ly suitable to his purpose, none of them containing any sectarian sentiments, but all being such as every Christian might wish to use for his children, he is at last obliged to go without them, or in despair, to request you or some other friend to see what he can do to procure them. Meanwhile his school languishes ; all his classes, who are competent to the task, having read through the few books he was able to procure at his second and third application; for other classes they are unsuitable; and the school, instead of being well disciplined, each scholar having a book to read suitable to his capacity, is in a state of the most fearful inefficiency and disorder.

The fact is, that of the books mentioned, No. 1 must be procured from Mr. Duff, Nos. 5 and 7, from the Church Mission Press; No. 6, from the Baptist Mission Press; No. 9, from Serampore; No. 14, from Mr. Thomas of Howrah, and No. 16, from an American agent in Cossitollah. With the books themselves, as published at these various places, I know from my own experience, the Calcutta book-sellers are unacquainted, and that they must therefore send a reply in its general features similar to what I have above

written.

I could furnish you with numerous cases in which equal delay and vexation have been experienced in the supply of orders for books in the native languages; but surely I have said enough to prove to yourself and readers, that if Messrs. Duff, Trevelyan, and Pearce will combine in one catalogue the most suitable books on each subject, to form a complete system of education, and will appoint (as I understand from one of them is their intention) an agent from whom all such books, whether the publications of the Education Committee, the School Book Society, the Tract and Christian Book Society, or of various individuals, who at different times have published different works for schools, may at once be procured, they will by the immense saving of time, trouble, and expense, thus secured to the conductors of schools all over India, confer on them a most important benefit.

I understand too that one great object in view with these gentlemen is the reduction, wherever proper, in the price of school-books. The only cause of the expense of books in India is the very limited demand, else books could be afforded cheaper in Calcutta than in London. For instance, Murray's large Grammar is sold in London for 4s. or 4s. 6d. The neat edition printed by the School Book Society is charged only 1 R. 8 as. or 38., and the latter sum pays cost price of paper and printing, as well as allowance for depository charges. Now if a steady demand for any books can be procured, it will be the object of these gentlemen to prevail on the proprietors to reduce the price accordingly, and thus the best books on each subject will be available to a poor population like that of India, at a price in some degree suitable to their means.

I now make an appeal through you, Sir, to the Editor of the Courier, whose illiberal remarks on the subject I see you have extracted in your paper of this date, whether a scheme fraught with such benefits, and attended with no expense to any but the parties themselves, is not deserving of the commendations of every friend of education. If the Editor of the Courier, yourself, or any one else chooses to recommend any book whatever, may he not do it, I beg to ask, in an advertisement, paying for the same; and may not these gentlemen, if they choose, introduce to the public any works they may think suitable on the same conditions? Their recommendation will carry weight as far as they are known and respected, and no further; and is this a crime, that at their own expense they relieve the embarrassment, save the time and money, and aid the usefulness of their friends and the public? Let motives be candidly construed, and honourably interpreted by even the Editor of the Courier, and I am persuaded that he, like yourself, will wish success to a plan so well intended, and as well adapted for extensive usefulness.

Trusting that he will do my friends the justice to transplant to his pages this hurried defence of their conduct, and that even by it he will be convinced that he has in his comments been most illiberal,

I remain, Sir, your obedient humble servant,
FAIR PLAY.

Calcutta, 11th June, 1834.
The Editor of the India Gazette's Comment.

"Messrs. Duff, Trevelyan, and Pearce's Address to the Friends of Education in India has excited something like a controversy, in which the Courier has rather roughly handled the Deputy Secretary, leaving the other two unscathed. Mr. Trevelyan picturesquely stands between his two friends, giving and receiving mutual support, and seeming to say that he will not allow himself to be separated from them. We think he is quite right, and that the Courier is quite wrong in expecting or requiring him, merely because he is Deputy Secretary, to abstain from any act which would be justifiable in any other man. Surely the possession of office does not destroy a man's individuality, or his obligation, in his personal capacity, to support or promote every object which in his private opinion is calculated to benefit society. If indeed it were made to appear that he employs his official authority and influence otherwise than officially for the promotion of his own party, private, or sectarian views, there would be just cause for reprehension; but nothing of this kind is alleged by the Courier. If for instance— to suppose a case merely for the sake of illustrating a general statement— the Deputy Secretary, availing himself of the powers and facilities of office, were to frank the school books belonging to the new partnership, or parcels and pamphlets sent into the mofussil, advocating his peculiar views respecting the substitution of the English for the vernacular languages, and Mr. Duff's peculiar views respecting the substitution of the Roman for the Oriental characters, we should say that he would thus lay himself open to animadversion by confounding the Deputy Secretary with the private gentleman, and employing the privileges of the one to promote the views and opinions of the other. Neither this, nor any thing resembling this in principle has been advanced, and the attempt to make him the exclusive object of censure, if censure is deserved, appears unjust. It is not the Deputy Secretary who has addressed the Friends of Education in India, but C. E. Trevelyan, one and indivisible with Messrs. Duff and Pearce, differing in nothing and agreeing in every thing with them.

