Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/437

1that for its advancing legislation Government shall gather to its councils, in increasing numbers, men who can worthily repre- sent and stoutly advocate the interests and the wants of the people. For such duties are needed men, who have studied the liistory, not only of their own country, but of the nations of the world ; who have weighed the various causes which have made Governments to fall and nations to prosper or decay and who have traced in the annals of the past the dangers to be feared either from encroaching despotism or unbridled liberty. In the faculty of law there is apparently no need to dwell upon the nature of the prospect, for the ranks of the law seem to swell rapidly, even perhaps too rapidly, for the good of the people, but there are open to the graduates of the law the honorable position of judges of the various courts, and thus distinctions are perhaps more readily attainable in that faculty. In the faculty of medicine the demand is rapidly overtaking the supply. The services of good men for Local Dispensaries, now numbering 170 in our 20 districts, are every day more appreciated in the districts. Hospital accommodation, which is already being supplemented in several places by special subscriptions with accommodation congenial to the customs of caste privacy, must be increased. The old-fashioned village doctors must give way before the higher education, the skill and trained ability of the graduate ; while as hospitals and dispensaries develop the opportunities of medicine and surgical instruction will increase ; and that skill which can only result from the experiences of constant practice will increase also the benefits of an educated and skilful treatment in alleviating pain and mitigating diseases being naore widely spread will bring sufferers in increasing numbers for relief, demand additional dispensaries and addi- tional officers, and thus open a wide field for the student in medicine. In the faculty of Civil Engineering, I confess I have been surprised that so small a number comparatively appear for degrees therein. In a country where from its climate and its circumstances, engineering knowledge is essential to the management with profit and safety of almost every farm where the one problem of the cul- tivator is how to economise, and how best to utilise the essential fertilising element of water ; to confine the streams to supply the tanks, to arrest and detain the maximum quantity of the periodi- cal floods, and only allow a minimum to pass away to the ocean at the same time guarding against disastrous flood damage, there is a field for engineering science hardly elsewhere to be found. The science of irrigation should be almost indeed the