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positions to which their attainments might be expected to entitle them, and which they see filled by those who had not been reared in the colleges, but who had won their way by actual work. This non-fulfilment in some degree of the intentions of Government has somewhat lowered the value of high education in the estimation of those who are to incur the cost, and undergo the toil, of the instruction. The defect has existed not in the judicial but in the executive departments. We have, therefore, after revision of previous orders, framed such rules as shall secure to graduates the recognition of their preferential claims to employment in the upper grades of the executive service. Doubtless, young Natives of promise and ambition seek University degrees for many other objects besides admission to, or promotion in, the service of Government—indeed, this University has never ceased to impress on its alumni that its degrees should be sought for their own sake. Still, in such a country as India, the public service offers a large field for the educated youth,—the largest, probably, of all the fields as yet open to them. It is due to the cause of education that its followers should have a surer access to that field, in proportion to the superiority of their attainments. And it is incumbent on the Government, in the selection of men for its service, to set the most influential example of reliance placed on the examinations and tests of the University.

In my last address (1878), I acknowledged the many merits of the youth educated under the direction of the University—such as their retentiveness of memory, Merits and faults of granuates. their power of mental application, their ambition to excel, and above all their improved standard of rectitude and integrity. But I also reminded you of their faults, as perceived by their critics or acknowledged by their friends,—such as immaturity of thought, rhetorical exaggeration, substitution of borrowed ideas for original reflection, subjection of the reasoning power to the imagination, inaptitude for testing theory by practice, and the like. These faults, which are common more or less to the youth of all nations in the world, have in India arisen and grown from many and various causes operating for a very long time. Therefore, they will not be speedily cured,—though the cure is beginning, and, if gradual, must in the end be sure. Meanwhile these faults become more saliently presented and more prominently noticed, according as criticism becomes more and more pointedly directed to our educational system, and as observers have a larger mass of educational results on which to make their observations. Consequently, we see that many persons, whose practical knowledge gives authority to