Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎523v] (171/238)

384 Proceedings of the East India Association.
penny per head, so that there was really only that fraction of difference
between them—half a farthing. But if the poverty of India was to be the
occasion of making a reduction in the expenditure on education, he did
hope that everyone who could would speak out strongly against any
starving of the Education Department. (Hear, hear.) He differed entirely
from the author of the paper when the latter argued that it was not the
duty of the Government to educate the people of a country, and that
the people of India because of their poverty should be left to provide for
their own education as their very limited resources would permit. In any
country at the present time, seeing how greatly education affected the
status of a country, such a policy would be fatal; but in India, where the
Government was everything, and where authority carried a weight that
had no parallel in any European country—official-ridden as some Con
tinental nations were—to divorce the State from education would be to do
the people of India an almost irremediable mischief and serious lasting
harm. Sir Roland Wilson had put his proposal forward in a very kindly
spirit, and with a view to relieve the people of India from some of the
burden of taxation that now weighed so heavily upon them ; but the
amount of money spent on State-aided education in India was not as much
as that which was given as a special allowance to the servants of the State
when the value of the rupee became very low. If it were proposed
to make such a saving as was estimated, he could imagine Indian publicists,
when this paper with its recommendations came before them, urging that
it was in that direction, and not in starving State-aided education in India,
that a reduction should be made. If thought for the people had been the
predominant idea in Sir Roland Wilson’s mind, he would not have talked
of education as a “ fancy expenditure.” Expenditure on education at the
present time, when they saw' the educated nations were getting more and
more to the front, could scarcely be rightly denominated as “ fancy
expenditure.” A few evenings ago at a similar meeting to the present he
had been gently chided by a friend, whom he saw there that afternoon, for
comparing the people of India and their condition with the people of
European countries and their condition. In that criticism he had been
misunderstood. To-day, if he instituted a comparison, it would be between
the people of India and other Asiatic peoples—with Japan, for example.
The example which, more than all others, the people in India had before
them at the present time, and wished to follow, was that of Japan.
Nowhere had education justified beyond all doubt the desirability and
advantage of the Government undertaking the education of the people
than in that country. Deal with the Indian people educationally as Japan
had been dealt with, and India, too, would rise high in the scale of nations
as Japan had done. A great portion of the paper only related to the educa
tion of the masses, and not so much to those who received the benefits of
higher education ; but the more one looked into the paper, and endeavoured
to ascertain what the author was really driving at, it seemed that he desired
that higher education should also be restricted, and he threw out the
prospect or bribe of simultaneous examinations for the higher branches of
the Civil Service as a reason why the people of India would themselves