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from being ground down by the cruelty and chicanery of the planter, into which state he has as much chance as before of again at some future time falling, and the effects of which will, we believe we may openly assert, though at the risk of offending some thin-skinned individual, die out. We mean no offence to the memory of one, whom, while living, we esteemed the most, and when dead regretted sincerely. We say that it was in his power to do permanent good to the cultivating masses in his immediate vicinity, but that he unfortunately missed his opportunity. May his name and his memory be an encouragement to others of his countrymen to carry out those exertions and that philanthropy which distinguished the political reformer in that line of genuine reform where they are so pre-eminently required.

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CHAPTER IX.

THE LONGEST, BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT CHAPTER IN THE BOOK: REGENERATION OF INDIA.

Two theories for the amelioration of the people.--Which preferred.-Danger from the present hopeless condition of the people.-The Empires of the World.--Of the Cæsars, Baber, and Napoleon.-Uniqueness of British domination.--The present time pre-eminently fitted for undertaking the task of Popular Education in India.--Review of the History of Indian Education.-Its three epochs.--Government System of Education faulty.-Distinction between general and special education.--Every man, however low and grovelling, receives all life long some education or other.-In India there is in one sense no general education.-Percentage of boys that finish a complete course of general instruction.-A mournful question. Necessity of rendering Colleges self-supporting.Grounds for viewing the measure as easy of accomplishment. -Percentage of boys receiving elementary education.-The state of this education.--Number of Schools in the Bombay Presidency.-Statistics of Population in the different divisions of British India.-The educational requirements of each calculated in comparison with some of the States of Europe. With reference to Primary Schools.--With reference to Teachers.-Unfitness of the present Staff even in the highest English Seminary.-The number of Normal Colleges and of Inspectors required.--The people too poor to join the Schools. Their popular notions on Englishmen's leaving

India for their Mother Country.-Great misapprehension among Englishmen with reference to the wants of the people. -Advocacy of the German method of popular instruction.Striking resemblance in the state of Germany and of India.Our present system of education not essentially differing from the German, though so popularly taken.-Mere Schools and School Training ineffectual to work any change among the people. The French Colportage described.-Establishment of a Committee for the diffusion of knowledge advocated.—The present state of Prose and Poetry in the Vernacular.-The establishment of Clubs advocated.-What is our present national strength and vigour ?-A new order of thought and morality, as yet unknown to the world, evolved in India. A Summary of our Scheme.

As yet we have only spoken of Baboo Harrischander and of his class; but incomplete would be any treatise on India, in which there is nothing said of the millions, helpless, hopeless, and ignorant, that inhabit its vast tracts. Baboo Harrischander fought for the ryot; why then not cast a glance on the poor tiller, and see if anything can be proposed for his amelioration? The really educated class of Young India form but the minority; so small, indeed, as to measure only a few drops of water in a long arm of the and though the future enveloped in this minority may justify any long and exclusive dissertation, we have at the very outset promised to invite the reader to the ignorant and the lowest. It would be a long and arduous task to describe

sea;

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their condition as it is at present, and the requirements it imperatively asks for; but yet we might say our say on their amelioration by the highest nobility. How shall we treat of them? Shall we treat of their rights, their material well-being? No; all the acts of the French Revolution, and of others which followed in its wake, were the consequences of a declaration of the "rights of man." The philosophers and the statesmen (and they were convertible terms at the time) of France took up the theory of liberty and of material wellbeing as the basis of their labours. They threw down all the obstacles that opposed this theory; they conquered liberty-conquered it only to the extreme of libertinism. Religion was chased out; moral restraint or the restraint of society removed; and the population left without the unity of religion or the unity of a constituted society. They taught only to enjoy liberty and material well-being, and the people followed, one and all, their own interest and advancement, not caring whether on their way they trampled on the heads of their brethrenbrethren only when the expression was to be used, but enemies when liberty was to be gained! To this we had once come, and to this we will

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again come, if we recur to the theory of liberty, which, whenever and wherever it has been sought for as the end, has ultimately led to the saddest of results. When under the When under the emperors, the ancient Romans contented themselves with demanding panem et circenses: they were the most abject race possible; and after suffering all the oppression of their emperors, they became the passive slaves of the barbarians who conquered them. When the theory of rights is taught, the nation rises in insurrection and annihilates the organisation of society, until, tired of anarchy, it willingly offers itself to worse tyrannies and oppressions; and under the theory of material well-being it becomes egotistic, a worshipper of the material, without the virtues of independence, generosity, good faith, &c. of a rightly constituted society. Both afford temporary relief-one while it satisfies the idea of liberty, the other while it provides present wants -and may in this respect be looked upon as one. One is sought after in a moment of excitement, the other in that of abjectness; but as happily we are neither excited nor abject, the point in our aim ought to be to find a principle superior to any theory of temporary relief—a principle of improvement, as well as of unity. This princi