Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/120

106 say for the sake of which they attend. These bounties on learning are the worst of bounties; they draw to a particular line a greater number of persons than that line would, without artificial encouragement, attract, or than the state of society requires. They also paralyze exertion. A person who does not want to learn a particular language or science is tempted to commence the study by the stipend; as soon as he has got the stipend he has no motive for zealously prosecuting the study. Sluggishness, mediocrity, absence of spirited exertion, and resistance to all improvemenimprovement [sic] are the natural growth of this system.

It is also of particular importance in such a country as India, and on such a subject as popular education, that the government should have some certain test of the wishes of its subjects. As long as stipends were allowed, students would of course have been forthcoming. Now the people must decide for themselves. Every facility is given, but no bribes; and if more avail themselves of one kind of instruction than of another, we may be sure that it is because such is the real bent of the public mind. But for the abolition of stipends, false systems might have been persevered in from generation to generation, which, with an appear-