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youth, which in avery large majority of cases, no future opportunities of study, no future discipline can redress or justify. This is the spring of his existence; this is the season, and the only season, in which the mind takes the impression for a whole life. The child is said to be "father to the man.” I have sketched his education, look at the result!
The construction of society demands a distinction in the grades of the medical profession; the rewards of exertion must be necessarily unequal in value; his physical relations must regulate in some measure the nature and extent of his occupations, the value of his time, and the rank he holds in society, but the giant evil of the day is want of education. The quantity or degree may be regulated by the future position and means of the student, but all should be educated in mind and manners up to the level of good society.
I conceive that education is required by all, whether rural, provincial, or metropolitan; but in every grade his general acquirements as to his competency for this high pursuit should be tested by actual examination; and I rejoice to think that the Council of this College, under the superintendence of its distinguished President, who have at heart the earnest desire to promote the highest interests of that department of the profession over which they preside, have acknowledged the necessity, by taking the initiative on this subject, and instituting examinations in classical and mathematical knowledge, for all future junior candidates for the rank of Fellow of this College, and on this head T have only to express my regret, that this important requisition is not made referable to the first, rather than to the last, stage in the career of the student.
