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facility but in departments of a more difficult nature, it was often literally impossible for a youth, however highly gifted, to answer with effect except by writing. Nor did he now speak of the abstruse mysteries of science. Take the case of a stiff problem in quadratic equations, and would it be fair to insist on a viva voce solution? But it was not only in science that this method of examination was inapplicable; the same remark was held in the literary department of education. The student could not possibly, by that rough translation which necessarily characterized an extempore effort, place it in the power of the examiner to ascertain that most valuable part of his proficiency (and which, by the way, was very material in the education of the civil servants of the Company), namely, the talent of composition in his own language. How was that object to be accomplished except by writing?

But he begged to state a fourth reason, and one still stronger than even any of those already mentioned. He presumed to say, that he had himself undergone as many academical examinations as most gentlemen present; and he would assert, that it was most unfair to place a nervous, diffident young man, in a situation where he would have to compete with a rival of his own standing, and not, perhaps, superior powers, but who was blest, either naturally or in consequence of having been trained to the task, with a readiness to answer, and an indifference to the terrors of exhibition. A public examination, he was persuaded (and he spoke from some acquaintance with the subject), added a most unjust impediment to the difficulties which the student, whose education had been obtained at a private school, must, at all events, encounter on such occasions. He did not mean to dissent from the eulogium that had been pronounced by the Hon. Proprietor (Mr. Kinnaird) on the public examinations at the celebrated establishment to which he alluded (the Charter-house school), where the whole public were suffered to be present, and any person was at liberty to puzzle the student as much as he pleased; on the contrary, he doubted not its justice. So favourable an attestation was the more valuable, as coming from one who was himself at once an Etonian and an academic. But, let it be recollected, that the students there were upon a level with each other, with respect to the fortitude with which they were prepared to face this exhibition: they were regularly disciplined to it, and there was nothing unfair in setting up a contest between two gladiators of the same school. It would be quite otherwise, to match one of those expert prize-fighters with a timid youth, educated perhaps under the wing of his father, and wholly strange to such

contests. He was, in fairness, obliged to observe, that the Cambridge examinations for the classical medal, were partly conducted in the properly viva voce method: but, then, to obviate the inconvenience of presenting different passages to the diffe. rent students (and which, as he showed before, would afford a fallible criterion at the best), the plan was adopted of calling the students successively into the hall, in the presence of the examiners, and setting them separately to construe the same passage. Now, he would ask, was such a system as that capable of being applied to examinations conducted (for he supposed that was the mode contemplated) in that Court before the Proprietors? (Cries of no, no.) He certainly conceived that the plan must lead to a process of this nature. The objections to a viva voce examination were so much felt in Cambridge, that, as he well remembered, when he was a candidate for a scholarship on a foundation, where it had been expressly enjoined by the founder (Dr. Battye), that the examinations should be conducted viva voce, the examiners (as one of them, the then Regius Professor of civil law, Dr. Jowett, afterwards told him) deliberately resolved not to evade, but fairly to escape the terms of the injunction. In the examination which preceded that one, it happened that the course of proceeding had brought to one student, a Greek passage in Thucydides, of extreme difficulty to be construed, and to his preceptor, one of a very opposite description. The examiners were struck with the injustice of a proceeding, in which nothing but the most decided superiority on the part of the conqueror (a gentleman since eminent) could have secured to him the victory. The consequence was, on the next vacancy they determined to alter the plan; and they accordingly required that the answers should be given in writing, but that each student should afterwards read his own answer in the presence of the rest; by which means, they obviated the inconvenience without violating the directions of the founder. These were actual precedents which he deemed not unimportant; and, though he knew that viva voce examinations, properly so called, were admitted at Oxford (to which, however, Oxonians of eminence entertained decided objections), and though, in a degree, they were also known at Cambridge, especially in the interior examinations of individual colleges, he must retain the opinion of them which he had expressed. What process of examination was to be adopted in the new classical examinations which the University of Cambridge was just about to institute, he had inquired, but had not been able to learn.

