Page:Ramtanu Lahiri, Brahman and Reformer - A History of the Renaissance in Bengal.djvu/110

 in the hands of this body, but under the Church Missionary Society.

But amidst all these efforts in the cause of English education, the Governor-General and his Council remained quite inactive in the matter. They thought only of the revival of classic learning. The project of establishing a Sanskrit College in Tirhoot was given up, because the distance of the place from the metropolis did not admit of proper inspection or superintendence, and with the funds originally intended for it the was founded.

Finding that the claims of English education were entirely ignored by Government, Rammohan Rai, in a letter to Lord Amherst, urged the necessity of giving young India a thorough knowledge of the Occidental sciences through the medium of English. We quote the last paragraph of the letter, which shows how the writer’s master mind was possessed of such broad and exalted ideas as have developed, even in European minds, only in modern times, and such as no Indian intellect, save his, has yet been able to grasp.

The paragraph runs thus:

“If it had been intended to keep the British nation from real knowledge, the Baconian philosophy would not have been allowed to displace the system of the Schoolmen, which was the best calculated to perpetuate ignorance. In the same manner the Sanskrit system of education would be the best calculated to keep this country in darkness, if such had been the policy of British legislature. But as the improvement of the native population is the object of the Government, it will subsequently promote a more liberal and enlightened system of instruction, embracing mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry, anatomy, with other useful sciences, which may be accomplished