then when the occasion is thus arrived, we in vain seek to know if those charges were ever made-if they are to be persevered in-if they are to be proved :--J ask, sir, whether this is just and candid? I demand, whether the college has not a right to say, If those charges were falsely imputed to you, do us the justice to disclaim them;-if they were erroneously preferred by you, do us the justice to retract them—but if they were truly urged by you, do us the justice to prove them. I demand whether the college has not a right to say, and whether the sentiment I would not find an echo in every bosom that has one pulse which beats true to justice, I have been publicly called to my trial, and, if I am innocent, I have a right to be acquitted. (Hear! hear !) In the absence of any thing positive, I am obliged to look back at such proofs (if proofs they can be called), as are reported to have been adduced on the occasion of originating this subject. We are told, sir, that great stress was then laid on certain anonymous documents, purporting to be the letters of parents, who lamented that their children should have experienced the demoralizing effect of a residence at the India college. We are told that extracts of those letters were read; but we do not find that the writers were named. And we are told that, on the evidence of those extracts, the college was denounced as a sink of vice and immorality. Sir, every proprietor has a right to form his own opinion from such private sources of information as he can command, and as he believes to be worthy of trust, I therefore cannot complain that the gentlemen who referred to these letters, should themselves have relied on their authority. They were very well entitled to do so. But when matters once came to a public accusation, the fundamental principles of justice enforce a different course. I have seen something of places in which the rules of evidence are applied to the purposes of judical investigation; and have always understood it to be among the very first qualifications of a witness, especially in criminal proceedings, that he shall be visible, and that he shall be disinterested. What then must I think, when I find this court called upon to pronounce a sentence of censure against a great public establishment, on such evidence as I have mentioned? When, indeed, I hear such testimonies referred to on such an occasion, I am for cibly reminded of an anecdote which I once heard related by a very great man in the House of Commons. Lord Chief Justice Willes was trying a prisoner on the circuit, when a witness positively stating some extraordinary fact, and being questioned as to his means of information, replied, that he had been told what he re lated by a ghost. "Well," said my lord chief justice, "I have no objection to the testimony of the ghost, but first bring him in, and swear him!"-(Loud and universal laughter.) So I say; Produce these invisible witnesses! Confront us with these mysterious beings! Call up these accusing spirits, who have too much delicacy to make themselves seen, but have not too much delicacy to make themselves heard! "O (but it is said), would you then violate the sanctity of parental grief? Would you compel a sorrowing father to appear in public with all his wounds still bleeding, and to proclaim the history of his child's ruin and his own shame?" Concerned indeed should I be, sir, to commit the smallest outrage on the seclusion of a sorrow so deep. I am content that such a parent shall remain in the shade. But, if so, in the sacred name of the eternal principles of justice, I call on you to go through with your own rule; and if you will not produce your witness for the ends of complete justice, do not produce him for those of crimination! Otherwise it is not by me, but by you, that the sanctity of parental grief is violated-by you, who make me a sufferer by the very respect I pay to that privacy by you who, in the guise of a secluded mourner, prepare against me an ambushed enemy, and who convert the most sacred of all feelings into an instrument of injustice !-Hear! &c.) But it is not my only ground of objection against these witnesses that they are invisible.-Little as we know of them, we know something-and that something is, that they are biassed,-strongly and necessarily biassed,-in favour of the cause which they are adduced to support. Why, sir, can it be supposed that fathers, who had been deeply wounded by the failure and discredit of their children-who were naturally eager to lay the blame any where rather than on the real demerit of their children-who had, in a great degree, identified their own cause with that of their children,-who had very probably been engaged in a warm and painful personal altercation with the collegiate authorities,-and whose whole personal acquaintance with the college, if they had any, was in all likelihood confined to the hurried observation of two or three days, amidst the press of the views and feelings I have described; can it be supposed, for a moment, that such persons are disinterested witnesses?