He now came to the second objection urged against the examinations of Hailey

bury College; namely, that they were conducted by the professors. The reasons which were stated for altering this part of the system appeared to him to have no validity. The objection might have some weight if the professor had to decide between a body of his own pupils (in whose favour he might be naturally suffered to feel some bias), and the pupils formed in some other school. But this was not the case. The students who underwent the examination, were all the pupils of the person who examined them, and there was no reason to apprehend, therefore, that he would be drawn aside from his duty by any partialities. He must entertain the same feeling towards all, and feel the same pleasure equally at the success of any. In fact, the circumstance of the examinations not being conducted in the way of public exhibition, precluded the only chance of abuse to which an exa. mination, by the instructor himself, was exposed. There was no inducement to convert the scene into one of theatrical, and possibly of prepared display. The examinations could not be acted-could not be got up by regular rehearsals-a perversion, to which the exhibitionary mode of examination was clearly liable; and of which instances were known to have occurred. In saying this, he did not mean the remotest allusion to the distinguished public school which he had recently named. He would now mention what appeared to him the advantages of having the examinations held by the professors them

selves.

Not satisfied with trusting to his own observations, he (Mr. Grant) took occasion to consult experienced persons belonging to the universities; and he derived from his inquiries the clear opinion, that when the proficiency of a number of students educated under the same tuition was to be examined, the fairest mode of doing this would be, by employing one who was acquainted with their reading. If, indeed, the students were perfect, or supposed to have finished their course in the branch in which they were tried, there might be no injustice in consigning them to a stranger for examination. It was then fair (speaking familiarly) to dodge them, to catch them out, to examine them at a venture. But, when the subject of trial was a proficiency confessedly imperfect, it was very advantageous that the examiner should accurately know the specific ground to which the studies of the pupils led generally been confined; and this was a just advantage, for it was evidently one to which the combatant was entitled. A second reason he should mention was, that one object of an examination being to ascertain chiefly how far the student had exercised his industry (and in no examination could that inquiry be more necessary, than in those which had reference to the

Indian civil service), it was doubly important that the trial should be conducted by those who were acquainted with his previous studies: for the question was, how far he retained and had digested what he had read. In this view, every lecture was partly an examination as to the student's improvement of previous lectures; and what was called the examination, was only the completion of the process.

Thirdly, there was a just partiality (he would venture to call it so), which ought to be shewn by an examiner towards a certain class of students, and which, it was obvious, could not enter into the system of examination if conducted by a stranger. It was, the great vice of all examinations, that they afforded a bounty to talent, and did not hold out a sufficient encouragement to patient and meritorious industry. Promptitude and brilliancy were the ruling virtues of an examination, though not of actual life. Such must be the case wherever the examiner was a stranger. An examiner, on the contrary, who well knew the comparative merits of his candidates, though bound to class them only according to what they actually produced (if he did not this, he must be pronounced unworthy of his trust), yet might, and ought so to shape the exercises he proposed, as fairly to do justice to all. He might, and ought so to preside, that talent might not gain an undue predomi nance over acquirement; that dormant knowledge might be elicited, as well as quick and showy parts displayed; and in many cases, this could not possibly be done, without a previous intimacy with the reading of the students.

If he were asked whether it was the habit in other seminaries, that examinations of importance should be conducted by the masters or other teachers themselves, he would say that the habit was, at least, frequent, though undoubtedly many instances of a contrary habit might be cited. Of the latter class were, undoubtedly, the examinations at Eton, quoted by the Hon. Mover, previous to the annual removals to King's College; for, in these, the order in which the pupils should be placed was decided by the provost of King's, and two fellows of the same college, acting specially as examiners. But, it must be observed, that the same distinguished seminary furnished examples of the other mode of examination: for the relative places of the students, in promoting them from a lower to an upper form, were ascertained by an examination, in which the master was the examiner and sole arbiter. This examination was the only one to which the Oppi dans were subject after admission, and it was always conducted in the same manner up to the fifth term, after which they were subject to no farther examination. In

