394 COMPLETION OF DOMINION It seems to have been James Mill, then an influential officer at the India House, who drafted a formidable censure upon Bentinck's proceedings, laving stress upon the impolicy of forcing upon the natives of India, by an abrupt reversal of educational policy, a superficial kind of English culture that would be used as a pass- port to public employ rather than as a channel for the acquisition of solid knowledge. Mill and Macaulay were old antagonists, and Macaulay evidently thought the Orientalists talked insufferable nonsense; never- theless, it can hardly be said, on retrospection, that the weight of argument was altogether on his side. The letter appears never to have been issued; the higher education became almost exclusively English; and as all restrictive press laws were abolished very soon afterwards, the new policy soon produced important and far-reaching consequences. But the chief title of this Governor-General to pos- thumous fame rests on the act which he had the courage to pass for putting an end to the burning of Indian widows. 1 In these days such a measure may appear obviously just and necessary; but in 1829 it was not adopted without much hesitation and many misgivings, for the real nature of public opinion on such subjects among the natives of India was then very imperfectly understood. The point at which law will be supported by natural morality in overruling superstitious sanc- tions is always difficult to discover; but we know that law and morality have a very complex interaction upon 1 See the second chapter of the next volume.
