the cause of human improvement, I shall appeal to several authorities which will, I think, be listened to with deference on this question.
The pains which the late Bishop Heber took to obtain correct information on every subject which had even a remote bearing on the improvement of India are so well known, that nobody will be surprised at his having left his opinion on this vital point fully on record. The following is extracted from his letter to Sir Wilmot Horton, dated March 1824, published in the appendix to his journal.
“Government has, however, been very liberal in its grants, both to a society for national education, and in the institution and support of two colleges of Hindu students of riper age, the one at Benares, the other at Calcutta. But I do not think any of these institutions, in the way after which they are at present conducted, likely to do much good. In the elementary schools supported by the former, through a very causeless and ridiculous fear of giving offence to the natives, they have forbidden the use of the Scriptures or any extracts from them, though the moral lessons of the Gospel are read by all Hindus who can get hold of them, without scruple, and with much attention, and though their exclusion is tantamount to excluding all moral instruction from
