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now publicly entered, that you will maintain the high character for which the graduates of this University have, as a body, been distinguished, and that you will remember that one of the duties which yon owe to your countrymen is that of influencing thought. If I were called on to name the Hindoo whose career has made the deepest impression on my mind as exemplifying the beneficial effects of European culture, I should have no hesitation in fixing on one who lived at a period in which there were no Indian Universities, who never sat on the bench of a High Court or at a Council Board, whose only title was one which the East India Company refused to acknowledge, whose life is unnoticed in the histories which are read in our Colleges and Schools, and whose memory has received but scanty honor at the hands of his countrymen. In speaking of Rajah Rammohun Roy, I do not forget that half of those now present think that he went too far, and that the other half regret that he did not go farther. We are not called on here to consider how far he may have been right in his opinions, but men of all creeds may agree that in his earnest and fearless pursuit of truth, in the modesty and simplicity of his character, in the purity and benevolence of his life, and in the high intellectual powers which he brought to bear on his self-imposed task, the great Hindoo Reformer is entitled to no mean place in the history of his age and country.

 

My Lord Duke, Mr. Vice-Chancellor and Gentlemen,—

It is customary to close this interesting Convocation at the Madras University with an address from one of its Fellows, and we owe it to the practical sagacity of our most noble and distinguished Chancellor, of which since his advent to power over us we have had so many examples, that on this occasion it is delivered by a Physician. You can well believe me when I say that when I remembered the many eloquent orations that have been heard on those occasions, especially from members of the Bar, whose vocation it is to speak, and speak well, I might, and did shrink from accepting the role of Public Orator. Yet when the reason of the choice was made plain to me, that each profession, especially of those engaged in teaching the youths of this country, should, in turn, say what it had to say on Education, — given as it were its "raison d'etre," I hesitated no longer. 