PROGRESS OF OUR INDIAN EMPIRE.

PART II.

Ir is related of the Moghul Emperor Baber, that when the idea of conquering India first took possession of his mind, he resolved not to embark on so vast an enterprise till he had made himself thoroughly acquainted with the country and its people. The better to effect this object, he is said to have disguised himself as a religious mendicant, and to have traversed the Panjab and Hindustan, noting the best approaches, marking the strongest positions, collecting the most minute information, and planning the whole scheme of his future military operations.

The result of his circumspection and forethought is well known. It cannot be said of our great generals that they were equally wise in their generation. They conquered by dint of dash and daring, combined, it may be, with occasional master-strokes of strategic skill and astute policy. They were aided by a strong tide of concurrent and cooperating circumstances. But they were innocent of long antecedent explorations of the enemy's ground. They were guiltless of deep-laid plots and tedious predeliberations.

Yet the present Empress of India is more securely seated on the throne of Delhi, than the most successful of the Mogul invaders. English pluck and prowess have effected more than Baber's forethought and energy, Akbar's wisdom and vigilance, Aurangzib's cleverness and cunning. We have surpassed all other conquerors in the completeness of

our material conquest. No power disputes our supremacy over a range of territory extending 2,000 miles from the Himalaya mountains to Adam's Peak. Are we inclined to be puffed up with the conceit of what we have effected? Let the knowledge of what remains to be done dissipate every thought of self-complacency. Let the sense of our failures neutralize all tendency to pride in our successes.

True, we are entitled to some credit. We are able, with a mere handful of our fellow-countrymen, to control two hundred and forty-one millions of Asiatics, to make laws, to administer justice, to preserve the peace. We have changed the whole face of the country by our railways, roads, canals, telegraphs, and public buildings. We have done more than any other Raj to promote the physical prosperity and welfare of the people. We have even laboured successfully to stimulate the intellects and instruct the minds of the upper classes. We have founded Universities, established colleges, built schools, trained teachers, appointed directors of public instruction, and spent large sums on educational institutions, old and new.

All this we have done. Yet infinitely more has been left undone. We have yet to take in hand the poor benighted ryots; to elevate, to enlighten the myriads upon myriads of those who till the ground in the veritable sweat of their brow; to deliver the masses of the population from the tyranny of caste, custom, ignorance, and superstition. The moral conquest of India remains to be achieved. And to effect this second conquest we are wisely discarding all the dash and daring by which our first conquest was secured. We are advancing with careful predeliberation. We are even perhaps a little too tardy in our preliminary investigations. We have only recently instituted a thoroughly organised system of statistical inquiry, of which Dr. Hunter's twenty volumes of Bengal statistics are the first-fruits.

I closed my last paper with a summary of the present educational status in India, and I pointed out that Sir Charles Wood's despatch of 1854 is the basis on which the

whole system rests. Excellent and carefully worded as the whole tenor of that despatch undoubtedly is, it makes one cardinal mistake. It encourages the false idea that instruction is a co-extensive term with education. The despatch had, as we have seen, two main objects. One was to promote the instruction of the higher classes in European science through the medium of English. The other was to provide proper teaching for the lower classes by means of the vernaculars. Its words are: We look to the English language and to the vernacular languages of India together as the media for the diffusion of European knowledge.'

And if our whole educational responsibility is bounded by the instruction of the upper classes of the people in European knowledge, we may perhaps take credit to ourselves for a fairly respectable fulfilment of our obligations.

But if our mission be to educate as well as instruct, to draw out as well as put in, to form the mind as well as inform it, to teach our pupils how to become their future self-teachers, to develop symmetrically their physical as well as mental, moral, and religious faculties, then I fear we have left undone much that we ought to have done, and acquitted ourselves imperfectly of the duties our position in India imposes upon us. Let me first glance at our socalled higher education.

In traversing India from north to south, from east to west, I visited many High Schools, examined many classes, conversed with many young Indians under education at our colleges, and was brought into contact with a large number who had passed the University matriculation examination, as well as with a few who had taken their degrees, and earned distinction for high proficiency. I certainly met some really well-educated men-like Rao Bahadur Gopal Hari Deshmukh, lately appointed a joint-judge— who, by their character and acquirements, were fitted to fill any office or shine in any society. But in plain truth, I was not always favourably impressed with the general results of our higher educational efforts. I came across a

few well-informed men, many half-informed men, and a great many ill-informed and ill-formed men-men, I mean, without true strength of character, and with ill-balanced minds. Such men may have read a good deal, but if they think at all, think loosely. Many are great talkers. They may be said to suffer from attacks of verbal diarrhoea, and generally talk plausibly, but write inaccurately. They are not given to much sustained exertion. Or if such men act at all, they act as if guided by no settled principles, and as if wholly irresponsible for their spoken and written words. They know nothing of the motive power, restraining force, or comforting efficacy of steadfast faith in any religious system whatever, whether false or true. They neglect their own languages, disregard their own literatures, abjure their own religions, despise their own philosophies, break their own caste-rules, and deride their own time-honoured customs, without becoming good English scholars, honest sceptics, wise thinkers, earnest Christians, or loyal subjects of the British Empire.

Yet it cannot be said that we make higher education consist in the mere imparting of information, and nothing more. We really effect a mighty transformation in the character of our pupils. We teach a native to believe in himself. We deprecate his not desiring to be better than his fathers. We bid him beware of merging his personality in his caste. We imbue him with an intense consciousness of individual existence. We puff him up with an overweening opinion of his own sufficiency. We inflate him with a sublime sense of his own importance as a distinct unit in the body politic. We reveal to him the meaning of 'I am,' 'I can,' 'I will,' 'I shall,' and 'I know,' without inculcating any lesson of 'I ought,' and 'I ought not,' without implanting any sense of responsibility to and dependence on an Eternal, Almighty, and All-wise Being for life, for strength, and for knowledge-without, in short, imparting real self-knowledge, or teaching true self-mastery, or instilling high principles and high motives. Such

a system carries with it its own nemesis. After much labour we rulers of India turn out what we call an edueated native. Whereupon he turns round upon us, and, instead of thanking us for the trouble we have taken in his behalf, revenges himself upon us for the injury we have inflicted on his character by applying the imperfect education he has received to the injury of his teachers.

The spitefully seditious writing which our Government has lately found it necessary to repress by summary measures is due to this cause.

And how have we discharged the debt we owe to the lower classes? Let the truth here also be told with all plainness. In their case we have not yet matured any effective scheme-not even for the proper informing of their minds, much less for the proper forming of their characters.

Mr. Thomason, as we have seen, started a system of careful statistical inquiry. He ascertained the generally benighted condition of the masses within the area of his own administration. He was also the first to conceive the idea of stimulating the people to co-operate in educating themselves. It occurred to him that the necessity for registering land under the revenue settlement of the North-western Provinces might be turned to good account. He determined to use it as an incentive to the acquisition of so much knowledge of reading, writing, arithmetic, and measurement as would qualify each man. to look after his own rights. Thereupon he organized a scheme of primary education based on the utilization of indigenous village schools. His method was held up as a model to other local governments. It was wisely followed and improved upon by other administrators, and notably by Sir George Campbell in Bengal. A good beginning has been made in some parts of India. But I fear we have as yet barely stirred the outer surface of the vast inert mass of popular ignorance and superstition.

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