Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/47

 circumstances,—especially in India where it is often felt that all else except the Government is uncertain and fluctuating—there cannot but be a tendency for a University to lose caste, as it were, and to come to be regarded as a mere office or department of the State. What is to be apprehended from this tendency is not only a loss of dignity to the University itself, but also a loss of the highest kind of efficiency in its working.

For, the mission of a University in a country like this, is nothing else than to create an intellectual and vital soul among the people; and there can be no question whether this mission is likely best to be fulfilled by persons feeling themselves nominated merely to carry out the views of a Government, or by the free and enthusiastic action of men feeling responsible to themselves for the good or bad success of the University.

It is under jealous and centralizing administrations, that a University like ours tends to lose its liberty. But your Excellency's administration has ever been characterized by the most large and liberal sentiments. And these sentiments you have especially manifested towards us. You have increased our academical body by the admission to it of persons from almost all sections of the community. You have accorded personal sympathy and public sanction to our acts. You have encouraged us to settle in our own assemblies all questions falling within our province.

For this faith and trust in us, we beg. Sir, especially to thank you. Knowing the interest you have felt in our welfare and success, we can well imagine the possibility of doubts arising in your Excellency's mind as to that policy of strict and severe examinations which we have always adhered to, and by which we have kept down the number of our Matriculations and Degrees to a small fraction of those exhibited by the sister Universities of Calcutta and Madras. But if such doubts have arisen, your Excellency has never given expression to them. On the contrary, you have again and again approved our course, and have seemed fully to share our belief, that our work if slowly advancing, has a solid foundation; and that it is of more importance to create a high standard of scholarship in this country, than to multiply, ever so much, the number of persons possessing nominal distinctions at the hands of a University.

While leaving our Examination standards, as an academical matter, to be settled academically, your Excellency has never