Page:Convocation Addresses of the Universities of Bombay and Madras.djvu/442

 schoolmaster may, I fear, sometimes complain that his lot is cast

' Among a people of children Who thronged me in their cities And asked, not wisdom, Bat charms to charm with. Bat spells to matter.'

Yet another objection is taken. The instruction imparted under the auspices of Universities not being certainly productive of pecuniary results, there will be created a class of discontented men who will abuse their education to subvert social order. It cannot be denied there have been men educated probably in our schools, whose writings suggest,

' You tanght one language, and the profit on't Is, I know how to curse.'

But if our education, as is asserted by the Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta, and as it certainly should do, makes men stronger, wiser, and better than it found them, the men who give a semblance of foundation for the objection are, such as they are, not in consequence of but m spite of the education they have received. The Government of British India, conscious of the integrity of its motives, and impatient of no honest criticism of its measures, has gained far more than it has risked in educating the intelligence of the country to take an interest in, and apprehend its measures. There are, in every Presidency, professional exponents of native opinion, and gentlemen of independent position, who, in virtue of the education they have received, are enabled to render substantial assistance to the Government. May they long

' survive To frustrate prophecies, and raze out Rotten opinion.'

If the sole end of education were the intellectual benefit of the individual student, and still less if it were his pecuniary benefit, the Government would have no justification for expending on higher education a larger sum than would be necessary to produce each year the small supply of trained men required to fill vacancies in the several departments of the public service. The justification for the present expenditure by the State on such education is to be found not in any pretension on the part of the State to provide a remunerative career, or an intellectual training, for a select few of its subjects, but in the avowed purpose, by giving, as far as it can do, a thorough education to the few, to benefit, influence, and elevate through the instrumentality of the educated few those, whom higher education cannot reach. The pledges which