Page:The despatch of 1854, on General education in India.djvu/41

Rh 99. We believe that the measures we have determined upon are calculated to extend the benefits of education throughout India; but, at the same time, we must add that we are not sanguine enough to expect any sudden, or even speedy, results to follow from their adoption, To imbue a vast, and ignorant, population with a general desire for knowledge, and to take advantage of that desire when excited to improve the means for diffusing education amongst them, must be a work of many years; which, by the blessing of Divine Providence, may largely conduce to the moral and intellectual improvement of the natives of India.

100. As a Government, we can do no more than direct the efforts of the people, and aid them wherever they appear to require most assistance, the result depends more upon them than upon us; and although we are fully aware that the measures we have now adopted will involve in the end a much larger expenditure upon education from the revenues of India, or, in other words, from the taxation of the people of India, than is at present so applied, we are convinced, with Sir, in words used many years since, that any expense which may be incurred for this object, “will be amply repaid by the improvement of the country; for the general diffusion of knowledge is inseparably followed by more orderly habits, by increasing industry, by a taste for the comforts of life, by exertion to acquire them, and by the growing prosperity of the people.”

We are, &c.

The following brief summary of this despatch, has all the authority of an official document, being written by Mr. Arthur Howell, when “Acting Secretary” to the Government in India, for a Return, ordered by and presented to, the House of Commons, in 1870.