682 
PROFESSOR SEWELL AND THE 
sion can afford any ground of excuse. A college is not a private 
school ; it has a public duty to discharge, and, asking for special 
respect, it is properly deprived of those particular seclusions that 
individuals may maintain. Aspiring to honours, it courts noto- 
riety, and, doing so, it virtually resigns its right to guard itself 
from observation. He who, holding authority under an institution 
of that kind, is styled a Professor, and undertakes to preside over 
the education of not mere boys, but young men, and has a high office 
and heavy obligations to fulfil. The responsibilities of his station 
are the greater, when, connected with a branch of the medical 
profession, he is appointed to fit his pupils to apply principles, and 
to qualify them to deal with the interests of the public. If his 
teaching be erroneous, the consequences cannot be light, and 
therefore the necessity that he should not be exempted from in- 
spection. Young men who come to hear and learn cannot be 
imagined to constitute a class qualified to weigh doctrines or to 
decide upon opinions ; they are not fitted to judge, but need to 
be protected against their judgments being abused. In the eager- 
ness for knowledge fallacy is too greedily accepted, and the gene- 
rosity of youth naturally exposes the student to many dangers. 
Mostly young, seldom highly educated, and generally from the 
country, the veterinary pupil requires more than ordinary protec- 
tion against the possibility of his mind being abused through the 
incapacity or hardihood of his instructors. He is sent from the 
school to practise upon the property of the farmer, who is not 
usually so wealthy as to be able to bear the consequences of his 
ignorance. Himself poor, the veterinary student has not the 
means to acquire those aids which the sons of the affluent can 
procure ; so, for the most part, he is necessitated to depend on the 
information he derives from his teacher. The period of study 
being short, he has not the same leisure for investigation; and, his 
circle being circumscribed, he does not enjoy those advantanges of 
communication which the members of the human medical colleges 
possess. In every respect the veterinary student has special 
claims on public consideration, and these can only be enforced 
through the medium of publicity. If secresy and exclusion are to 
be arbitrarily asserted and authoritatively maintained, the College 
becomes removed from every check, and protected from every limi- 
tation. The young gentlemen who enter it, seduced to do so by a 
name which is warranted by no character such as it implies, are 
virtually given up to the ignorance or caprice of those who, under 
fictitious titles, may conceal failings and vices of the worst de- 
scription. 
In the case of the teachers at the Saint Pancras Institution, all 
those reasons which, upon the professors of other colleges have a 
