Page:The despatch of 1854, on General education in India.djvu/17

Rh report to us upon the best method of procedure, with a view to their incorporation by Acts of the Legislative Council of India. The offices of Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor will naturally be filled by persons of high station, who have shown an interest in the cause of education; and it is in connection with the universities that we propose to avail ourselves of the services of the existing Council of Education at Calcutta, and Board of Education at Bombay. We wish to place these gentlemen in a position which will not only mark our sense of the exertions which they have made in furtherance of education, but will give it the benefit of their past experience of the subject. We propose, therefore, that the Council of Education at Calcutta, and the Board of Education at Bombay, with some additional members to be named by the Government, shall constitute the Senate of the University at each of those Presidencies.

34. The additional members should be so selected as to give to all those who represent the different systems of education which will be carried on in the affiliated institutions—including natives of India, of all religious persuasions, who possess the confidence of the native communities—a fair voice in the senates. We are led to make these remarks, as we observe that the plan of the Council of Education, in 1845, for the constitution of the Senate of the proposed Calcutta University, was not sufficiently comprehensive.

35. We shall be ready to sanction the creation of an university at Madras, or in any other part of India, where a sufficient number of institutions exist from which properly qualified candidates for degrees could be supplied; it being in our opinion advisable that the great centres of European government and civilization in India should possess universities similar in character to those which will now be founded, as soon as the extension of a liberal education shows that their establishment would be of advantage to the native communities.

36. Having provided for the general superintendence of education, and for the institution of universities, not so much to be in themselves places of instruction, as to test the value of the education obtained elsewhere, we proceed B.