r power
must be a curse to themselves and to the State.

This, Sir, is my defence. From the clamour of our accusers I appeal with
confidence to the country to which we must, in no long time, render
an account of our stewardship. I appeal with still more confidence
to future generations, which, while enjoying all the blessings of an
impartial and efficient system of public instruction, will find it
difficult to believe that the authors of that system should have had
to struggle with a vehement and pertinacious opposition, and still more
difficult to believe that such an opposition was offered in the name of
civil and religious freedom.

*****

INAUGURAL SPEECH AT GLASGOW COLLEGE. (MARCH 21, 1849) A SPEECH DELIVERED
AT THE COLLEGE OF GLASGOW ON THE 21ST OF MARCH, 1849.

At the election of Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow, in
November, 1848, the votes stood thus: Mr Macaulay, 255; Colonel Mure,
203. The installation took place on the twenty-first of March, 1849;
and after that ceremony had been performed, the following Speech was
delivered.

My first duty, Gentlemen, is to return you my thanks for the honour
which you have conferred on me. You well know that it was wholly
unsolicited; and I can assure you that it was wholly unexpected. I
may add that, if I had been invited to become a candidate for your
suffrages, I should respectfully have declined the invitation. My
predecessor, whom I am so happy as to be able to call my friend,
declared from this place last year in language which well became him,
that he would not have come forward to displace so eminent a statesman
as Lord John Russell. I can with equal truth affirm that I would
not have come forward to displace so estimable a gentleman and so
accomplished a scholar as Colonel Mure. But Colonel Mure felt last
year that it was not for him, and I now feel that it is not for me,
to question the propriety of your decision on a point of which, by the
constitution of your body, you are the judges. I therefore gratefully
accept the office to which I have been called, fully purposing to use
whatever powers belong to it with a single view to the welfare and
credit of your society.

I am not using a mere phrase of course, when I say that the feelings
with which I bear apart in the ceremony of this day are such as I find
it difficult to utter in words. I do not think it strange that, when
that great master of eloquence, Edmund Burke, stood where I now stand