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took the view he did ir 1880, because he all licenses without paying anything saw the State had put itself into such a for them. It is not only going to position in regard to licences by the collect the £40,000,000 in exciso, but is course it had pursued, that it could not going to be the master of the licensed turn round and say there was no property trade and perhaps take every farthing in them. The State is not a petty of the profit. [Cries of "No."] Hon. fogging attorney to take advantage of Members cry No," but at the end of any quibble, of any hole, that it can find fourteen years the State will recover the in the logic of the position. The position monopoly value of the whole trade to do of the State ought to be a position of with the licences exactly what it pleases. integrity and fair dealing. This is not The State may, and I think will, reap a Bill to promote morals, it is a Bill to get the entire profit of the trade. Nobody money. The President of the Board of imagines there is going to be prohibition. Education, it seems to me, let that out This is simply a Money Bill, a money in a recent speech at Dewsbury. I doubt, device. The Bill from that point of view however, if the Government have even is artfully drawn. It is drawn so as to concealed it from themselves. First and meet the views of temperance reformers foremost this is a Bill for getting money. in this respect, that during the next fourWhat did the President of the Board of teen years 30,000 licences are to be Education say? He said this Bill would abolished. That is to catch the bishops be very convenient for old-age pensions. and the temperance party. At the end Have we really come to the stage when of fourteen years the State is to recover we are going to rob Peter to pay Paul; the monopoly value. This Bill is to put to take money from tens of thousands money into the pockets of the Treasury. of shareholders in brewery compar ies As regards the first part of the proposiand licensed victu l'ers, in order to tion, namely, a wholesale reduction of promote old-age pensions? The Govern- licences during the next fourteen ment, as a matter of fact, are out of years, where do the Government find elbows; they have made promises any warrant for for the proposition? they have not the money to carry out, Certainly it is not in Sharpe v. Wakefield. and in order to carry out those promises All that that case laid down was that the are endeavouring to seize the first magistrates in a particular case, having Naboth's vineyard they car find, namely, considered all the circumstances of the the licensed trade of this country. case, might suppress a particular licence. Sharpe v. Wakefield never contemplated MR. LUPTON (Lincolnshire, Sleaford): the wholesale reduction of licences. The hon. Member admits that the trade What Lord Hannen said was that each collects £160,000,000 from the people, case must be considered on its merits, and hands over £40,000,000 to the State. and Lord Halsbury said the matter I would ask him, Would it not be better must be decided according to law and for the State to collect the £40,000,000 not according to humour. When you direct, and leave the remaining take away 30,000 licences in the next £120,000,000 in the pockets of the fourteen years, is that treating the mat er people? judicially?

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of education in India," said that he past 200 years during which we had been did not propose, in moving that Resolu- associated with that country. It was tion, to occupy the time of the House high time that we had another indepen at any great length. If he were bringing dent investigation. What he contended forward a Resolution for the adoption was required at this time was an imof any great change in our educational partial investigation. He would depresystem in India it would be incum- cate an inquiry by any of those estimable bent upon him to bring forward facts gentlemen who were connected with the and figures in support of any argument working of the educational machinery in he might advance. But he was not India. They were liable to be somewhat doing that; he was simply calling for prejudiced, and somewhat Conservative. an inquiry, and in doing that he should They were likely to be somewhat opposed represent to the House the feelings and to change, and what was wanted was opinions of a large number of people that some fresh minds should be brought who were interested in this question, to bear on the subject. He would like and who were able to judge of the merits investigations to begin with an inquiry of the present system. But before pro- into the scope of our educational work. ceeding he would like to congratulate They were all aware that the Indian the Secretary of State for India on having Government for some years had proappointed, last year, a Committee to nounced most emphatically in favour of look after the interests of the Indian further elementary education. The students who came to this country to Indian Government had been looking complete their studies. That Committee, towards that for some years, and they he understood, had now completed its continued to look in that direction withlabours, and he trusted that in the more out making any real progress towards serene atmosphere of another place, that object. He would like to quote the noble Lord the Secretary of State Lord Curzon with regard to the position would make some pronouncement as of the Government of India. In a to what was to be done in regard speech which he made shortly after he to the recommendations made by went to India in 1901, in connection with that Committee. During a long resi- an education Conference at Simla, he dence in India, and during a recent visit, saidhe had talked with all sorts and conditions of people in regard to this great question, and he had not found anyone who approved of our present methods in any branch of education in that country, and the results of this lay at the root of much of the discontent and unrest which unhappily prevailed in some parts of India at the present moment. was not able to-day to propose a remedy. When it came to questions of reform, he had the authority of no less a personage than Sir Theodore Morrison for saying that there

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Frimary education, by which I understand the teaching of the masses in the vernacular, opens a wide and a very contested field of study. Government has not fulfilled its duty in this respect."

