a tendency to narrow the mind, and if a physician, a lawyer, or an engineer allows himself to be wholly immersed in the details of his calling, and does not, from time to time, visit those higher regions in which it is permitted to the living to he may rise to eminence and be a valuable member of society, but the absence of that elevating and ennobling culture which it is the peculiar province of literature to bestow will leave its stamp on him. In one respect the training of this University is less favourable to general culture than that of any other University in India, or perhaps in the world. All other Universities require an acquaintance with at least One classical language. This is not essential to a Madras degree. You have, however, all acquired the key to One of the noblest literatures in the world. The master-minds of England, her poets, her philosophers, her orators, her historians, will, if you summon them, take up their abode with you. Their most