Page:University of Calcutta Convocation Addresses Vol 3 (1899-1906).djvu/13

 though I have been here long enough to find out that everything is not perfect, I have not been here long enough to dogmatise as to how perfection may be attained. Perhaps in succeeding years I may be able to express opinions which will be less presumptuous than they would be at the present time. On the whole, I believe the present system to be faulty, but not rotten, and I feel that cautious reform, and not wholesale reconstruction, should probably be the motto of our action. There is one consideration, however, by which I am forcibly impressed. I find myself the Chancellor of this University in virtue of my office as Viceroy of India, and I draw from this fact the not unnatural conclusion that the Government of India assumes some direct responsibility, not merely for this University, the functions of which, I am informed, extend over the Central Provinces, Burma, Assam, and Ceylon, as well as Bengal, but also over the entire system of which this University is the exemplar and head. At the same time I am not certain that the Supreme Government applies as close an attention to, or exercises as genuine a supervision over, education as it might do. There is no separate Educational Department in the Government of India, as we have in England, with an organisation and a staff of its own. There is no official charged