Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/48

34 composition which the heat of the climate would otherwise engender. There is now nothing to prevent the people of India from attaining to the highest eminence in the medical art; and we shall soon be able to make the college entirely national, by replacing the foreign by indigenous professors. The importance of this remarkable step in the progress of native improvement is so generally acknowledged, that even the Hindus of the old school have given in their adherence to the medical college; and the Shasters, with the elasticity peculiar to them, have been made to declare that the dissection of human bodies for medical purposes is not prohibited by them. The establishment of the medical college has received the approbation of the Court of Directors; they have indeed reason to be proud of it as one of the chief ornaments of their administration.

Besides settling the principle of national education, Lord William Bentinck prepared the means of ultimately extending it to the mass of the people. He justly considered that, to place this great work on a solid foundation, it was necessary to ascertain the exact nature and extent of the popular wants, the difficulties and the facilities of the task, and the local peculiarities which might require a partial change of plan. Our know-