ablest supporter of the India Bill while it was being debated in the House of Commons. In the following year he was appointed to be President of the General Committee, and he forthwith became the leader of the Anglicists-Messrs. Bird, Saunders, Bushby, Trevelyan and J. R. Colvin. Opposed to them were the Orientalists-the Hon'ble H. Shakespear, Messrs. H. Thoby Princep, James Princep, W. H. Macnaghten and T. C. C. Sutherland (Secretary to the Committee). Lord Macaulay declined to take an active part in the proceedings of the Committee until the decision of the Supreme Government had been given on the main question at issue. Both parties addressed the Government, and argued their points with all the force of conviction. Their letters came before Lord Macaulay in his capacity of Legal Member of the Supreme Council, and then it was that he penned his masterful and brilliant Minute of the 2nd February 1835. Lord William Bentinck's Resolution of 1835 Lord William Bentinck was confirmed in his own views, and in his Resolution of the 7th March 1835, he gave his verdict in favour of the Anglicists : RESOLUTION.-" The Governor-General of India in Council has attentively considered the two letters from the Secretary to the General Committee of Public Instruction, dated 21st and 22nd January last, and the papers referred to in them. "His Lordship in Council is of opinion that the great object of the British Government ought to be the promotion of European Literature and Science amongst the natives of India, and that all the funds appropriated for the purposes of education would be best employed on English education alone. "It is not the intention of His Lordship in Council to abolish any college or school of native learning, while the native population shall appear to be inclined to avail themselves of the advantages which it affords; and his Lordship in Council directs that all the existing professors and students at all the institutions under the superintendence of the Committee shall continue to receive their stipends. But His Lordship in Council decidedly objects to the practice which has hitherto prevailed, of supporting students during the period of their education. He conceives that the only effect of such a system can be to give artificial encouragement to branches of learning which, in the natural course of things, would be superseded by more useful studies; and he directs that no stipend shall be given to any student who may hereafter enter at any of these institutions, and that when any professor of oriental learning shall vacate his situation, the Committee shall report to the Government the number and state of the class, in order that the Government may be able to decide upon the expediency of appointing a successor. "It has come to the knowledge of the GovernorGeneral in Council that a large sum has been expended by the Committee in the printing of oriental works. His Lordship in Council directs that no portion of the funds shall hereafter be so employed. "His Lordship in Council directs that all the funds which these reforms will leave at the disposal of the Committee be henceforth employed in imparting to the native population a knowledge of English Literature and Science, through the medium of the English language; and His Lordship in Council requests the Committee to submit to Government with all expedition a plan for the accomplishment of this purpose." Zilla Schools established. In giving effect to the instructions conveyed in the above Resolution, Zilla Schools, in which English and the local vernacular were taught, were established at the headquarters of half the districts in Bengal, with the intention of opening others in the remaining half. The average cost of each school was Rs. 250 a month. The scheme was that these zilla schools should form the basis of whatever system of popular education might eventually be introduced. The next step in contemplation was to extend these schools from the town to the country-from the influential few to the masses of the people. The Doctrine of Filtration. The whole outlook is briefly described by Trevelyan in his "Education in India" (1838):-"Materials of a national system must be prepared in the zilla seminaries before they can be employed in the organization of the pargana and village schools. The youth of the upper and middle classes, both in the town and country, will receive such an education at the head station of the zilla as will make them willing and intelligent auxiliaries to us hereafter, in extending the same advantages to the rest of their countrymen.* The Place of the Zilla School in the Scheme for General Education. "The zilla seminaries will be the normal schools, in which new sets of village schoolmasters may be trained, and to which many of the existing schoolmasters will be induced to resort to obtain new lights in their profession. The books and plans of instruction which have been tried and found to answer in the zilla seminaries, will be introduced into the pargana and village schools. In short, the means of every description for establishing a system of national instruction, will be accumulated at the central points; and our future operations are likely to be unembarrassed and efficacious in proportion as this foundation is well and securely laid. We have at present only to do with outlines, but they should be drawn with strict reference to the details which will hereafter have to be filled in.” The Forces behind the Educational Reforms in India. The creed of the Anglicists, the Minute of Macaulay and the Resolution of Bentinck came not by accident. In Great Britain, Cowper, Crabbe, Blake and Burns had invested the lives of the poor with nobility and interest. This "Doctrine of Filtration" was destined to disappoint those who put their trust in it. Wordsworth had preached the fuller gospel of God and Nature and Man. The public schools of England had come under the quickening influence of Arnold of Rugby. Home legislation had been ameliorating the condition of the lower and middle classes of society. The Reform Bill of 1832 had placed political power in the hands of the enlightened middle classes. In 1833, during the administration of Earl Grey, slavery had been abolished in the colonies at a cost to the nation of twenty millions. In 1834 a system of national education had been initiated by a Parliamentary grant towards the erection of schools, and the growing evil of pauperism had been checked by the enactment of the New Poor Law. In 1835 the Municipal Corporations Act had restored to the inhabitants of towns those rights of self-government of which they had been deprived since the fourteenth century. Lord Bentinck and his colleagues were under the spell of the hour. What more natural than that they should find in the progressive movements in the homeland the impulses of their dealings with the peoples of India? In India itself the times were propitious to administrative and domestic reforms. Wars had ceased. With the return of peace it was possible to give attention to internal affairs. Accordingly sati, infanticide and human sacrifice were proscribed. The thugs were exterminated. The people's vernacular supplanted Persian as the court language. Slavery was abolished. Freedom of the press was advocated. Indians of capacity and education were admitted to the higher appointments in the Executive and Judicial Services. It was therefore necessary that what funds were available should be expended upon the education of the many in English, and not upon the education of the few in Sanskrit and Arabic. But Bentinck did not stop here. He was anxious to improve the lot of the masses. He recollected that the Committee of Public Instruction had been charged to advise the Government what measures should be adopted for the spread of education among the people. This had t not yet been done. It was, therefore, still requisite that a survey should be made of the condition of indigenous education; and the Rev. W. Adam was deputed to make the survey. CHAPTER II. Mr. Adam's Survey of Indigenous Elementary Education, 1835 to 1838. The Rev. W. Adam came to India as a Missionary in 1818. After a while his religious convictions underwent a change. He became an Unitarian, and in consequence severed connection with the Missionary Society in whose service he had come out, and began to conduct the India Gazette, a popular Calcutta Journal. A man of quick sympathies, he early got into touch with native sentiments and aspirations. He was convinced that the expenditure of public money on Sanskrit and Arabic literature and schools was a mistake so long as the great masses were eager for education in the vernaculars. In 1829 he made bold to address to Lord William Bentinck a memorandum on the subject of popular education, and in it he submitted that "an educational survey of the country was an indispensable preliminary to every educational or other measure." Mr. Adam appointed Special Commissioner to survey the State of Education in Bengal. The Governor-General, already deeply interested in the education of the lower classes of Indian society, determined upon employing Mr. Adam himself to make the survey he had advocated. Accordingly, in 1835, Mr. Adam was appointed Special Commissioner for the Survey of the State of Education in Bengal, he being, as Lord Bentinck said, "an individual peculiarly qualified for this undertaking. . With considerable ability, he possesses great industry and a high character for integrity. His knowledge of the languages, and his habits of intercourse with the natives give him peculiar advantages for such |