Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras/Part 1/Sir Alexander Grant Bart, LL.D.
SIXTH CONVOCATION.
(By Sir Alexander Grant, Bart., LL.D.)
Honourable Sir,—Before this Convocation, the last at which your Excellency will preside, is dissolved, we, the Fellows of the University of Bombay, crave permission to approach your Excellency with an expression of our heartfelt gratitude for the many benefits, which as our Chancellor and as head of the Government of Bombay, you have conferred upon this University; and of our great regret that your connection with us in these capacities is now so soon to terminate.
Nearly five years ago it was your Excellency's first public act on arriving here as Governor of Bombay, to preside in this place and to award the first Degrees which were given by this University.
Not only at our first, but at all subsequent, Convocations, your Excellency has done us the honour of presiding. Every student who has hitherto been deemed by this University worthy of a Degree, whether in Arts, in Law, or in Medicine, has received that Degree, accompanied by appropriate and impressive words, from the hands of the Governor of the Presidency. And annually in your place as Chancellor, your Excellency has never failed to address us on topics connected with our progress and policy. Your Excellency's speeches, delivered on these occasions, are preserved in our Calendars, and we trust that they may ever be referred to by our successors, as containing some of the most important principles by which, their course may be guided.
The part thus taken by your Excellency in our proceedings has given this University a peculiar prestige as neither of the Universities of Calcutta or of Madras has been similarly distinguished by its respective Chancellor.
While acknowledging the benefits of the lively interest which your Excellency, as our academical head, has thus shown in our welfare, we beg also to thank you for the equally valuable forbearance which, as head of the Political Government, you h.ave exhibited towards us.
A University like ours occupies necessarily a delicate position. The delicate position of the University. Its members are all appointed by the Government; it derives all its current resources from the Imperial Treasury; and its acts are all subject to veto from the local administration. Under such circumstances,—especially in India where it is often felt that all else except the Government is uncertain and fluctuating—there cannot but be a tendency for a University to lose caste, as it were, and to come to be regarded as a mere office or department of the State. What is to be apprehended from this tendency is not only a loss of dignity to the University itself, but also a loss of the highest kind of efficiency in its working.
For, the mission of a University in a country like this, is nothing The mission of the University. else than to create an intellectual and vital soul among the people; and there can be no question whether this mission is likely best to be fulfilled by persons feeling themselves nominated merely to carry out the views of a Government, or by the free and enthusiastic action of men feeling responsible to themselves for the good or bad success of the University.
It is under jealous and centralizing administrations, Liberal sentiments of the Chancellor. that a University like ours tends to lose its liberty. But your Excellency's administration has ever been characterized by the most large and liberal sentiments. And these sentiments you have especially manifested towards us. You have increased our academical body by the admission to it of persons from almost all sections of the community. You have accorded personal sympathy and public sanction to our acts. You have encouraged us to settle in our own assemblies all questions falling within our province.
For this faith and trust in us, we beg. Sir, especially to thank you. High standard of scholarship. Knowing the interest you have felt in our welfare and success, we can well imagine the possibility of doubts arising in your Excellency's mind as to that policy of strict and severe examinations which we have always adhered to, and by which we have kept down the number of our Matriculations and Degrees to a small fraction of those exhibited by the sister Universities of Calcutta and Madras. But if such doubts have arisen, your Excellency has never given expression to them. On the contrary, you have again and again approved our course, and have seemed fully to share our belief, that our work if slowly advancing, has a solid foundation; and that it is of more importance to create a high standard of scholarship in this country, than to multiply, ever so much, the number of persons possessing nominal distinctions at the hands of a University.
While leaving our Examination standards, as an academical matter, to be settled academically, your Excellency has never failed in your political capacity to give high recognition to the Recognition of University men. value of all the Degrees and honours conferred by the University. By bestowing many personal distinctions on our graduates, by opening to them generally appointments in the Revenue Service, and by assigning to them rank with the Sirdars of the Presidency, your Excellency's Government has held out the most efficacious encouragement to perseverance in academical studies.
The period of your Excellency's administration is nearly Results obtained during the regime of Sir H. B. E. Frere. co-eval with that of the public existence of this University. During that period the number of our graduates has risen from 8 to 70, that of our under-graduates from 106 to about 500. The number of our Fellows has been increased from 36 to 175. During the same period, by the munificence of eminent citizens, three noble college buildings for affiliated Institutions have been commenced and are now nearly finished; two splendid donations have been received for the erection of a University Hall and Library, which we hope shortly to see rising on the Esplanade; six endowments in the form of Scholarships and Prizes have been entrusted to us; and handsome gifts in the shape of a University Seal and Mace have been received. With the history of all these things the memory of your Excellency's administration will remain associated. And, as the noble-minded Lord Elphinstone was regarded as the founder of this University, so we shall take the liberty to regard your Excellency as our Second Founder. Lord Elphinstone's Arms were incorporated with those which we bear, and we will now ask your Excellency to permit your bust, (to be provided at the expense of the existing Fellows and Graduates) to be placed in our future University Hall, surmounted by a shield bearing your Excellency's Arms, in perpetual token of our grateful appreciation of your rule.
In conclusion, we respectfully bid your Excellency farewell, and wish you a long and happy life, in that high sphere to which you are now going, and where we feel sure you will continue to watch over the welfare of the University of Bombay, as being the part not least interesting to you of this Empire of India.
The Chancellor Sir Henry Bartle Edward Frere, K.C.B., G.C.S.I., then replied as follows:—
Mr. Vice-Chancellor and Gentlemen of the Senate,—I feel it very difficult to find words to express the deep and heartfelt