Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/195

Rh tablished the identity of our Indian empire, and the Government has since been occupied in remodelling the different departments of administration on this principle. All the provinces of this empire are to have the same criminal and civil law, the same post-office and commercial regulations; and it is surely not of less importance that they should have the same system of public instruction. Our subjects have set out on a new career of improvement: they are about to have a new character imprinted on them. That this national movement should be taken under the guidance of the State, that the means at our disposal should be equally distributed, that each province should profit by the experience of all the rest, that there should be one power to regulate, to control, to urge the indolent, to restrain the over-zealous, to lead on the people by the same or corresponding means to the same point of improvement, will hardly be denied to be as conducive to the welfare of our subjects as it will be to the popularity and permanency of our dominion over them.

The Bengal Education Committee was bound to keep a single eye to the enlightenment of the people, that being the object for which they had been associated as a public body, and for which the administration of a portion of the reve-