D. F. Carmichael

“ How long will you hang back undecided and desponding? Whom and what do you fear, you who have sworn to-day, as far as in you lies, to support and promote the cause of morality, and to advance the well-being of your fellow men? ”

“ The knowledge you have acquired during long years of study, Habits of study. has called into daily exercise your perseverance, your watchfulness, and self-control. These habits must have excluded a host of follies and vices. In the morning of life, when the blandishments of passion take the reason prisoner, these habits, I persuade myself, have sustained and invigorated your mind, have imparted a freshness and a healthful tone to its enjoyments and fitted it for the more arduous purposes of your work in the world. ”

“ Having opened such preferment to the natives, is it not the duty, the plain policy of the Government to see that the men whom it appoints to be interpreters between itself and the rude millions whom it governs, shall come from a class which, if Indian in blood and color, shall be English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect ? ”

“ Those who take their notions from England, can have no conception what an immensely powerful engine, either for good or evil, an Asiatic Government is. Time will bring its changes, but in India we know that the Grovernment is everything ”

“ The mercantile, medical, sacerdotal and other professions, which absorb the greater part of our English youth of the middle class, are either held in comparatively low esteem, or are confined, at present, to particular castes : and except when he becomes a pleader, almost the only idea which a liberally educated native has of rising in life is by attaching himself to the public service. In the early years of British rule in India, the system of Govern- ment was based on the principle of doing every thing by European agency ”

“ The great reformer of philosophy has beautifully declared, that in all other pleasures, after they be used, "their verdure departeth, which showeth that they be deceits of pleasures;" but in these, "satisfaction and appetite are perpetually interchangable." These indeed are the only pleasures, which, fraught with unalterable delight and interest, outlive the fervent years of youth, and grow still stronger in the decay of age. ”

“ It abounds with works of imagination not inferior to the noblest which Greece has bequeathed to us; with models of every species of eloquence; with historical compositions, which considered merely as narratives, have seldom been surpassed, and which, considered as vehicles of ethical and political instruction, have never been equalled; with just and lively representations of human life and human nature ”

“ And, my young friends, the knowledge you have gained is to be prized not only for the qualities and serene pleasures which it directly tends to excite, but also for the material blessings which it confers upon society. ”

“ Would to heaven we could see another Convocation consisting of those amongst you—an immense majority they are who are Hindus—formed for the more reasonable and beneficent purpose of exploding the innovations in the ritual and usages of your sacred Vedas, which however brought in, have now unhappily, for centuries prevailed; innovations involving the degradation of the female sex, ruin to the moral virtues and the intellectual energies of the man, and the hopeless postponement of national advancement and domestic felicity. ”

“ They may cram the Special Tests in time, but it is not good for the country that any but really educated men should become Magistrates, Tahsil- dars, and Munsiffs, Now that the University has stood and prospered for a quarter of a century, it is surely high time that we promoted to the more responsible offices in the public service none but those who have taken complete advantage of the education now offered to all ”

“ Shall they be driven not by the winter storm in its overwhelming fury, or shall they be removed by the gentle and peaceable means, which an united body of educated men, actuated by the purest patriotism, should well know how to use? ”

“ In the professional degrees the rate of success has fluctuated to a remarkable extent^ as is too well known, for instance, to recent candidates for the degree in law. Having worked with and watched the work of men, some of whom are proficients of the pre-University High School and others are Graduates of the University, I gratefully acknow- ledge that I have found both classes equally efiicient and equally honorable. The proficients in their day had an advan- tage which graduates cannot share. ”

“ It is the admission of men, without any connection with the Uni- versity beyond the Matriculation — sometimes not even that — to the Special Test, by passing which the candidates become qualified to hold the more important oflBces in the country. This system has been injurious to education, the University, and the public service itself. Look at the hundreds and hun- dreds of young men, who annually matriculate or pass what is best known as the Uncovenanted Civil Service Examination. ”