em until it has outgrown that
system; that by good government we may educate our subjects into a
capacity for better government; that having become instructed in
European knowledge they may, in some future age, demand European
institutions. Whether such a day will ever come, I know not. But never
will I attempt to avert or retard it. Whenever it comes, it will be the
proudest day in English history."

Peace and law and order British rule had restored to India, and its
foremost purpose henceforth, as set forth by Lord William Bentinck, a
great Governor-General, imbued with the progressive spirit of the best
Englishmen in India, to which Parliament had given a fresh impetus, was
to be the diffusion of Western education. "The great object of the
British Government," he declared, "ought to be the promotion of English
literature and science, and all the funds appropriated for the purpose
of education would be best employed in English education alone."

India seemed for the next twenty years to respond enthusiastically to
the new call. Not only were the new Government schools as well as the
older missionary schools thronged with Indian students who displayed no
less intelligence than industry in the acquisition of Western learning,
but the rapid assimilation of Western ideas amongst the upper classes,
especially in Bengal, was reflected in the social and religious reform
movements initiated by Western-educated Indians touched with the spirit
of the West. Already in 1829 Lord William Bentinck had been supported by
a considerable body of Indian public opinion in prohibiting the
barbarous custom of _Sati_, _i.e._ the self-immolation of Hindu widows
on the funeral pyre of their husbands. Government, however, rightly felt
that, except in regard to practices of which it could not tolerate the
continuance without surrendering the principles of humanity for which it
stood, it was for the Indians themselves and not for their alien rulers
to take the lead in bringing their religious and social customs and
beliefs into harmony with Western standards. Nor was there any lack of
Indians to give their countrymen that lead--amongst them several
high-caste Brahmans, Ram Mohun Roy first and foremost. They were
resolved to cleanse Hinduism of the superstitious and idolatrous
impurities which, as they believed, were only morbid growths on the pure
kernel of Hindu philosophy. The Brahmo Somaj, the most vital of all
these reform movements, profes