like manner, the well-known and severe examination at Westminster School, by which the relative places of the commoners, elected to be King's scholars, were determined, was an examination purely by the master. Many other instances of the same kind might be referred to; but he would be content with the precedents supplied by his own university. At Cambridge, the distinction to which he had adverted, between a teacher examining young men, all of whom were his own pupils, and one examining his own pupils against others, was practically a good deal observed. In the large colleges, there were more than one tutor in each department; and the different tutors were naturally, in some degree, though in a fair and honourable manner, rivals. Hence, in order to prevent all possibility of cavil, it was not advisable, and in fact was not the practice, that the tutors should be the conductors of the college examinations, inasmuch as, in these, the young men instructed by different tutors came into mutual competition. But, in the small colleges, where there was but one tutor in any one department, the difficulty did not exist; and there the practice was different. In his own college, the tutors were the only examiners; and by them his own place had been fixed in several college examinations, and those of no small severity. In closing this subject, he would beg to observe, that no person who had the opportunity of seeing what was done at the Haileybury examinations, could doubt their efficacy, both as a stimulus and a criterion. He held in his hand a pile, he might say a book, consisting of the printed questions put at one of the examinations. It was not selected, but taken casually; any Proprietor was welcome to inspect it, and no man could inspect it without being satisfied that, if any number of the students could, with tolerable correctness, follow the examiners through an extent of learning and knowledge so considerable (which he was well assured, and, indeed, partly knew to be the case), both the species and the quantity of their studies must be pronounced worthy of high commendation. He would add this fact in favour of those examinations. They had now been going on for nearly twenty years; they were severe : the competition among the youthful candidates was most eager, and for some years, even their relative places in the service, as compared with their contemporaries, had been fixed by the result of the contest; and yet, while so much prejudice had existed against the college in some quarters-while so much had been said, and publicly and clamorously said, in disparagement of other parts of the system-it was a striking fact, that not a whisper, not an insinuation, had even been

breathed, in impeachment of the rigorous fairness and impartiality of the college examinations. (Hear!)

He would now proceed to the consideration of the second object sought to be attained by sending youths to a place of education; he meant the acquisition of friends and acquaintances. In entering on this topic, he felt himself crossed by the objection which, had often been urged against the college, on the ground of its prematurely contracting the student's education and society into a particular channel. It was said that the college tended to form a caste of writers. It seemed to be supposed that these writers were all of the same profession, and that the instruction they received, being adapted to form them for their particular calling, was, therefore, in its nature, professional and illiberal. Surely this opinion was founded on a very mistaken view of the subject. Whatever, indeed, the system was, when it was considered that the students ordinarily resided but two years, and that they were collected from every part of the United Kingdom, and from seminaries of the most various descriptions, it could never be supposed that their residence could have the effect of narrowing, or improperly warping their minds or habits. At no other institution did the succession of inmates change so quickly; it was, therefore, impossible to suppose that much of local prejudice could be formed; the current was too rapid to allow of those accretions which were said to be apt to deform the stagnant marshes of learned establishments. An Hon. Proprietor (Mr. Trant) indeed, had quoted, as conclusive against the system of the college, a writer in a periodical publication, who disapproved of the Oriental test established at the college, as tending improperly to encourage a particular branch of instruction at the expense of the rest. The censure, however, as cited by the Hon. Gentleman, was directed not against an oriental test simply, but against an exclusive oriental test; and the fact was, that since that opinion had been expressed, the college system had been altered in substantial conformity with it. A regulation had been enacted, by which no student could obtain the certificate necessary to his appointment to the service, unless, besides passing the oriental test, he obtained the testimony of good proficiency in one department of European literature, or of proficiency in two. Whether this regulation did enough, was not the question; but it manifestly tended to place the European branches of study on a level with that institution in Eastern literature, which, though an important, could not he deemed a paramount part of the education at the college. It was idle to imagine that a moderate infusion of oriental learn

ing could really have the effect of contracting or illiberalizing the students-of double-dyeing them, as it were, in Indian ink. And, with respect to the other constituent parts of the system, the fact was, Lord Wellesley being the witness, that the situations granted by the Company, under the name of writerships, embraced the utmost variety of professions, and some of these of the most arduous kind; so the system of instruction in use at Haileybury was more various and comprehensive than any other institution, be it school or college, exemplified.

