Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/49

 gratification with which I have listened to the address which you have just read, following upon the Registrar's Report of the steady and most satisfactory progress which has been observable in the proceedings of this University during the past as in every preceding year since its foundation. I cannot but feel that you have estimated the share I have personally had in promoting the success of the University more favourably than I deserve, but I prize that estimate because I feel assured that the favourable view you have taken of what I have done while Governor of this Presidency is founded not on mere personal partiality, but on sympathy with the great objects we all of us have had in view.

I have endeavoured ever since I came to this Government to promote, as far as lay in my power, the efficiency and independence of this University, because I believe that it contains the germ of some of the most valuable gifts which England could bestow upon India. You have spoken of the "forbearance" which, as head of the "Political Government," I have exhibited towards the University, and you do me no more than justice in inferring that what you term "forbearance" has not been the result of lukewarmness or indifference but of a clear conviction that the Political Government of this country could hardly commit a greater mistake than by attempting to convert the University into a "mere office or department of the State." I have ever felt most strongly the importance of those truths which you have so well expressed in your address that any loss of dignity or independence in the University involves also a loss of the highest kind of efficiency. During all the years that I have passed in this country I have felt a continually deepening conviction that, whatever absolute power may do to impress any particular image on the material with which it works, it cannot create any principle of life in institutions or communities, and that the vital force which lives, and grows, and has the germ of further life and further growth, can only result from true natural organization, and is infinitely more potent and valuable than any dead image which external power can impress. It has been the object of this Government to draw to the Senate of this University all the independent thought and educated ability which is within our reach, and we firmly believe that no man worthy to be a Fellow of this University would consent to serve as a mere nominee of Government, bound in any way to prefer the behests of that Government to the dictates of his own conscience