in trades and commerce trained their boys in letters and in accounts, to befit them for their hereditary duties. British administration has recognised, helped, and subsidised this ancient system of elementary education; but the help given is still inadequate. One of the most pressing wants of the present day is a more liberal help to village primary schools and a wider extension of primary education to cultivating classes, so that every cultivator and labourer in India may find it possible to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic in his own village at a nominal cost. Sir Erskine Perry complained of the smallness of grant in 1853, and pointed out that with such an inadequate grant the Government could not "place schools in every village." The educational grant continues to be inadequate to the present day, and the duty to "place schools in every village" remains still unfulfilled.1

FEMALE EDUCATION.

The education of girls has not kept pace with the education of boys, if it be judged by the test of attendance in schools. In a country where girls are generally married between the age of ten and fourteen, they seldom attended schools in olden times, and can do so only in very small numbers at the present time; their education must be largely carried on by a system of tuition at home. Drinkwater Bethune, Legal Member of the Governor-General's Council, made a very praiseworthy and successful endeavour to start a girls' school in Calcutta, to which he devoted £10,000 from his own personal funds; and Bethune School is to this day the most successful institution for girls in India, and teaches up to the highest standard of University

2

1 The total educational grant for the whole of British India with its population of 230 millions was a little over a million sterling in the last year of Queen Victoria's reign. Out of this £664,000 came from Government funds, and £484,000 from local and municipal funds.

2 Marshman's Evidence, Commons' Sixth Report, 1853.

Examinations. The Indian Universities, following the example of the London University, bestow degrees on women, and lady graduates take their degrees in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay. In Primary Schools little boys and girls are often taught together, and the total number of girls attending schools in the last year of Queen Victoria's reign in British India was somewhat under half a million.

As has been said before, this figure is not a correct index to the spread of female education in India. Girls and girl-wives, belonging to the upper classes, generaly receive education at home. And among the lower and unlettered classes, women receive instruction in religious truths and moral duties and in their national traditions and literature, to a much larger extent than in Europe. It may be safely asserted that the mind of the unlettered Indian woman in her village home is at least as well instructed in her religion, as well informed in her national traditions and literature, as the mind of the poor European woman who knows her Bible, and reads occasional stories in penny magazines.

PUBLIC PRESS.

A large mass of correspondence between the Court of Directors and the Indian Government, which was published in 1858 as a Return to an Order of the House of Commons, enables us to trace the interesting history of the Public Press in India.

As early as 1791, under the administration of Lord .Cornwallis, one William. Duane was arrested by the Bengal Government for deportation to Europe for writing ⚫an offensive påragraph in The Bengal Journal. The Supreme Court held that the Government was within its rights; William Duane was warned and released; but he repeated his attack in The World, and was sent to Europe in 1794.

Notices were taken of other attacks in subsequent years, and in 1799 some regulations were passed by the Government of Lord Wellesley to keep the Press in order. No paper was to be published until it had been previously inspected by a Government Official. And the penalty for offending against this and other rules framed was "immediate embarkation for Europe"! The regulations were approved by the Court of Directors.

Many editors were censured for objectionable articles and paragraphs between 1801 and 1818, and many offending writers were compelled to apologise to the Government. New and milder Regulations were passed in 1818 by the Government of the Marquis of Hastings. But editors were still prohibited from publishing "animadversions" on public measures, "discussions" tending to alarm the Native population, as well as "private scandal and personal remarks" tending to excite dissension.

For a number of years after these Regulations were passed, the Government took notice of offensive writings in numerous instances; and Lieutenant-Colonel Robinson was ordered by the Commander-in-Chief to a court-martial in 1822 for writing a violent letter to the Government, in Idefence of what he had written in the Calcutta Journal under the anonymous title, "A Military Friend."

In Madras and Bombay also, notice was frequently taken of writings in the Press.

"A free Press," said the Directors in 1823, "is a fit associate and necessary appendage of a representative constitution. Wherever a Government emanates from the people, and is responsible to them, the people must necessarily have the privilege of discussing the measures of the Government; and whenever the people choose representatives to make laws affecting their persons and property, the right of animadverting on the mode in which this trust is discharged belongs, of course, to the party delegating it. But in no sense of the terms can the Government of India be called a free, a representa

tive, or a popular Government; the people had no voice in its establishment, nor have they any control over its acts."

"The Governments in India exercise a delegated authority, derived from the Court of Directors and the Board of Control. The Government of India resides in this country [England], and is, of course, responsible to the English public, in common with the Government of England. It is in this country, therefore, and not in India, that its measures ought to be discussed."1

Such was the opinion held by the Directors in 1823 with regard to the Public Press of India. It must be stated, however, that what was known as the Public Press of India then, was the Press of the small European community in India. It neither represented nor defended the interests of the people; and the people of India had no Press of their own of any influence, at that time or for thirty years after. And thus it happened that, when Lord William Bentinck strove for the advancement of the people of India, and employed them in responsible offices under the Company, he was attacked by the Press of India as no Governor-General has since been attacked.

Lord William's principal adviser, Macaulay, shared a similar fate; and he refers to the Public Press of India of his time in these memorable words: "That public opinion means the opinion of five hundred persons who have no interest, feeling, or taste in common with the fifty millions among whom they live; that the love of liberty means the strong objection which the five hundred feel to every measure which can prevent them from acting as they choose towards the fifty million." 2

1 Letter from the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the East India Company to the Right Hon. C. W. W. Wynn, dated January 17, 1823.

2 Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. John Stuart Mill expressed a similar opinion of the English Press in India as late as 1852. In his evidence before the Lords' Committee he said: "As long as the great mass of India have very little access to the Press, it is in danger of being an organ exclusively of individual interests. The English newspaper Press in India is the organ only of the English society, and chiefly that part of it unconnected with the Government. It has little to do with the Natives and with the great interests of India."

Lord William Bentinck's successor, Sir Charles Metcalfe, signalised his short administration by giving liberty to the Press, such as it was, in 1835. This truly liberal and bold measure gave violent offence to the Directors of the East India Company. They

wrote:

"This proceeding is in opposition to all our previous orders, to the solemn decisions both of the Supreme Court at Calcutta and of His Majesty's Privy Council, delivered, in both cases, after full arguments on both sides of the question, to the recorded opinions of all preceding Governments of Bengal, Madras and Bombay."

"We are compelled to observe that this proceeding must be considered the more unjustifiable, inasmuch as it has been adopted by a Government only provisional."

"We should then be prepared at once to avail ourselves of the power entrusted to us by Act of Parliament, and disallow your new law when passed, were we not aware that the immediate repeal of such a law, however ill-advised and uncalled for its enactment may have been, might be productive of mischievous results. We shall therefore wait for the deliberate advice of the GovernorGeneral in Council after the arrival of Lord Auckland, your present Governor-General, before we communicate to you our final decision. But you are in possession of our sentiments, and we shall not be sorry to find, that by returning to the former system you have rendered our interference unnecessary."

Fortunately, Sir Charles Metcalfe was not the man to be moved from his convictions by the "sentiments" of the Directors, and not likely to return to the former system on account of their threats. And when Lord Auckland came to India two years after, people both in England and in India had already been reconciled to the liberty of the Press, and the good work of Metcalfe was not undone.

1 Letter dated February 1, 1836.