uninstructed visitor. They are also too expensive. Heavy stamp duties still exist; they were originally imposed partly as a means of obtaining revenue to meet the expenses of the courts, and partly under the unfortunate notion, not yet altogether exploded, that needless litigation is encouraged by making recourse to the courts cheap and easy.

164

LECTURE VII.

EDUCATION IN INDIA.

THE FIRST ESTABLISHMENT OF COLLEGES IN BENGAL-CONTROVERSY BETWEEN THE ADVOCATES OF ORIENTAL AND ENGLISH STUDY-LORD MACAULAY IN 1835-THE EXISTING SYSTEM OF HIGHER EDUCATION-NEGLECT OF PRIMARY EDUCATION-SYSTEM LAID DOWN BY LORD HALIFAX-ITS MAIN FEATURES THE INDIAN UNIVERSITIES COLLEGES TECHNICAL EDUCATION -CHARACTER OF COLLEGIATE INSTRUCTION-MISSIONARY INSTITUTIONSEDUCATION OF MOHAMMEDANS-THEIR DISLIKE OF EXISTING SYSTEMSIR SYAD AHMAD KHAN-THE COLLEGE ESTABLISHED BY HIM-THE EDUCATION OF NATIVE CHIEFS AND NOBLES-THE MAYO COLLEGE-SECONDARY EDUCATION-HIGHER AND MIDDLE SCHOOLS-PRIMARY EDUCATION-ITS PROGRESS-FEMALE EDUCATION-LADY DUFFERIN'S ASSOCIATION-EXPENDITURE ON EDUCATION-GENERAL RESULTS-EXTREME IGNORANCE OF THE PEOPLE-SMALL NUMBER OF HIGHLY EDUCATED MEN-NUMBER OF OFFICERS IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE WHO HAVE PASSED UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS-THE DANGERS OF THE PREVAILING IGNORANCE-DISREGARD OF ORIENTAL LITERATURE-DEFECTS OF EXISTING SYSTEM-SIR HENRY MAINE ON THE EFFECTS PRODUCED BY THE STUDY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE-THE WANT OF A HISTORY OF BRITISH INDIA-THE INACCURACY AND BAD FAITH OF MILL'S HISTORY-LITTLE ABOUT INDIA TAUGHT IN OUR COLLEGES.

It was only during the later times of the East India Company's Government that the promotion of education in India was considered one of the duties of the State. The encouragement, however, of Oriental learning had long, to some extent, been acknowledged to be a matter of importance, both for its own sake, and because a knowledge of Mohammedan and Hindu law was necessary in the civil and criminal courts. To Warren Hastings belongs the honour of having founded, in 1782, the first college in Bengal, and it was maintained for some years at his expense. It was especially in

tended to encourage the study of Arabic and Persian literature and Mohammedan theology, to qualify the Mohammedans of Bengal for the public service, chiefly in the courts of justice, and to enable them to compete on more equal terms with the Hindus for employment under Government.' In 1791, a college with similar objects, but designed to cultivate the laws, literature, and religion of the Hindus, and specially to supply qualified Hindu assistants to European judges,' was established at Benares. A few more institutions of a similar kind were founded, but as time went on the demand for other forms of education rapidly increased. A long controversy took place, in which there was much exaggeration on both sides, between the advocates of Oriental and English study; the former desired to give more liberal help to students of Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian, and to encourage the production of literary and scientific works in the Oriental languages; the latter maintained that all the higher branches of knowledge should be taught through the medium of English alone. The controversy virtually ended in 1835 with a minute by Lord Macaulay, who was then a member of the Governor-General's Council in Calcutta. Nothing could exceed the contempt which in his picturesque sentences he poured forth on the whole literature of the East.

"The question before us,' he wrote, 'is simply whether, when it is in our power to teach this language-English-we shall teach languages in which, by universal confession, there are no books on any subject which deserve to be compared to our own; whether, when we can teach European science, we shall teach systems which, by universal confession, wherever they differ from those of Europe, differ for the worse; and whether, when we patronise sound philosophy and true history, we shall countenance, at the public expense, medical doctrines which

would disgrace an English farrier, astronomy which would move laughter in the girls at an English boarding-school, history abounding with kings thirty feet high and reigns thirty thousand years long, and geography made up of seas of treacle and seas of butter.'

The influence of Lord Macaulay was irresistible. The Government of Lord William Bentinck decided that the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European literature and science among the natives of India, and that all the funds appropriated for the purpose of education would be best employed on English education alone.' Although some of the old institutions were allowed to go on teaching in a feeble way the classical languages of the East, the conclusion virtually arrived at was that Oriental studies required no encouragement from the State.

During the next ten or fifteen years a good deal of progress was made in the establishment of colleges and schools by the Government and by missionary societies. Very little was thought at that time about primary education for the masses of the people. Education, it was said, would gradually 'filter downwards.'

So far as higher education is concerned, the principles laid down in 1835 have been in the main adhered to ever since.

There were some exceptions to the general neglect of primary education which followed the measures taken in 1835. In the North-Western Provinces, in particular, their wise and enlightened LieutenantGovernor, James Thomason, laid the foundations of a great system of elementary village schools; but it was not until 1854 that the duty of the State in regard to this matter was distinctly recognised. In that year orders, for which Lord Halifax (then Sir

Charles Wood) was mainly responsible, were sent by the Court of Directors to India, and the despatch containing them has been not improperly called the charter of education in India.' I shall quote, from the Report of the Indian Education Commission of 1883, a summary of its contents; it will show the system on which the Government has been working ever since :

'The immediate aims of the Government were the same as those to which the attention of every European State was first directed when organising its system of public instruction. The existing schools of all kinds were to be improved and their number increased, systematic inspection was to be established, and a supply of competent teachers was to be provided. But in India the attitude of the State to national education was affected by three conditions to which no European State could furnish a parallel. In the first place, the population was not only as large as that of all the European States together that had adopted an educational system, but it presented, in its different provinces, at least as many differences of creed, language, race, and custom. Secondly, the ruling power was bound to hold itself aloof from all questions of religion. Thirdly, the scheme of instruction to be introduced was one which should culminate in the organisation of a literature and science essentially foreign. While, therefore, on the one hand, the magnitude of the task before the Indian Government was such as to make it almost impossible of achievement by any direct appropriation from the resources of the empire, on the other, the popular demand for education-so important a factor in the success of the European systems-had to be created. The Government adopted the only course which circumstances permitted. It was admitted that "to imbue a vast and ignorant population with a general desire for knowledge, and to take advantage of the desire when excited to improve the means for diffusing education among them, must be the work of many years; as a Government, we can do no more than direct the efforts of the people, and aid them wherever they appear to require most assistance.

Under the orders of 1854, supplemented by later in