-I should almost doubt whether he could be a father, whom I saw conducting himself with impartiality under such circumstances. I should be apt to say with the poet, "He has no children!" These considerations seem to me decidedly to prove what Mr. Malthus observes, that disappointed fathers are the very last authorities who ought to be adduced in such a case as the present. They prove this indeed, so decidedly, that I cannot help appealing to the candour of the hon. proprietors themselves, who have cited those authorities, against the admissibility of their own evidence. But, if they refuse us that justice which I think is only our due on this point, I am at least sure that I may safely direct my appeal to the court of proprietors.-I will in that case, intreat the court to remember that the college has been charged with such peculiar degrees of vice and licentiousness as render it altogether a dangerous and contaminating residence for youth-that the friends of the institution have anxiously and loudly called for the evidence on which such accusation rests-and that the single, the exclusive evidence, I will not say produced, but referred to, on the occasion, has been the testimony of witnesses who do not appear-who are not named-and concerning whom they refuse to tell us any thing except this, that by every rule of law and reason, they are utterly incompetent to be heard on the subject. (Hear! heur ! hear!) 66 Mr. Jackson here interposed amidst an universal cry of Order! Order!-and observed, that such terms as peculiarly offensive vices" might lead to misconception. He had not heard the term used against the college; and if it had, he had no doubt it would be dropped, in order to avoid an interpretation which, he was very sure, had never been contemplated by any person. This interruption, he hoped, would be excused, on account of the motives which had occasioned it. (Hear! hear! hear!) a Mr. Grant, after complimenting his learned friend on the disclaimer he had so properly and promptly made, observed that he (Mr. Grant) understood the charges circulated against the college to imply a great prevalence of the excesses too common among youth-a prevalence of these excesses in a degree which distinguished this seminary from most or all others, and made it peculiarly dangerous as a scene of temptation and of bad example. It had been described as 66 sink of vice," as "a disgrace to the Company and to the country, and to all who belong to it ;" as the "dread of the neighbourhood;" as distinguished by "the frequent commission of every species of offence," and as conducted in a manner so repugnant to every principle of order and morality as to prevent individuals from sending their sons there." These were specimens of the expressions applied to it; expressions which, if rightly used, must be capable of being established by immediate proof of the most conclusive and irresistible kind; but for such proof, and indeed for any proof whatever, the friends of the college had called, and, he had no doubt, would continue to call in vain.-" I should be very sorry (continued Mr. Grant) to trespass too much on the indulgence of the court; but while I am on this subject, I cannot refuse myself the gratification of adducing, in my turn, the testimony of a father whose son has passed through the college. It is addressed to the principal, by a distinguished member of the church of Ireland, Dr. Woodward, brother-in-law to the archbishop of Cashel. I trust that highly respected person will forgive the liberty I take in reading publicly an extract of a letter, written without any purpose of such a kind; but certainly, I feel satisfied that this, with the similar testimony I before gave from Mr. Mackenzie, will far outweigh a whole host of anonymous accusations. The letter is dated the 1st Jan. 1817." I am also happy in an opportu 66 young men owed to your admirable "conduct under very trying circum"stances." I will just add (proceeded Mr. Grant) that the writer of this interesting letter had no acquaintance with Dr. Batten previous to the admission of his son at the college. Having now, as I trust, thoroughly disposed of the deeper accusations against the morals of the college, I feel myself called upon to notice the remarks of the learned mover on the implied admission of Mr. Malthus, with respect to the existence there of at least a degree of moral irregularity. The averment of Mr. Malthus is, that the students " are, beyond all comparison, freer from the general vices" of youth, "than the undergraduates of our universities;" and, he really believes, “more free than the headclasses of our great schools." On which the learned and hon. proprietor says, "Admirable consolation, truly, for parents to be told, that the students at Hertfordchildren of sixteen, are freer from youthful vices than the under-graduates at our universities, men of five-and-twenty! But does Mr. Professor forget the radical difference between the two cases? We may send our children to the universities, or not send them, as we please; but we are compelled to send them to the Indian college." One word, sir, on the accuracy with which the sentiment of Mr. Malthus is represented here, before I say any thing as to the reasoning employed on it. The learned mover, on a former day, remark ed that he had never seen so great a number of misrepresentations crowded into so small a compass, as in the pamphlet of Mr. Malthus. I hope my learned friend will excuse me for observing, that if Mr. Malthus has dealt in misrepresentation, he has at