events, I would give no authority over this College or over any of our Colleges to a Collector or a Judge merely because he is a Collector or a Judge. Such an officer may be incompetent; he may be indifferent; he may be adverse. When we repose such a confidence, we ought to repose it in the man, not in the office.
I think that each of the Professors should receive 500 Rs.[1] per mensem, and that they should also be lodged in the College. One master with 200 Rupees and three under masters with 100 Rs. each, would suffice for the English department.
It is hardly necessary to say that I would open this school to pupils of every nation and religion without distinction.
Dr. Wise is strongly of opinion that we ought to establish stipends, or, as he calls them, bursaries. I regret that I cannot agree with him on this point. I must own, however, that at Hooghly the stipendiary system is not so objectionable as it would be at Patna, at Dacca, or at any other place where there is a school supported by our general fund. We have for the education of the people of this vast empire a fixed sum, which is very small compared with what the object requires. If we pay students at one place, we must refuse to pay masters at some other place. The funds of the Hooghly College are not part of our general resources. We cannot with propriety lay them out in setting up schools in Assam or the Dooab. After paying professors and masters in the most liberal manner, a large sum will still remain at our disposal. If therefore it should appear that any advantage is likely to follow from establishing stipends, there is no counterbalancing consideration of economy to be set off against that advantage.
I am strongly opposed to the stipendiary system, not merely in the form in which it has existed in the Sanscrit College and the Madrussa, where indeed it wore its most offensive shape, but even in the modified form in which some of our body wish to see it introduced into our new schools. At the same time I should not at all object to giving several annual pecuniary prizes of such amount that they would enable the successful student who might gain them to subsist comfortably during the next year. If he continued to exert himself, he would probably again obtain the prize. If he became idle, others would wrest it from him at the next annual examination. This course would, as it appears to me, produce all the good
- ↑ The Honorable H. Shakespear, Sir E. Ryan and Mr. Smith proposed that one of the professors should be Principal and receive Rs. 800 a month. Mr. C. Trevelyan and Col. Young proposed Rs. 600, and that the salaries of the English Staff should be increased. Free quarters were unanimously assigned to the Principal.
