Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/484

1886.—Rt. Hon, Mountstuart Elphinstone Grant Duff.

have to be made and extended, irrigation works constructed, agricultural and manufacturing products stimulated, and facilities provided for exporting the produce of the country. All efforts in this direction will, I doubt not, have your sympathy and support.

Whatever your future lot may be, do not be unmindful that reputation of the University, no less than your own and that of your relatives and friends, is involved in your behaviour. Be careful to do nothing tending to tarnish that reputation or to lower the good name which you have hitherto maintained. It is not in the ordinary course of events likely that you can all attain to eminence or distinction, but it is within the power of all of you to be useful, faithful and trustworthy in your respective callings in life.

 

Ladies and Gentlemen,—My first duty is to congratulate upon their degrees those students who have just been admitted to them, and to express a hope that they will keep the promises which they have this day made.

My second duty is, in accordance with custom, to address some observations to them and to this assembly. I have, however, a very great deal to say. It is the only opportunity I have had, or shall have, before I bid farewell to India, of directly addressing a class which, although at present far from numerous, only 46 out of a million* in the population of this, the most educated of the Presidencies, is growing, and ought steadily to grow, in importance,—a class which nothing but mistakes on its own part, aided by amentia and dementia in some other quarters, can prevent being an instrument of infinite good to Southern India.

Having then a very great deal to say, I cannot possibly put it into the brief limits of an address, to which even the most indulgent of you could listen on a hot March afternoon.

I will accordingly merely read a paragraph or two for form's sake, and let my reflections find their way to you, not by the ear, but by the eye. 