length been fought with his own weapon; for I will venture to assert, that so much misrepresentation has seldom been crowded into so small a compass, as may be found in my learned friend's remarks on the short sentence last quoted from Mr. Malthus. I need not say I am far from imputing wilful misrepresentation: it would be absurd to do that; but it is necessary to set the sentiment of Mr. Malthus in its true light. First, then, my learned friend totally omits to read the important clause with which Mr. Malthus concludes; the clause, I mean, in which he states his belief that the Hertford students are freer from vice than the headclasses of our great schools. This clause is left out, as if it had never existed. Next, my learned friend tacitly drops the words "beyond all comparison" in the preference which Mr. Malthus gives to the morals of Hertford college over those of the universities. Thirdly, he describes the students at the India college as "children of sixteen ;" thus taking the very earliest age at which a youth is admissible at that college as a standard for the age of the whole society. And lastly, he describes the under-graduates as "men of twenty-five." Sir, my learned friend has passed, as he tells us, four years at Oxford; I put it then to his recollection-I put it to the recollection of any man who has passed four days therewhether twenty-five be the average age of under-graduates? It is well known, that the period previous to the first degree usually extends from about eighteen to twenty-one. It is equally well known that some are sent to the university much younger than eighteen; I may, perhaps, be allowed to mention, as one example of this assertion, that the individual who has now the honor of addressing you, was entered of Cambridge at sixteen, and went into residence two or three months before he had completed his seventeenth year. By means, however, of these little oversights, Mr. Malthus's defence of the morals of the Hertford institution becomes that which might very justly have awakened the surprise of my learned friend, namely, an assertion that these children of sixteen were not quite so vicious as men of five-and-twenty! But, since the observations of the learned proprietor on this passage may be thought, in some measure, applicable, even as it stands in Mr. Malthus, let us consider them a moment. My learned friend seems to think it a sufficient objection to the institution, thst there is some vice among the students, especially as the residence at the college is compelled. Now first, sir, I beg to know whether, when my learned friend proposed to this court in 1805, the resolution approving the establishment of a seminary in this country, he really conceived that the seminary he was about to erect would be totally free from all the vices of youth? that it would actually exhibit that immunity from evil, which has in all other cases been known rather as the unattainable object of human systems, than as their realized excellence? If he did, let him point out the means by which so great a blessing was to be brought down to the sphere of practice; if he did not, let him not too severely condemn the existing institution for containing that alloy of defect which he himself proposed to tolerate, in proposing to erect a seminary. "But then," said my learned friend, "we are not obliged to send our sons to the university, but we are obliged to send them to the college at Hertford." Why, who obliged you? what terrible fiat what fatal decree-what dire necessitycompels you to accept for your son a lucrative and honorable appointment in the civil service of the Company? If my learned friend were to receive an appointment for a son in the Company's service, and he were told at the same time that his son must be sent to Hertford in order to qualify himself, would there be any shackle on his determination, whether he would or would not accept the appointment on such conditions? What greater hardship is there in this case than is imposed upon such persons as are destined for the profession of the church in England? It is well known that those who have the offer of church preferment for their sons, cannot avail themselves of such offer unless they send their sons to receive a suitable education at the university. To obtain orders without it is difficultto rise high in the church, hopeless. And would it be just to complain of that as a compulsory regulation which imposed such education as the condition of the preferment? Yet this is a stronger case than that which I employ it to illustrate; for I should presume that the profession of the church provides for at least ten times as many persons as the Company's civil service; so that, for every one person compelled to keep terms at Hertford, nearly ten may be said to be compelled to keep terms at the universities. I am aware, sir, that this subject may, in individual cases, involve a good deal of difficulty. Scarcely any crisis can be conceived more serious or more interesting to a parent, than when he has for the first time to determine, whether he shall retain his child under the safe and de lightful shelter of the domestic roof, or shall commit him to the trials and difficulties of a more public scene. The ques-tion may sometimes bring with it great embarrassment, and prove very