Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎529v] (183/238)

396 Proceedings of the East India Association.
the present educational budget as a reason why the saving to be effected
by its abolition was not worth a thought. No one attempted to grapple
w r ith my argument, that the choice really lies between abolition and an
enormous increase, the present expenditure being altogether insufficient to
do any real good. Sir C. Stevens naturally said all he could for the system
in the development of which he had taken so active a part; but all the
impartial testimony that I have been able to collect tends to confirm the
doubt expressed by another speaker (Mr. Daru), “ whether primary educa
tion, as given in the vernacular schools in India, is in any real sense
education at all ”; and I repeat that, if not, the money spent on it has not
merely been wasted, but has done positive mischief.
5. The Higher Education .—I am glad to find myself, on one point at
least, in agreement with Mr. Thorburn, who thinks that the commercial
and professional classes might now pay for their own higher education,
with some help from here and there an Indian Carnegie, instead of charging
it on the taxes, nine-tenths of which, he says, are paid by the agriculturists.
At the same time, I admit, so far as the principle is concerned, the sound
ness of Sir C. Stevens’ plea that the Government must train its own servants
to suit its own requirements, and that it may not be always possible to
make candidates for Government employment pay the whole cost of
qualifying themselves for the posts that they desire to fill. For instance,
I find that, in the period covered by the last Quinquennial Review, the
Medical Colleges were a source of considerable expense, while the Law
Colleges were practically self-supporting. I am willing to rank public
expenditure, for the purpose of securing a sufficient supply of competent
army surgeons, sanitary inspectors, and so forth, on the same level of
necessity with the actual pay of soldiers and policemen; but I do not
admit any similar obligation on the State to provide medical aid for persons
not in its service, or medical training preparatory to private practice. It
is a question to be settled by experiment in each branch of the public
service how far commercial competition can be relied on to produce fit
candidates; but much will, of course, depend on the degree of public
confidence that the fittest will really be selected and promoted, and, in
particular, that Europeans will not be promoted over the heads of equally
competent Indians.
With this exception, I should like to see the Government withdraw, not
only from financial, but from every sort of responsibility for the higher
education, and this for the very reason that leads Mr. Pennington to desire
its continuance—namely, because, like him, I want to hasten the day when
the people of India will be able to take charge of their own affairs. I
agree with him as to the end, but differ as to the means. I believe that
at the stage now reached the best preparation for self-government is self-
education, using the former term in its conventional sense to denote
co-operative and indigenous, as opposed to despotic and foreign, govern
ment, and meaning by the latter voluntary, as opposed to compulsory,
co-operation for educational purposes, which, of course, implies popular
and diversified, as opposed to official and uniform, choice of subjects and
methods.