Page:The despatch of 1854, on General education in India.djvu/19

Rh colleges, for sufficient instruction in the English and vernacular languages, so as to render the studies of each most available for that general diffusion of European knowledge which is the main object of education in India.

39. It is to this class of institutions that the attention of Government has hitherto been principally directed, and they absorb the greater part of the public funds which are now applied to educational purposes. The wise abandonment of the early views with respect to native education, which erroneously pointed to the classical languages of the East as the media for imparting European knowledge, together with the small amount of pecuniary aid which, in the then financial condition of India, was at your command, has led, we think, to too exclusive a direction of the efforts of Government towards providing the means of acquiring a very high degree of education for a small number of natives of India, drawn, for the most part, from what we should here call the higher classes.

40. It is well that every opportunity should have been given to those classes for the acquisition of a liberal European education, the effects of which may be expected slowly to pervade the rest of their fellow-countrymen, and to raise, in the end, the educational tone of the whole country. We are, therefore, far from underrating the importance, or the success, of the efforts which have been made in this direction; but the higher classes are both able and willing, in many cases, to bear a considerable part at least of the cost of their education; and it is abundantly evident that in some part of India no artificial stimulus is any longer required in order to create a demand for such an education as is conveyed in the Government Anglo-vernacular colleges. We have, by the establishment and support of these colleges, pointed out the manner in which a liberal education is to be obtained, and assisted them to a very considerable extent from the public funds. In addition to this, we are now prepared to give, by sanctioning the establishment of universities, full development to the highest course of education to which the natives of India, or of any other country, can aspire; and besides, by the division of university degrees and distinctions into different branches, the exertions of highly educated