hard to ́ determine. I am sure that my learned friend sees it precisely in the same light, and that, if the solution of the problem fell to himself with respect to any person in whose welfare he felt interested, he would treat it with the seriousness that becomes it a seriousness which, I confess, I desiderated in his remarks on the subject, in relation to the supposed dangers of an education at Hertford. It is, I repeat, a serious-it may sometimes be a very painful question. There is great difficulty in balancing between the advantages of an early probation in fortifying youthful virtue, and the premature hazards to virtue which that very probation supposes. I must be allowed to say, however, that in the case immediately before us, the question is one of far less nicety and embarrassment than in almost any other in which it can' possibly arise. The reason is a very sim ple one. A father, who is called to make up his mind whether he shall venture the child of his hopes and anxieties amidst the temptations of a residence in the col lege at Hertford, must have already made up his mind to trust that same child, only two years later,, amidst the far more nu merous, and far more perilous temptations of a residence in India. The hazards of the two situations will not bear a compa rison! What such a parent, therefore, has to determine, is simply this;-whe ther, having satisfied himself that his son should at a very early age be placed amidst the trying seductions and serious responsibilities of an Indian life, it is not expedient, it is not obligatory, previously to subject him to the milder exigencies of a public but yet a less exposed situation : a situation which may afford a sort of preparatory exercise to his firmness and fortitude. Under circumstances like these, even if in no other case, the Company have surely a right to say to families seeking Indian' appointments, "If you are desirous of the advantages of a situation for your children in our service, even subject to the risks by which those ad vantages may be attended-we, on our part, refuse to grant them the advantages, unless they are first qualified to sustain the risks. It is our interest, and it is equally their's, that they shall undergo such a preliminary ordeal as may call their latent powers into actionas may inure them to a reliance on their own resources. In this ordeal it is possible they may fail; but such a failure will be a far less evil than the failures to which unformed habits and unconfirmed principles would expose them in India a far less evil both to themselves and to others Asiatic Journ.-No. 18. less painful to their parents, less injurious to their own character, and less ob noxious to the interests of society." With these observations, sir, I shall dismiss this part of my subject; perfectly confiding that the character of the India college, in the important point of morals, is now securely established against all the unfounded aspersions which it has sustained. I have but one topic yet to consider, before I relieve the court from the task which I am unwillingly imposing on their indulgent attention; I refer to the question of discipline. When I before had the honor of addressing the court, it will be remembered that I declared myself ready to admit that a spirit of insubordination had, in some instances, manifested itself at the college; but I certainly neither did then, nor do now concede, that this spirit has at all manifested itself to the extent alleged. I must own myself, however, somewhat surprised by the course which the learned mover of the resolution has adopted with respect to this head of ob servation. Instead of dwelling on the actual state of discipline at the college,a subject which is matter of fact-a sub ject which, in point of knowledge, is accessible to any inquirer, because, from its very nature, it involves overt acts and none others he has thought proper to discuss, at great length, some of the statutes of the institution, with a view of proving them either absurdly rigorous or ineffective. It is very probable, sir, there may be defects in the college statutes; it is possible those defects may be great; but what connection have à-priori argu ments on such points with our present discussion, which relates to the actual state of the institution, as ascertained by observation and evidence? I will, however, shortly glance at one or two points noticed by the learned proprietor. And first, he objected to the regulation which requires the presence of all the students, without exception, at the celebration of divine worship according to the forms of the church of England, as a hardship on members of the church of Scotland, or of the various classes of dissenters who might have appointments in the service. With regard to Scotland, I have some connection with that country, and even consider myself as a native of it; and I am not aware that the strictest members of the Scottish church would object to the mere act of attendance at the rites of English worship; so long as they were not called to profess themselves in communion with the English establishment. I have the same opinion of the liberality of the dissenters in general. But if this be a hardship, it is one which is equally imposed by the system of other collegiate establishments. The children