Page:The Marquess of Hastings, K.G..djvu/218

210 committed to his care by education, and his repudiation of the narrow policy which unfortunately animated so many Europeans who lived in India.

'This Government,' he said, 'will never he influenced by the erroneous position that to spread information among men is to render them less tractable and less submissive to authority. ... It would be treason against British sentiment to imagine that it ever could be the principle of this Government to perpetuate ignorance in order to secure paltry and dishonest advantages over the blindness of the multitude .'

Again, commenting upon some brutal and deliberate crimes commited by sepoys he says: —

'The gain of four or five rupees or the gratification of the most petty pique, seems quite enough to urge the sepoy to the cold-blooded murder of his fellow-soldier and intimate companion. The cause lies in this, that the perpetrator has no conception of the atrocity of the act. Let this be the answer to those who contend that it is unwise to disseminate instruction among the multitude. Absence of instruction necessarily implies destitution of morality. God be praised, we have been successful in extinguishing a system of rapine which was not only the unremitting scourge of an immense population, but depraved its habits by example, and inflicted necessities, while it stood an obstacle to every kind of improvement. It is befitting the British name and character that advantage should be taken of the opening which we have effected, and that establishments should be introduced or stimulated by us which may rear a rising generation in some knowledge of social duties .'