good English scholars; and that to this end our efforts ought to be directed.”
With Macaulay to support him, Lord William Bentinck boldly took action. On the 7th of March 1835 he made known, by a formal order, that the annual grant of the lakh of rupees, which the directors had sanctioned in 1813 for the education of the natives, and which up to that time had been applied to the encouragement of Oriental learning, should thenceforth be utilised in imparting instruction in European languages and sciences through the medium of English.
This decided step of the Governor-General angered those in the Public Instruction Committee who differed from him in opinion. Dissension on a public question became changed into individual hostility, and Macaulay became the bugbear of the supporters of Oriental learning. But he was never a man to give up his point; or even argue it in a lukewarm way. Whatever appeared right was urged by him with great force and vehemence.
He showed this spirit all through the discussion; and as an example we quote the following passage from the written opinion he had given about expending the Company’s yearly grant:—
“I have no knowledge of either Sanskrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their values. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanskrit works. I have conversed both here and at home with men distinguished by their proficiency in Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the Oriental learning at the valuation of the Orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.”
