Our First Half-Century: A Review of Queensland Progress Based Upon Official Information

by Queensland

HIS EXCELLENCY UNVEILING THE DEDICATION TABLET

His Excellency, having signed the University Bill, and assented to it on behalf of His Majesty the King, handed a copy to Mr. Bell, Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, saying: It is with profound pleasure and great hope that I present this Act to you on behalf of the people of Queensland. (Applause.)

His Excellency: I now proceed to unveil the commemorative tablet which dedicates this house to the University of Queensland.

By pressing a button, His Excellency unveiled a tablet bearing the following inscription:—

DEDICATED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF QUEENSLAND BY HIS EXCELLENCY THE GOVERNOR, SIR WILLIAM MACGREGOR, G.C.M.G., ON BEHALF OF THE PEOPLE OF QUEENSLAND, ON 10TH DECEMBER, 1909, THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF RESPONSIBLE GOVERNMENT IN QUEENSLAND. W. KIDSTON, CHIEF SECRETARY.

The Hon. J. T. BELL (Speaker of the Legislative Assembly) said: Your Excellency, Mr. Kidston, Your Grace, Ladies and Gentlemen,—If I may for a second, before uttering the few sentences I propose to do, mention a personal matter in regard to His Excellency, I should like to do it, and that is to express the consternation I felt at the announcement which His Excellency made that in his opinion all the speeches that are delivered upon this occasion should be of such a character that they may be perused with pleasure and with instruction by those who are celebrating the jubilee of this institution fifty years hence. May I say that I find it sufficiently difficult to cope with my contemporaries without having to make in addition provision for posterity? I listened to His Excellency's address with the greatest satisfaction, as everyone did who heard it, because it was felt to be a fitting deliverance for such an occasion as this. Whether now, or five years hence, or ten years hence, or when the jubilee of this institution is celebrated—as it will be celebrated—anyone who wants authoritative information concerning the present education systems of the world, of the Empire, and particularly of Australia and in regard to this University, can turn to His Excellency's deliverance with the knowledge that he can get all the information there. (Hear, hear.) I at least feel—and so does everyone who has any acquaintance with the fact—sympathy with the allusion which His Excellency made during his remarks to that body of men who are known as the University Extension Council. I do not know how far back their labours began—it was certainly more than ten years—but these men, free from any instinct of self-advertisement, and prompted only by influences that were unselfish, did their very best in our small community years ago, and year after year, to lay the foundations of a university. (Hear, hear.) I am of opinion, although these things are difficult to trace, that it was the labour of these men of the University Extension Council, and their influence upon the public and upon the men in public life, which really laid the foundations of this gathering, and caused the Government of the day to institute the University. I say all honour to those men, and I hope that their names will be perpetuated somewhere or other. (Hear, hear.) I should like to say that in dedicating this building to the purposes of a University, those of us who are Queenslanders born and bred, not of the first but even of the second generation, must feel some interest in the transformation that such an edifice undergoes. I can only hope that it will play its part as well as a University edifice as it did as a Government House. Ever since, I suppose, 1861 or 1862, it has been the home of Her Majesty's or His Majesty's representative in this State. It was the headquarters of the social and political life of the State, and it has, through its various inhabitants, performed its duties well. There is this to be said, that it has housed in the past men of the character that it will house in the future—men who possessed qualifications that equally adapted them to live in this building in the future, and within its new surroundings, as they were qualified to inhabit it in the past. Let us think for a moment of some of the men who have made this building historical. Let us think of Sir George Bowen, our first Governor, a man who, before he became private secretary to Mr. Gladstone, was the representative of the Crown in the Ionian Isles, was an Oxford don, a fellow of his college, and a man with an academic reputation. He came out here and lived with us, and in one way at least his classical impulses have left their impression on the community in the nomenclature of a number of creeks and hills in Southern Queensland. (Hear, hear.) Then we had Lord Lamington, a man of some academic pretensions; but, greatest of all from a university standpoint, we had Lord Chelmsford, a man who was an honour to his college, his university, and to the State which he governed. (Hear, hear.) He was one of the very few men in the public service of Great Britain who had ever come south of the line who were able to say they were fellows of All Souls—(applause)—which represents in university distinction what the V.C. means in the military field. (Applause.) He was a man of qualifications that we were proud to have in our Governor, and I know that when the proposal was made to him that this building which he inhabited should be converted into a university he was one of the first and most enthusiastic advocates of the proposal. (Applause.) Lastly, we come to the last occupant of the building, our present Governor, Sir William MacGregor, and no happier instance can be found of what a university education can do to produce an Empire builder and a stern man of the world than is to be found in the person of His Excellency. Whatever may be the class of inhabitants who are going to labour within these walls in the future, they have had forerunners of whom they have no reason to be ashamed. Just let me add a few sentences more. This building has some distinct advantages from a university point of view. The sole object of a university is not to instruct men to pass examinations; it has a wider sphere than that. There was a time—it existed through ages—when the conception of a university was an institution that turned out scholars. To-day, I venture to say, it has become recognised that the duty and the object of a university is the production of citizens. (Applause.) And you will not produce citizens merely by making them go to lectures and periodically answer questions in an examination. In the university life one of the chief and most valuable features is the comradeship, the common citizenship with the other members of the university, the participation in athletic sports, the esprit de corps that comes from belonging to such an institution. And from that aspect I look with pleasure upon the Brisbane River, only a few yards away, where we shall find in the future, I hope, a university boat club, which club has always been a prominent feature of universities in Great Britain, as it is now becoming in Germany. And in connection with athletics, and especially aquatic athletics, you will find the students of this University will uphold the reputation of British students. (Applause.) I do not propose to speak at any greater length. I am convinced that after the liberal and, as far as we can see at the present time, adequate provision that has been made by the Government of the day for the management of this University, you will see men attending it who will make their mark upon the community. (Hear, hear.) I repeat that I hope that the test of the success of this University is not going to be purely a literary test, though let it be tested in that way too. I am convinced that those who look at the University from the broader standpoint feel confident that this University is not going to turn out merely scholars—merely men who can pass examinations—but is going to turn out men of the world, and is going to have a striking effect upon the tone of our citizenship. (Hear, hear.) I hope that not merely morals, but, in some degree at all events, manners, will be cultivated in this University; and we, a handful of people, who spend comparatively enormous sums every year on primary and secondary education, shall have additional reason to be proud when we see the effects of the University now inaugurating being spread throughout the land. (Applause.) I thank Your Excellency for dedicating this building to the purposes of a University, and I rejoice that we have a man of your character performing such a ceremony. (Applause.)

