Alexander John Arbuthnot

“ In the matter of the elementary education of the masses, we have done little more than turn the first sods. The great lines of progress in this department of national education have still to be constructed. It has yet to be settled what machinery shall be finally adopted; whether the measures now in progress for the improvement of the indigenous schools with which the country abounds, will in the long run prove effectual, or whether for our village schools, as for our local roads, we shall be compelled, here, as elsewhere, to resort to a local cess. ”

“ The results of the examinations for degrees have not hitherto been so marked. Up to this time the degrees in Arts have been almost entirely monopolized by the Presidency College ; but the Provincial College at Combaconum bids fair to become a formidable rival at no very distant date, and if we may judge from the large number of Presidency College graduates who have received the ground-work of their education in the College on the banks of the Cauvery, it will need all the efforts of the older institution to maintain her position in the examination list. ”

“ If I were called upon to name the greatest man who has lived and died in this nineteenth century, I should select, not a great Statesman, not a great Orator, not a great General, not a great Lawyer, not a great Poet ”

“ Surely, therefore, it is the bounden duty of every man who is interested in native progress, to do what in him lies in stimulating the diffusion of sound learning through the medium of the vernacular languages, and in helping forward the creation of a pure vernacular literature. In this latter object the University has a right to look for active co-operation from her graduates ”

“ But whatever may be your intentions on this point, the course of study which you have gone through has been sufficient to develop and strengthen your intellectual faculties, and has enabled you to pursue without further aid from teachers that system of self-education which it behoves every man to carry on, so far as circumstances may admit, throughout the whole period of life. ”

“ At the very time at which the first Convocation of the University was being held, the policy of such an educational extension was being questioned in an official and authoritative document, emanating from one of the leading members of the British Government, who at that time held the office of President of the Board of Control. The despatch of 1854 had laid great stress on the grant-in-aid system, as being the most economical, and, in many respects, the most effectual means of extending education, and at the same time placing it upon a sound basis. ”

“ These are questions which demand the anxious consideration of all who are interested in the progress of the nation, and not least of those who, like yourselves, having been taught to value sound learning, are bound to do what you can to disseminate its treasures, even though it be in a rudimentary form, among your less favoured countrymen. ”

“ It is sometimes said that a wide separation has taken place between that comparatively small section of the native Community who have been educated through the medium of the English language and the masses of their countrymen, that the former have become denationalized, and that they do not form that link, which it was hoped they would have constituted, between the European Governors of the country and the great mass of the population. ”

“ But every position has its responsibilities as well as its advantages, and the greater the advantages, so much the more weighty are the obligations which they entail. It is for you to be the interpreters to your countrymen of the principles and of the knowledge which you have acquired in the course of your academical studies, of the training, moral and intellectual, which you have received ”

“ There is another sphere of duty for which the University of Madras desires to enlist the services of her graduates, and upon which she hopes that some of you, who have this day been enrolled as her members, will not be unwilling to enter. ”

“ The results of the First Examination in Arts, an examination which was introduced only five years ago, must be regarded as not less satisfactory, if due allowance be made for the higher standard which is demanded, the number of successful candidates having risen from 23 in 1864 to 117 in the present year. ”

“ The position is usually considered to be less influential than those which may be attained in other professions. As a general rule, the emoluments are smaller, and the work, if it be done effectually, involves no slight amount of mental and physical labour. ”

“ Its influence is annually attested by the increasing number of under-graduates, and by the marked improvement which is taking place in the standard of school instruction throughout the Presidency ; — an improvement which, is not con- fined to the Government schools, but which is to be found in an equally marked degree in the nuuDerous independent institutions which have grown up and thriven of late years under the foster- ing influence of the grant-in-aid system and of the valuable system of examinations which this University has supplied. ”