Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/458

 Graduates in Civil Engineering,—

The profession to which you belong is of considerable importance to an agricultural community like the Hindus. Though I cannot speak to you with any pretension to authority on matters professional^ still I may be allowed to say that there are several districts in this Presidency which owe their prosperity to important irrigation works and to their maintenance in good repair. Let those works which you may construct be cheap and durable, and try, as far as your opportunities allow, to suggest schemes for developing the resources of the country ; and to check peculation and fraud. Let me entreat you not to despise, in the exercise of your profession, whatever is good and beautiful in the ancient architecture of the country. Remember that you represent a profession which presents to the public view the triumphs which Art gains over Nature, and which often strike the imagination and excite admiration, and that your career in life should, therefore, some time or other, leave a mark on your country worthy of the profession to which you belong.

Graduates in Law, —

The profession which you have chosen is one of the most honorable, but at the same time you should not forget that it is a profession crowded with men of merit, that competition is very keen and professional success difficult to secure without years of close application to study, and a careful cultivation of the habit of speaking with simplicity, readiness and precision. You should remember, if you desire to rise to professional eminence, that law is both a science and an art, and that your success, whether at the bar or on the bench, will depend on the clearness with which you understand the principles of the science, and on the readiness with which you will pass through a complicated mass of facts, in the midst of animated and often eloquent addresses, taking in as it were by intuition each fact, referring it to its appropriate principle, and estimating its legal value within a given time. The study of law, it has been well said, is in its higher sense, the study of the philosophy of social life. The art you have to practise is one of the noblest ; its object is the protection of human interest in all the relations of life, and the methods by which rules of decision are deduced must satisfy at once the requirements of legal science and of substantial justice. In the practice of this art, you should also remember that you owe special obligations to the cause of truth and justicor Those of you who may enter the bar ought never to forget that the knowledge you