But

it was said that the education of the Company's civil servants ought to be English. And what could be more characteristically English than the education actually received at the place in question? The young men were taught mathematics according to the methods adopted in the English universities; they were instructed in that classical literature, for the successful cultivation of which England was renowned above all other nations; they were initiated in those departments of science, relating to statistical and administrative economy, in which England had taken a conspicuous lead in modern times; lastly, they were introduced to an acquaintance with the interesting study of our laws and constitution, the England (if he might so speak) of England; that specific part of our system, which made England what she was, the glory of the West, and the empress of the East. (Cheers.) It remained to observe, on this head, that if it was important, according to the opinion cited from Lord Grenville, that the young writers, while in England, should be educated at some of our public schools or colleges, no provision for enforcing such a method of education was made by the proposition now before the Court. On the contrary, some of the advocates for that proposition specifically supported it on the ground that it did not enforce a public education; but would enable parents, at their option, to bring up their children in a state of perfect privacy and seclusion. Having answered, as he presumed to hope, the objection urged against the congregating of the young writers, previously to their actual appointment, at a particular seminary, he would now notice the benefits resulting from such a plan. He was not, indeed, aware that some slight adaptation of the views and thoughts of the students to the scene of their future life, as a preliminary to the commencement of their service, could, in itself, operate any disadvantage. On the contrary, he had heard good opinions to a contrary effect; but there was a great and undeniable benefit closely connected with the system. In looking over a number of letters from young civilians in India, who had been educated at Hai

leybury, he had been greatly struck with observing the excellent effects produced by the acquaintances and intimacies which they had contracted at college, and which were cherished after their arrival in the East. Several gentlemen, also of that class, who happened to be in England, had remarked to him, in strong terms, on the benefits to which he referred. of reading from private letters, however, he would refer the Court to some interest. ing observations on this very subject, contained in the publication of the civilian, which he had already had occasion to cite.

Instead

"Previously to the institution of the East-India College, it must constantly have happened that a writer, on setting foot in India, knew not a single individual in that vast empire; and a situation more desolate in itself, or more calculated to excite the sympathetic condolence of those whom he had left, could not well be conceived. At the present day, he becomes acquainted, in the course of his college education, not only with young men of his own standing, but with those also who are either his seniors or his juniors by a year and a half. With many, who are destined to the same presidency as himself, he becomes intimate; with the characters of all, at a period of life when character is best seen, he is made familiar. Thus India is to him no longer a land of strangers. He finds in it a second home; he again meets the companions of his youth. Whatever difficulties the novelty of his situation may at first create, they are removed by friends whom he finds already settled in the country; and, in the course of his future career, he can visit no part of the Indian empire, where he will not be received under the hospitable roof of a fellow-collegian."

This was a picture drawn from the life: Experto credite. The writer spoke from his own feelings and experience. There was yet more, however, to be noticed on this point. The friendships formed at Haileybury did not merely give the young civilian society on his first arrival in India; it gave him important knowledge among the members of the community to which he was introduced; it afforded him the means of selecting his associates; it fortified him against that danger of forming improper or injurious connexions to which a very young man suddenly planted amidst strangers could not but be more or less exposed. He did not speak from imagination. Very judicious men had, from their personal observation, testified to him the good effects which, in this respect, had flowed from the previous acquaintanceship of the writers sent from Haileybury. They had, also, and on the same authority, pointed out another class of benefits arising from the same source. The young writers appointed to the diffe

