Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The President's /wdress, 1597. It has often been my privilege to deliver the Presidential Address before this Society, and I have always endeavoured to impress students, and especially freshmen, with the importance, alike as an advantage and a duty, of becoming members. To-night I do not wish to ring any more changes on the old theme, on which I have already said all that I have to say, but prefer to deal with a subject, which in one of its aspects is not unconnected with the work of an association like the Union, but which is of a somewhat wider interest, and engages, or ought to engage, the attention of all University men. I refer to the question which a little while ago was brought prominently before the public, whether our degrees should be obtainable on examination merely, or only on examination after residence. It is a question of which we assuredly have not heard the last, and it is by n0 means easy to answer. The popular view of the matter seems to bethat our examinations should be open to all comers without limitation or distinction; and this commends itself by its apparent liberality and straightforwardness, perhaps also by its seeming conformity with the ideas of a democratic community. On the other hand, the adherents of the existing system have on their side the weight of authority and the practice of by far the greater number and the most distinguished of kindred institutions: which gives them, too, a primd facie claim to consideration. Clearly neither opinion is one to be dismissed or accepted without serious examination; and as the matter has come within the sphere of practical politics?of politics, I fear, in the strictest sense of the words?it behoves us to set about forming a right estimate of it without delay. In this paper I have discussed only as a gen...