Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎453r] (30/238)

Suitable to the Present Circumstances of India ? 243
should be spent, there is absolute agreement as to the
necessity for spending much more than at present if any
real good is to be done, and nowhere have I seen
suggested any figure, however large, on attaining which
they will cease to ask for more. There was, indeed, some
appearance of finality in the original aim of the founders of
State education in India. It was to impart to the limited
class of natives who would have been employed in adminis
trative work under a native Government so much of Western
learning as they could be induced to receive, in order to fit
them for co-operating with Europeans in the same kind of
work. It might reasonably be expected that when once
the money value of the new knowledge came to be under
stood, it would be spontaneously sought and paid for, so
that the institutions for higher education would in time
become self-supporting; and it was hoped that then the
wisdom of the few would in some natural way filter down
among the masses. But the case was entirely altered
when the Despatch of 1854 proclaimed “the importance
of placing the means of acquiring useful and practical know
ledge within the reach of the great mass of the people.”
As a matter of fact, no public money has been saved
even on higher education since that date, in spite of a
largely increased income from fees and voluntary contri
butions, and in spite of a gradual change from the method
of direct management to that of “ grants-in-aid.” But if
there had been any saving under this head, it would have
been sunk, with all other surplus revenue, in the bottomless
morass of what we are pleased to call education of the
masses. The Commissioners of 1883 actually speak of
“ protecting the right of the masses to receive primary
education, not only against the encroachments of expendi
ture upon public works and other demands which local
boards have to meet, but also against those demands which
fall upon provincial revenues.” If it is the “ right ” of every
child of school-going age to receive a benefit, which only
one in twelve is at present actually receiving, the prospect
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