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24 During Lord Auckland's prolonged absence from Calcutta the question of education still figured in the business of his Council. The old controversy between the advocates of English teaching and the Orientalists or friends of Sanskrit and Arabic had not been wholly silenced by the victory of the former in 1835. Under Bentinck's Resolution of March 7, certain grants of public money had been withdrawn from those Native colleges in which the old classical languages of the East were alone taught. By means of those grants many a poor scholar had been enabled to pursue the studies on which his future depended. In his Minute of November, 1839, Lord Auckland sought to redress a manifest grievance by decreeing that Government scholarships should not be confined to English-teaching colleges alone. This concession to a just demand annoyed the more thorough-going friends of European learning; and the zealous Scotch missionary, Dr. Alexander Duff, who had pioneered the triumph of the modern or Anglicist school, took up his parable against any compromise with the absurd old systems of the East. But even Dr. Duff's eloquence failed to convince the Government of its alleged backsliding.

A few mouths later Lord Auckland's Council enacted certain reforms demanded or suggested by the changed conditions of our rule in India. Many