Page:Viscount Hardinge and the Advance of the British Dominions into the Punjab.djvu/68

64 the native students, remarking how admirably they delivered some of Shakespeare's finest speeches, and how on examination they explained with intelligence and fluency the passages which they had recited. He concluded his address by giving his hearers a practical account of the magic powers of steam and electricity, and announced amid cheers the appointment of one of the students as a deputy-magistrate for special proficiency in the English language.

The seed thus sown has borne good fruit. Not only has the native youth come forward to compete with English students in examinations in England, but in every Council in India native representatives now take their seats by the side of their English colleagues, thereby adding weight and stability to our institutions.

Almost contemporaneously with this Education Minute, the Governor-General issued another notification of special interest to the poorer classes of the community. This was a reduction of the salt duty, which was at that time levied on different principles and at different rates in the three Presidencies. The reduction applied only to Bengal, where the supply of salt was then chiefly derived from a Government monopoly of manufacture, somewhat similar to the existing opium system, although importation from England, which has now almost entirely superseded this local manufacture, had even then begun. At that time the rate of duty in Bengal was three and a-quarter rupees per maund (80 lbs.), contrasting with