The Hon. W. KIDSTON: I have here apologies from the Chancellors of the Universities of Melbourne and Tasmania, regretting their inability to be present with us to-day. One of the pleasing features of this celebration is the kindly and friendly way in which the Universities of sister States have received the advent of their younger sister, the University of Queensland. (Hear, hear.) But the Universities of Sydney and Adelaide have done more: they have sent Professor David and Professor Stirling respectively to say a few words to us on this occasion and to wish us Godspeed. I now ask Professor David to speak. (Applause.)

Professor DAVID (Sydney University) said: Your Excellency, Mr. Kidston, Your Grace, and Ladies and Gentlemen,—It is a great honour for me, as representing the elder sister amongst the Universities of Australia, to bring a message of goodwill to our young University—the University of Queensland. (Applause.) It is under happy auspices that this young University is having this grand building, with such fine memories of the past, dedicated to its uses. We have in our present representative of His Majesty a gentleman of ripe scholarship and learning, one who has been throughout his whole life, as he is now and as he long will be too, a great power for good, a great power for all that is uplifting and ennobling to the British Empire—Sir William MacGregor. (Applause.) We have, too, this dedication ceremony performed in the presence of a representative of the Government who has shown that he has the greatest possible grip of all that is needed to make a university such as this young University a People's University; one, too, who has at heart, I know, the good and prosperity of his country—the Honourable the Premier, Mr. Kidston. (Applause.) The present Ministry, with great foresight, have resolved to make this University not merely a University of Brisbane, but the University of Queensland. (Hear, hear.) And it seems to me, as one who has studied university matters for some years in the past, that it is an act of great wisdom on the part of those who have controlled the inception of this movement that they have decided to associate here together the Technical College and the University. (Applause.) I feel sure that the association will make for the good of both these institutions, which never should be divorced from one another, and between which there should be nothing more than friendly rivalry, and always an interchange of courtesy, of hospitality, and of confidence. (Applause.) Another point, and a very important one, which I was delighted to hear from the lips of Mr. Kidston, is that this University is to be able to appeal to the farthest boundaries of this great State, by virtue of these sixty splendid scholarships which the Government have decided to endow—(applause)—that will bring in many boys and girls who otherwise, through remoteness or want of means, would have been unable to avail themselves of this University education. Thus I am sure that, although this University will start, no doubt, with but a small number of students, even amongst the small group of students who may come first to this University the nation will reap no less rich reward than did the University of Sydney when it started with a mere handful of students. That University celebrated its Jubilee only in 1902, and amongst its first handful of students was no less a man than he who was the honoured Chancellor of our University, Sir William Windeyer; than he who did so much not only for New South Wales but Australian science, our late Government Astronomer, Mr. H. C. Russell; than he who is now an ornament to the Bar, an honour to his University, and a great honour to this State and to the whole of this Commonwealth, Sir Samuel Griffith. (Applause.) Certainly it will not be for want of plenty of good material that this University will not flourish, for we in Sydney know of what splendid materials your grammar schools, both for boys and girls, are made, as well as many of your other schools. We know it right well in Sydney, for there, many a time and oft, your boys and girls take prizes over the heads of our own. (Applause.) Then a word in conclusion, and that is this, Your Excellency, and ladies and gentlemen: That, just as in medieval times when the universities were started, Feudalism, which made for isolation and all that was selfish, was broken down chiefly by the University influence, which gathered the people and drew them together in that great bond of brotherhood and learning, so in these troublous times, when class is ranged against class, and when Labour is pitted against Capital, surely we need the levelling influence of a University—not an influence to level down but an influence to level up in a noble, common brotherhood. (Applause.) We need universities as well as we need "Dreadnoughts" and Kitcheners—as we do need them to keep our country foremost in the arts, not only of war—even in war a university may do much; we have a Director of Military Studies at our University at Sydney, and I trust you will have one here—but to keep us foremost in the arts of peace. In the matter of the foundation of the universities of the Old World, you will remember that it was through the Crusaders that those universities were founded. It was the fiery zeal for Faith that started those universities. The Crusaders were brought into contact with the learning of the Eastern World, and so Learning and Faith were brought together in the foundations of those old Universities of Paris and Oxford. Sometimes Learning only flourished: sometimes only Faith: sometimes Reverence only, sometimes Faith. May it be our fervent prayer that in this noble hall both Reverence and Learning shall for ever dwell together in sweet harmony. (Applause.) As representing the older sister University of Sydney, from the bottom of my heart I wish to our young sister University on this historic occasion all goodwill—a message of goodwill, a message of Godspeed. (Applause.)