I am one of those who think that the

Then after giving some reasons, the lack of vernacular literature being one reason, Lord Curzon went on to say—

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plication. What is the greatest danger to My second reason is even wider in its apIndia. What is the source of superstition, outbreaks of crime, yes, also of much agrarian discontent and suffering among the masses? It is ignorance. And what is the only antidote to ignorance? Knowledge. And in proportion as we teach the masses so shall we make their lot happier, and in proportion as they are happier so will they become more useful members of the body politic."

many views with regard to what should be done, as there were people engaged in the Educational Department of India, What was wanted was a thorough and impartial investigation. There had been We were proud of what we had done in noj general inquiry with regard to our India in bygone generations, but it was educational methods in India since the very sad to find that not more than Royal Commission in 1882, and during one-sixth of the boys of school age and a the twenty-six years which had since very much smaller proportion of the girls elapsed he was sure that everyone were yet in school. There were only would agree that more changes had 98 per 1,000 of the male natives of India taken place in India than in all the and 7 per 1,000 of the female natives

who could read the vernacular. Then the undergone had not been such as fitted amount of money spent upon education them for such careers as were open to in India was deplorably inadequate. It them. It had been a great deal too worked out at 1d. per head of the children literary. They had memorised a great of school age. He would be out of order deal of English classical literature, and if he suggested any special means of had gone through numerous examinaraising funds, but there was a widespread tions. Their whole training had not been feeling, not only in this country but also sufficiently scientific and practical, and in India, that what we were spending on the result was that there were to-day our military defences in India was alto- crowds of educated men who looked gether out of proportion to what we to those who had provided their educawere spending on education. Personally, tion to provide them practically with he very strongly supported that view. a career, and with everything else in He held that there was no necessity life, instead of looking to themselves to-day for the large military expenditure being maintained at the point at which it stood thirty years ago. He did not base that opinion so much upon our good relations with our neighbours as upon the fact that communication was very much easier now and that it only took days where formerly it took weeks to transport troops from outlying and southern districts to the North-West frontier. He thought the Government would do well to consider the question of reducing the military expenditure in India as soon as possible and of applying what was saved to the cause of elementary education. He was told when he was at Calcutta a short time ago by a very high authority that a special tax for education would be popular, and he was sure that that would be so in some of the provinces. This question of primary education alone justified them in asking for an inquiry as to existing methods and how far they could be improved. When they came to the question of secondary and higher education, there was a diversity of view as to what should be done. It was universally held that our present method was not the best, and that there was vast room for improvement; they were driven to that conclusion by results. The Government and some of the great missionary societies had done a great deal for higher education. They had vied with each other in providing this at very low cost to those ready and willing to receive it. The result had been that a large number of men had gone through the colleges and taken university degrees and were now suffering from the kind of education that had been given them, and a great many of them could see for themselves that the course of training they had

to develop the great resources of the country. These resources as it was were being left to be exploited by people who had no special or permanent connection with or interest in the country. That was not as it should be. Everybody in India was agreed upon that. But when it came to a question of a remedy, there was great diversity of opinion, and for that reason he, for one, was not prepared to make any suggestion; it would be exceedingly foolish in view of the manifold variety of opinion to dogmatise at all with regard to any particular remedy. The whole system of education all the way through was being starved for want of money. That was the root of the whole evil. There was an altogether inadequate supply of teachers, and they did not always get the very best material because the inducements offered did not attract talent to the profession. Then they were lacking in training colleges. If they had training colleges, and offered better inducements, things would very speedily improve in that respect. The fact of the matter was that the whole system was starved, and the Government of India should resolutely face the question of providing in a very much more liberal manner than they had done hitherto for this great work, He would not like to say-there would, perhaps, be no justification for saying

that the domiciled community had not received their due share of educational facilities compared with what was spent upon the natives, but they saw that in that connection in regard to the money devoted to the education of the domiciled community how painfully inadequate the amount was. These people, especially the Eurasians, were in

an exceedingly difficult position. There was no scope for them amongst the labouring classes, and even the most incompetent amongst them, without a fairly good education which would enable them to take a clerkship, or something of that kind, were in an exceedingly difficult and deplorable condition, and the demand for some better provision for their education and uplift was very strongly called for. Referring again to the discontent and unrest that prevailed in some parts of the country, in making inquiries he found it was very largely a schoolboy agitation. They had set their hands to the plough and must not look back. A great deal of the trouble arose from the fact that these lads were half-educated. The kind of education they had received had not been on the right lines, and they must remember that a little knowledge was a dangerous thing. We were not in India by chance or for what we could get out of the country. We were there for the uplifting of the people. He sometimes thought it would be one of the best things we could do for that country greatly to enlarge the facilities for adequate and proper education on the right lines. A few years ago a popular soldier was sent to India with practically a free hand to spend ten millions of money in making a new redistribution of the troops. He wished they could send an educational expert and enthusiast to India with a free hand to spend not £10,000,000, but £20,000,000 or £30,000 000 during the next ten years. That would be one of the finest things --it would make those ten years the best and the work done would redound more to our credit in connection with our relations with India than anything during our past connection. He had not come forward with any suggestion of his own with regard to a remedy. He had no change to propose at this stage. All he asked was that there should be an impartial inquiry as to the scope, character, and methods of our educational system in India. He begged to move.

