tablished the identity of our Indian empire, and the Government has since been occupied in remodelling the different departments of administration on this principle. All the provinces of this empire are to have the same criminal and civil law, the same post-office and commercial regulations; and it is surely not of less importance that they should have the same system of public instruction. Our subjects have set out on a new career of improvement they are about to have a new character imprinted on them. That this national movement should be taken under the guidance of the State, that the means at our disposal should be equally distributed, that each province should profit by the experience of all the rest, that there should be one power to regulate, to control, to urge the indolent, to restrain the over-zealous, to lead on the people by the same or corresponding means to the same point of improvement, will hardly be denied to be as conducive to the welfare of our subjects as it will be to the popularity and permanency of our dominion over them.

The Bengal Education Committee was bound to keep a single eye to the enlightenment of the people, that being the object for which they had been associated as a public body, and for which the administration of a portion of the reve

nue had been committed to their hands. The general interests of science formed no part of their public charge, but it must not be supposed that they were on that account personally indifferent to them. No men are more disposed than the members of the Education Committee to admire the exertions of James Prinsep, of Hodgson, of Turner, of Masson, or are more anxious to contribute to their success in any way that does not involve a sacrifice of public duty. The gentlemen whom I have named, and others who are associated with them, are turning the ancient Arabic and Sanskrit records to their proper account. Owing to the vastly superior means now at our disposal, they are worse than useless, considered as a basis of popular education; but as a medium for investigating the history of the country, and the progress of mind and manners during so many ages, they are highly deserving of being studied and preserved. These two objects have no more to do with each other than the Royal Society has with Mr. Wyse's Committee on National Education, or the societies for Preserving Welch and Gaelic Literature, with the British and Foreign School Society. By joining them in a forced and unnatural union the progress of both has been retarded. Philological and antiquarian research was supported on

Education was con

the resources of education. ducted in a way more adapted for the lecture-room of a German university, than for the enlightenment of benighted Asiatics. The friends of education, in performing the indispensable duty of recovering the sum which had been assigned by the state for their object, were very unwillingly placed in a state of apparent opposition to the interests of oriental research. The more immediate supporters of the Asiatic Society, in struggling to retain the interest they had enjoyed in this sum, were marshalled against the cause of popular education. Since the separation has been effected, both parties have pursued their respective objects with much greater success than before. The Education Committee, uninfluenced by any foreign bias, has employed all its disposable funds in founding new seminaries. The Asiatic Society, forced at last to lean on its natural supporters, has been liberally assisted by private contributions; and will, it may be hoped, soon receive that aid from the public resources to which the public importance of its labours so justly entitle it.

It is much to be desired that this division of labour between the departments of general science and popular education should receive the sanction of the highest authority, and be carried into full

effect. The plan which appears to me best calculated to answer every purpose, is, for the Government to attach a Sanskrit professor, with several native assistants, to the establishment of the Asiatic Society. These persons, selected on account of their eminent attainments and known love of science, and undisturbed by any other pursuit, might de vote themselves to the investigation of the history, antiquities, philosophy, and literature of the East, recording the result of their researches in the most lasting and available forms. India is undoubtedly at the threshold of a new era; and it seems to be no less incumbent on us at this period to gather up the recollections of the past, than to provide matter of national improvement for the future. The Hindu system of learning has formed the character of the people up to the present point; and it must still be studied, to account for daily occurring phenomena of habits and manners. Whatever mental cultivation, whatever taste for scientific and literary pursuits has survived among the Hindus, is owing to it: they were a literary people when we were barbarians; and, after centuries of revolution, and anarchy, and subjection to foreign rule, they are still a literary people, now that we have arrived at the highest existing point of civilisation. That the system

which has produced these effects should be carefully analysed and recorded in all its different parts, is no less required by the interests of science in general than by our particular interest as rulers of India. The pundits and students of the Sanskrit College, whose whole time is taken up in teaching and learning that language, are quite `unequal to the task. The Asiatic Society, whose proper business it is, are also at present unequal to it; they have no machinery for its performance: the members of the society are principally public officers, overburdened with other duties; and they have as yet been obliged to confine their attention to the replenishment of their museum, and the collection of such scattered notices of the antiquities of the country as have been sent to them by amateur correspondents. The examining and laying open of the different branches of Hindu and Mahommedan literature, has been of necessity, almost entirely neglected; and unless some plan be adopted such as I have suggested, it is not easy to see how this object (the one for which the society was principally founded), can ever be accomplished. Such Arabic and Sanskrit works as are worthy of being preserved, might be printed under the superintendence of the professor and his native assistants; and the expense might be borne,