rent presidencies corresponded with each other freely; they mutually communicated their impressions and opinions on those public subjects, an attention to which was involved in their proper employments; thus an interchange of mental light, and an intercommunion of good feeling, were established; one of the very advantages, which (if he mistook not) had been contemplated by Lord Wellesley, in his original idea of the college of Calcutta, and which seemed thus to be obtained, unattended by the objections that had been thought decisive against the adoption of that splendid plan. Such then, on the whole, was the result of the companionship that constituted a part of the Hertford system. Here attachments grew up, which afterwards ripened into solid friendships; attachments, which might not, in a vulgar sense, conduce to the interest of the parties; but which contributed to their comfort when separated from their immediate families-and not to their comfort merely, but to their moral well-being; and which, while thus promoting private happiness and individual virtue, erected, at the same time, on these excellent foundations, an extensive and increasing superstructure of national and political improvement. (Cheers.)

He would now draw the attention of the Court to the consideration of the said motive, which guided parents in determining the place of education to which they would send their child, namely, the formation of moral habits: understanding that term in its most comprehensive sense. On this important point he had made many inquiries, and with all the care and anxiety which belonged to such a subject, and he would shortly state the result.

As compared with our great public schools, it appeared that there was this distinction in the system at Haileyburythat, whereas in the former, the scholars mingled together indiscriminately: there was at Haileybury, as at the Universities, though not perhaps quite in the same degree (for Haileybury stood in some sense between the two), a power of selecting so. ciety. The students had separate rooms, and were not acquainted, unless introduced. Although, therefore, the restrictions on conduct were in some respects less strict at Haileybury than at a public school, the student was exempt from that promiscuous companionship which was often objected to as one principal mischief attending public schools. At Haileybury, a youth well trained and well advised might select his associates from among the studious and the correct, and in a degree avoid even the acquaintance of the more idle or dissolute.

On the other hand, if compared with our Universities, there could be no doubt that at Haileybury a degree of discipline

was enforced far beyond the standard of academic strictness. He could easily establish this proposition by a detailed comparison; but, unwilling to exhaust attention, he would be content with a quotation from the letter of his Oxonian friend, which he had already cited in part-a perfectly competent testimony on the subject:

"As to the discipline pursued in the East-India College, it always appeared to me to stand mid-way between the discipline of our public schools and that of our colleges. Compared with that of our public schools, it seemed to give a little more freedom of action, because the students found themselves no longer compelled to study, as at school, for fear of the rod, but invited to mental exertion by the promise of encouragement and the hope of reward. The restraints which affected the spending of this time were, and still are, such as are not only unknown to our colleges, but would be considered intolerable if enforced when the students were two or three years more advanced in age than those at the East-India College. What would an under-graduate member of the strictest college in Oxford feel, were he compelled, like the members of the EastIndia College, to attend chapel every morning and evening, to dine in hall every day, and to be within gates every evening soon after dusk, and to be in his own room alone every night at eleven o'clock? At Hertford the use of wine is forbidden: yet at our universities the use of it is freely indulged to young men, who come up to college not two years later in life than the students of the East-India College. Riding on horseback, or driving a gig, hunting and shooting, are sports most rigorously forbidden at the EastIndia College; and if a young man is unable to take long walks, or to use athletic exercise, he has no source of recreation. How different is this from our Universities! Those persons who call out to take away the name of college, and call the East-India College a school, would find, on examining the subject, that the college is already in reality that sort of school, to which they would reduce it as the remedy for every defect. Let men who have passed through an English University examine the discipline of the EastIndia College, and they will be found to confess, that the disturbances which arise there are such as might be expected, from the enforcing a strict discipline upon young men, some of whom will not bear the restraint; whilst others, though apparently in the college with their consent, have both a dislike to appointments in a distant land, and an aversion to the severe studies of the place."

But what, generally speaking, was the actual conduct, in point of correctness, of the students at this institution? He had