MR. HART-DAVIES (Hackney, N.) in seconding the Resolution, said how very much they regretted that Under Secretary for India He was sure he would

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wish to have been there, and made his first appearance as representative of India on a question so extremely farreaching and important as this. He was quite sure, from the Imperial point of view, it was an extremely important question. He took a peculiar interest in it because some years ago he was at the head of the Education Department in a large though rather backward province in India, and he remembered how very much they were handicapped, by want not only of funds, but of any determinate plans, so to speak, on which education was being carried on. There was no doubt our educational position in India was profoundly unsatisfactory for various reasons, as to both quantity and quality. We spent on education in India with its population of 250,000,000 only about about £3,000,000. Compared with the expenditure on education in England that was ludicrous. Fees accounted for about £1,000,000 of that, £1,500,000 were derived from provincial, municipal, and local funds, and the rest was provided by the Government of India. That was an absurdly small amount to spend on a huge country like India where education was extremely valued. There was no want of enthusiasm for education in India. It was only the want of money that prevented the development of education. That was a most deplorable thing, and it reflected a certain amount of discredit on us as a ruling race in India that we spent so much money on fortifications on the North-West against a purely imaginary danger. When he remembered that we might have spent all that money on education, he was not exactly proud of the Government of India. As regarded primary education he thought there should be in every village a primary school, and that education should be free, and they ought to have in as many places as possible a secondary school. Education was perhaps more important in India than in any other country in the world. He had a great deal to do at one time with a certain department which had to deal with agricultural indebtedness. Agriculture was the principal industry of India, and one of the principal reasons of the distress of agriculturists was that they were in a state of indebtedness all

over the country and were in the hands of the money-lenders. He did not want to say anything against the moneylenders who performed a useful part. They served to bridge over hard times, and on the whole he did not know that they were more grasping or more hard than money-lenders in any other part of the world. But when he looked into the debts and the history of their indebtedness, he found that one of the principal causes why agriculturists were in such a hopeless condition was that they were unable to contest the figures of their creditors or to tell the history of the debt, being unable to read or write. They could not keep any check whatever on the operations of the moneylenders, and that was one of the reasons why they wanted education. If the people could only learn how to read and write and add simple figures, that would make a very great difference in their well-being. There was also a great want of technical education in India, although there was no want of technical ability. More agricultural instruction was also required. This want had, he was aware, been removed of late to a certain extent, but not so much as it ought to have been. There was a great deal more required to be done in all the secondary branches of education. In alluding to higher education one touched upon more difficult ground. He was aware that some people held the view that the higher education in our universities only tended to make disloyal subjects. This was the fault not so much of the education as of the manner in which it was imparted. In the old days more individual attention was paid to the students by the professors in our universities. This was important because the Indian student was a man who responded very readily to sympathy. He was extremely amenable, and if they could introduce more of the old personal feeling, which used to exist between the professors and their pupils, they would be going a long distance towards removing some of the evils of the system of higher education in India. Under the present system the young man had to study with a large class of other students, and the professors could not introduce that personal sysmpathy which was the true secret of all our rule in India, and the want of which was the

real root of all our difficulties. This was all a matter of money, for if they sent out more professors and had a more careful selection of students they would do away with a good many of the difficulties. The present system might be described as pouring new wine into old bottles. The Indian students had already assimilated the philosophy of the West, but they did not know how to apply it because they had not been properly trained and led by the sympathetic treatment of their professors to understand what western ideas really meant. He had met Indian gentlemen of high education with whom he could talk as freely as he could with any Englishman, and who could speak with him on equal terms on these great questions. They had to take care that the rising generation of India was brought up in such a way that they would be able to absorb the real spirit of western culture and assimilate it to the spirit of eastern culture. If they would treat Indian students in this way they would find that a great many of the difficulties existing at present would disappear. They were bound to go forward in this matter because it was too late to turn back. If they persevered with the sympathetic treatment of these Indian students he felt sure that in the future they would have no reason to complain of having introduced western culture in India. He was aware that for all these things they required more money, and they would have to spend a great deal more money in the future upon education in India. It was necessary for them to introduce fresh spheres of industry. India was not a poor but a rich country, enormously rich in mines, but the natural resources of India were not properly exploited. To do that, more education was required. It was lamentable the amount of brainpower that was being wasted in India.. Many new industries might be introduced. Some hope should be held out that the Government of India would institutean inquiry into the present condition of education in India and suggest how it might be improved and developed..

Motion made, and Question proposed,, 66 That the time has come for an impartial and searching inquiry into the scope, character, and methods of education in India.-(Mr. Laidlaw.)

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