of ProtesVOL. III. 4 H tant dissenters are sometimes educated in our universities; so are members of the church of Scotland; they cannot, indeed, undergo matriculation, but I am not aware that they ever desire exemption from the regular duties of chapel. The children of English families are to be found among the students at the universities of Scotland; these attend divine service according to the Scottish ritual; and I am not aware that they ever find the obligation of such attendance a burden upon conscience. But these, it may be said, are not parallel instances;-for (as before) we are not compelled to bring up our children at the universities of Scotland, nor are the Scotch under a similar necessity with respect to ours; it is the compulsory law in the case of Hertford, which makes all the difference. Now to say no more on that subject, will it suffice if I produce a precedent from an institution, for which my learned friend professedly entertains, and very justly, the highest respect-I mean, the Company's military seminary at Addiscombe?-Hear, therefore, the following clauses from the regulations of that excellent establishment: "18. Every Sunday morning, the ca dets shall walk in procession to and from church, attended by the serjeant and bombardier, and one of the resident masters of the seminary; unless the state of the weather, or some particular cause shall prevent it, in which cases, divine service, according to the form of the Church of England, shall be performed, and a lecture be read at the seminary, Divine service, according to the form of the Church of England, shall also be performed, and a lecture read in the seminary, every Sunday evening. 20. The cadets shall not absent themselves from church, morning and evening prayer, &c." Perhaps, however, it may be contended, that no fair precedent can, in the present instance, be deduced from the system of a military seminary, the very nature of which implies the admissibility of restraints which would be intolerable in an establishment purely civil. Give us, therefore, it may be said, an example of a civil seminary exactly in point or give us none at all. I do not know, sir, that the distinction which such a reply would set up, could be contended for in a matter relating to the rights of conscience; I am, however, content to adopt the proposal; I will bring you the example of a civil seminary-and one, the authority of which must be conclusive with the gentlemen on the other side. I request, therefore, the attention of the court to the following words from the statute-book of lord Wellesley's college ;"Divine service shall be performed in the 4 college chapel, at such times as the pro vost shall appoint, at which all the 'students shall attend." Can it admit of any doubt whether divine service so en joined was to be performed according to the modes and rites of the church of England? If it can, I entreat you to hear another regulation enacted for the. benefit of the same institution "The primary objects of the provost "shall be, to receive the junior civil ser "vants on their first arrival at Fort Wil"liam, to superintend and regulate their "general morals and conduct, to assist "them with his advice and admonition, "and to instruct them in the principles "of the Christian religion, according to. "the doctrine, discipline, and rites of "the church of England, as established "by law." So much, sir, for this obnoxious and oppressive ecclesiastical regulation in the India college-a regulation which is thus completely paralleled, both in the college of lord Wellesley, and in the military seminary; the one of which estabishments my learned friend has praised at our expense, and the other he would establish on our ruins.(Hear! hear!) The learned proprietor, however, pronounces it extremely hard that a student should be liable to expulsion by the arbitrary authority of five clergymen, truly, because he had missed chapel. Members of the clerical order, he observed, though no doubt highly respectable persons, are not likely to be the most merciful of censors in such a case. Their habits of life and of thinking incline them to some little severity of judgment, in estimating the faults of others. Where we pity, says my learned friend, they blame. I confess, sir, I regret that my learned friend should have given place to this remark. I am averse to professional reflections, were it only from a selfish motive; for, as my learned friend well knows, no profession has been the subject of more frequent or of more unjust reflections of this nature, than that to which he and I have alike the honor of belonging. At the same time, I acknowledge that others have expressed themselves respecting clergymen nearly in the same manner; the celebrated David Hume, for example, who, speaking of that order of persons, observes, "These men, being elevated above humanity, acquire a character which is entirely their own, and which, in my opinion, is, generally speaking, not the most amiable that is to be met with in human society." Such is the opinion of Mr. Hume, which seems to make a good companion for that of my learned friend.-(A laugh.) To treat this subject seriously, however, I cannot help observing, that in the resolution already so often mentioned, which my learned friend proposed to the court in |
