Lord Mayo, on his arrival in India, found two distinct sets of views entertained in regard to education. In some Provinces, among which Bombay held an honourable place, successful efforts had been made to found Public Instruction on a popular basis. In other Provinces — conspicuously in Bengal — high-class education flourished, while scanty provision was made for the primary or indigenous schools. The ultimate effect of this latter system, it was urged, would 'filtrate' downwards. Its immediate result, however, was to arm the rich and the powerful with a new weapon — knowledge — and to leave the poor under their old weight of ignorance in their struggle for life. Lord Mayo threw himself with characteristic energy into the efforts which were being made to remedy this state of things.
'I dislike,' he wrote to a friend, 'this filtration theory. In Bengal we are educating in English a few hundred Bábus at great expense to the State. Many of them are well able to pay for themselves, and have no other object in learning than to qualify for Government employ. In the meanwhile we have done nothing towards extending knowledge to the million. The Bábus will never do it. The more education you give them, the more they will keep to themselves, and make their increased knowledge a means of tyranny. If you wait till the bad English, which the 400 Bábus learn in Calcutta, filters down into the 40,000,000 of Bengal, you will be ultimately a Silurian rock instead of a retired judge. Let the Bábus
