Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/32

 Government Circular of 28th January 1859, in which objection was taken to the employment of native agency for the promotion of education, and the Collector was warned not to attempt to persuade the people to send their children to the schools or to contribute to the maintenance. Against these orders Mr. Hume, in a letter of 30th March 1859, respectfully, but earnestly protested, pointing out that the Court of Directors had directed officers "to aid with all the influence of their high position the extension of education." He further explains, in considerable detail, why he believes that it is through the influence of their own leaders that the people can best be convinced of the benefits of education ; and he concludes on a personal note of deep pathos : "I cannot," he says, "but found hopes of indulgence on the intense interest that I feel in the subject, and the ceaseless attention that I have paid it. For years past it has been the dream of my leisure moments, the object of my hopes, and although I have achieved little as yet, I cannot as I watch the feeble beginnings avoid recalling an alpine scene of happy memories, when I saw the first drops of a joyous stream trickling through the huge avalanche that had so long embayed it, and feeling confidence from that augury that day by day and month by month that tiny rill gathering strength and size will work out its resistless way, and at last dissipating the whole chilling mass of ignorance, the accumulations of ages, pass on unobstructed to fertilize and enrich an empire. History, alas ! presents us with too many examples of the long obstructed stream hurling aside at last roughly its opposing barriers and sweeping onwards an ungovernable flood heaping up desolation where it should have scattered flowers. Let it be ours to smooth and not impede its path, ours not by cold explanations of policy but by enlisting the sympathies