Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/33

men trained as our English judges are. I can safely say that nothing was further from the intention of those who framed and passed the codes. I believe nothing can be further from the probable result. The intention certainly was to do at once, and on system, for India, what has been the aim of our great masters of law in England for generations past, to embody our law and practice into written systematic codes, but in every case the guiding principles of law and practice were intended to be those of English law and practice; and in training our lawyers and judges the model before our legislators has ever been that body of lawyers which gives to England a constant succession of judges of whom every Englishman is so justly proud. Nor can I doubt that the desired result will follow in due time. It is no light task which the English Government set before itself to provide laws and suitable tribunals to administer them to so many millions of men; for you must remember that such tribunals as the British Government proposes, require not only a judge to sit on the bench, but a trained bar, and a knowledge of the general principles of the law and practice of the tribunals very widely diffused among the community at large. It is in this direction that we may hope the University will prove here as valuable as Universities have been in every country in Europe, as giving that kind of intellectual and moral training without which the most accurate knowledge of the mere letter of the law will fail to make a good lawyer in our English sense of tho word.On the other hand, I believe that, in the profession of the law, the scholars of this University will find, as do their brethren in Europe, a most congenial and useful field for their talents improved and stimulated by University training. I hope that many of them will avail themselves of the aid so liberally offered them by the benefactors of the University to travel and perfect themselves in our great practical English schools of law. They will there be struck, as early travellers from our own country used to be struck in India, by the spectacle of a whole people among whom the law is paramount. But more than this, they will find themselves welcomed as members of a brotherhood which is at once the most liberal in tho admission of members, and the most strict in exacting from them such conduct as is consistent with a profession of which law is the exclusive study.

And this brings me to note that, during the past as during of former years, Importance of foreign travel and Indian prejudices. several of the foundations connected with the University have indicated an appreciation on the part of the founders of the great advantages of foreign travel as a part of University education.