Page:Report on public instruction in the lower provinces of the Bengal presidency (1850-51).djvu/29

Rh faults of both grammar and orthography. As I am not of the number of those who entertain the idea that it is possible, even if it were desirable, that English should at any time supersede Bengali as the general language of the country, and looking to our educated students as the channels through whom mainly European ideas and opinions are to be communicated to the mass of their countrymen, I must consider it a thing deeply to be regretted, that they are not as highly distinguished by the elegance with which they speak and write their own language, as by the command which they have gained over ours. But, while I repeat and enforce the advice which I gave you last year on this topic, I desire not to be confounded with those who seem to think that the study of the vernacular languages of India cannot be promoted, without lowering at the same time the high standard of proficiency at which we have hitherto aimed for our English scholars.

“I have been led to revert to this subject by the report of a speech which I have read only since I came into this city, made by Sir, the President of the Board of Education at Bombay, when lately distributing prizes to the students of the , the principal place of education on that side of India. Not only from that speech, but from the last printed report of the proceedings of the Bombay Board of Education, I perceive that questions are yet, or have been very lately agitated there, which were formerly fiercely debated in Bengal; but which, until I thus found them re-opened, I believe to have been definitively settled. From the correspondence and minutes published on this subject under the sanction of the Government of Bombay, I learned with equal surprise and alarm that an opinion, I trust not a deliberate one, had been promulgated by a leading member of the Government, a man of great ability, high station, and much influence in the Councils of that Presidency, that the great use of our educational establishments is to improve the subordinate classes of officers in the public service; and that all systems are erroneous which do not keep steadily in view this their main purpose. I found, with more alarm than surprise, that the enunciation of this opinion had nearly led Sir Erskine Perry to resign his office of President of the Board. The immediate danger seems to have passed over: nevertheless I also take this opportunity of publicly and solemnly protesting against this declaration and doctrine. That is not the work I have been commissioned to undertake: that is not the work I would have consented to superintend. The scope of my views and that of the Government by whose authority