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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 17, Issue 923, 21 January 1871, Page 2

Judge Richmond, addressing the boys of the Nelson College recently, said :—I do not disguise from you, that you, as Colonially educated youths, are under certain disadvantages. We are here destitute of that felt and most visible pfesenee and majesty of a powerful state, of which I have tried to describe the effect. There is as yet no such thing as a Colonial people. I hear talk of " the people of Victoria," " the people of New South Wales," but there is as yet no such thing—nothing worthy of the name here or there. We are not a people, we are not a natiop, nor do I see any sign of our speedily becoming such, This is a great want, looking at it merely from an edu* cational point of view; not, I hope, wholly irremediable, or even incapable of of being turned by a thoroughly right spirit from a defect into an advantage, yet still a great danger. Those who are at home enjoy the benefit of a University education, feel in forpe those great social impulses which make a man forget himself. There the faculty of reverence is, stimulated at once; nourished by the presence, and it may be by the personal intercourse of men illustrious in every department of science and literature. There again you have shed down upon you, as it were, the silent influence of venerable monuments of antiquity, which abound in the oldest cities of Europe, and especially in many of the great seats of learning, Here no vast cathedrals bring home to us the littleness an 4 the brevity of the individual life of man. No gray cloisters and shady quadrangles, full of memories of the past, exalt and chasten the minds of our students. We must be content to read" of such things an<\ for them.