Page:Macaula yʼs minutes on education in India, written in the years 1835, 1836 and 1837 (IA dli.csl.7615).pdf/54

Rh suffered even to be candidates. But it does not appear to me that Mr. Mangles’s proposition modified as Mr. Bird suggests, is open to this objection. I therefore am disposed to adopt it.

As to jobbing and favouritism, I defy any human being to shew any manner in which this system can possibly tend to increase jobbing or favouritism. The objections to it are of quite a different kind. It has no tendency whatever to enable men in power to promote unfit candidates for office. The danger is that it may prevent men in power from promoting people whom they know to be deserving, but who have not the prescribed diploma. It is a check on the freedom of the dispensers of patronage, and like all such checks, tends to render favouritism more difficult. It is in this respect analogous to the rules which limit the amount of salary to be drawn by young Civil Servants, and the number of officers who may be taken from duty with a regiment, for staff employment. These rules may be good or bad, but every body knows that they render it much more difficult than it would otherwise be for a Governor to gratify his favourites.

It is true that, under the proposed system, favouritism and jobbing may still be practised,—if there should be collusion between the dispensers of patronage and the examiners. But in the first place it is in the highest degree improbable that there will be such collusion. In the next place, if there should be such collusion in every case, we still shall be only where we now are. The worst that can happen will be that unfit men will be appointed after a pretended examination. Under the present system they may be appointed without any examination at all.

When I express my assent to Mr. Mangles’s proposition, I do not mean that I agree with him in thinking that lectures on Jurisprudence and Political Economy ought to he instituted at our great schools. It may be very true that elementary knowledge is better than no knowledge. But the danger is that what may be taught may be not elementary truth, but positive error. Elementary knowledge in reading may be taught by a very ignorant person. A and B, are written and pronounced in the same way by the most learned scholar and by the most foolish old woman. It is the same with the elements of Arithmetic. A very inferior man may be able to teach addition and multiplication as well as Sir. But I do not see that there is any thing in such sciences as Political Economy and Jurisprudence which is analogous to the horn-book and the multiplication table. The greatest men who have written on those sciences are at variance about the very first principles. It is rather amusing and may be useful to observe that Mr.