TWENTY-FIFTH CONVOCATION.
(The Honorable J. B. Peile, C.S., M.A., C.S.I.)
Gentlemen of the Senate,—In a second year the duty has fallen to me of addressing you in this place at the Convocation for conferring degrees. I had hoped that this chair would be otherwise and more worthily filled to-day. You, I am sure, hoped that also. If you are denied an intellectual pleasure on which you had counted, it will still be easily understood that the claims and interests of education in this empire, the aim and grasp, the tendencies and influences of the University and of public and private instruction, are many-sided and complex, such as are not to be learnt from books or the conversation of those who have been in India; and the mastery of them in all lights, political, social, material, literary, requires some time. Next year, if I am present, I shall be glad to take a lower place, and to listen while our educational performances are passed through the crucible by the refined intelligence of Lord Reay.
Now, I will advert here to an unpleasant subject which I am bound to notice, Desist from unworthy habits. but from which I shall be glad to pass on. I speak of the unhappy event which marred the Matriculation Examination of 1885, and which, though its shadow lies only on the threshold of the University precincts, is so abhorrent to the clear air of elevated studies, that it may well fill all friends of learning with dismay. If there was a breach of trust, latent it may be, in a carelessness which is not defensible, or even corruption somewhere, the reproach of which rests on us—the Executive of the University—how much more grievous was the breach of trust committed by the young men who were not true to themselves at a time of life when all the worth of the future character is staked on a rigid conscientiousness about the work in hand? What can be the value or quality of a youth's studies at college who gains his title of entrance to the higher course by an acted lie? Carlyle, addressing the students of Edinburgh, said of even the minor offences of shallow pretentiousness and cramming:—"Avoid all that is entirely unworthy of an honourable habit Morality as regards study is, as in all other things, the primary consideration, and overrides all others. A dishonest man cannot do anything real. This is a very old doctrine, but a very true one; and you will find it confirmed by all the thinking men that have ever lived in this long series of generations of which we are the latest."