"If censure is deserved, it must be shared equally among the three, and a correspondent in to-day's paper makes out a very strong case to show that it was indispensably necessary to adopt some other means than have hitherto existed in order to supply mofussil institutions with school-books. We can add nothing to the force of his statements, except to profess our entire conviction of their correctness in as far as facts are concerned. With this admission, however, it will still remain to be determined, whether the proper course has been adopted to supply the wants of the mofussil. It is true that each of the three had it in his power to recommend what book he pleased to those who might consult him, and that united they only do the same thing, what any one or any three others have the power of doing. But is there not in this obtrusion of themselves on the public, and in this unsolicited assumption of a general power of recommendation, something presumptuous and self-sufficient? With a sincere approval of the general object, we cannot avoid forming this opinion, which we should not have been forward to express but for the letter of FAIR PLAY. The combination must be regarded either as an act of philanthropy or a matter of business. If the former, good sense and a very ordinary share of modesty would have taught them to seek the support and aid of the community by forming an association of the friends of education, drawn from various classes, and existing under the usual checks against jobs

and partialities, for a purpose which, it appears, no existing public institu tion fully meets. If it should be regarded as a matter of business-and the intended appointment of an agent from whom all the books are to be ob tained would seem to imply this view-then it is merely the establishment of a new book-selling concern, introduced to the public under unusual auspices, and with professions of disinterestedness, which it would have been well to withhold. Utrum horum mavis, accipe; but don't let us have the two so combined that the one shall be indistinguishable from the other, and that in any transaction with the agent of Messrs. Duff, Trevelyan, and Pearce, the purchaser or the seller of books shall be required at one time to submit to the rules of business, and at another to yield an advantage in consideration of the philanthropic objects of his employers.

"Whatever may be thought of the judgment of these three gentlemen, we cheerfully admit the excellence of their motives and intentions; and as they have taken no step which may not be recalled, we would recommend them to reflect on the false position which they at present occupy before the public."

The Editor of the Gazette, having thus admitted in the most unqualified terms, that the authors of the scheme were actuated by the purest and most philanthropic motives, as also, that their's or some similar plan was indispensably required, only expresses his doubts as to the propriety of the peculiar mode proposed for its accomplishment. Accordingly, another correspondent, signing himselfJUSTICE," stepped forward, and at great length clearly proved that in the peculiar circumstances of the case, the mode was not only unexceptionable, but the best that could be devised.

To the Editor of the India Gazette.

SIR,-The fairness with which you have treated the letter of FAIR PLAY with regard to the address of Messrs. Duff, Trevelyan, and Pearce, encourages me also, as a friend of these gentlemen, to address you. Besides acknowledging the purity of their motives, you admit, "that it was indispensably necessary to adopt some other means than have hitherto existed in order to supply mofussil institutions with school-books." It is acknow ledged therefore that existing means were insufficient, and that there was a call for new measures; the object, in short, for which Messrs. Duff, Trevelyan and Pearce came forward, is allowed to be a good and sufficient one, and their manner only is objected to. The propriety or otherwise of the particular course adopted by them to accomplish a desirable object is therefore the question now at issue, and if sufficient reason can be shown on their side, I fully expect that the same honorable candour which led you to acquiesce in the public advantage of the end, will also draw from you a willing admission of the propriety of the means.

You observe, "Is there not in this obtrusion of themselves on the public, and in this unsolicited assumption of a general power of recommenda tion, something presumptuous and self-sufficient? With a sincere approval of the general object, we cannot avoid forming this opinion." This is the charge, and the defence is as follows:

First. That act cannot be said to be done presumptuously which is forced upon a person, and such has been literally the case with respect to this act and these gentlemen. For various reasons they had severally acquired a reputation for being friends to popular education, and for not being above supplying, when requested to do so, the apparatus necessary for carrying it on, from works of the highest class down to spelling-books and grammars, which are the foundation of all; and the consequence of this reputation has been, that for some time past they have been in the

habits of receiving more applications for assistance than it has been in their power to comply with, consistently with the due performance of their own proper duties. As these applications have of late increased, rather than diminished, it became absolutely necessary to devise some appropiate means of answering the demand, and the expedient which naturally suggested itself was a joint periodical letter in the public papers. Need I point out the waste of time which will be avoided by the adoption of this plan? Three gentlemen, who have other important duties to perform, will be saved writing on an average at least two letters a day each. Their correspondents, who formerly applied to them personally, will be saved the time and trouble attending writing to make inquiries, and every body else will gain the advantage of the fullest information on a subject on which it could before be furnished only in a very imperfect manner to a few. Messrs. Duff, Trevelyan, and Pearce therefore have not courted publicity, but yielded to necessity. The "assumption," so far from having been "unsolicited," has been forced upon them; and you, Mr. Editor, and every other impartial person, will be ready to admit that they cannot be deemed “selfsufficient" in having taken up that position which was marked out for them by the suffrages of a large proportion of the friends of education, when they could no longer avoid doing so, consistently with the regard which was due to their own peculiar functions. Should you hesitate to admit this, I shall make my appeal to the Editor of the Courier. He read the Deputy Secretary a lecture the other day on the possibility of these pursuits interfering with official duties, and the Deputy Secretary has anticipated the call by joining in an arrangement, according to which he will only have one public letter a month (a kind of educational price-current we may call it) to write on this subject, instead of a far greater number of private ones.

Another motive is believed to have weighed with these gentlemen in coming forward in the manner they have, without immediately seeking for any support from without. The present is a peculiar juncture in the moral history of the country. The General Committee of Public Instruction, as it regards the education of the people, has fallen far behind the march of events. The nature of its proceedings in respect to the supply of books will be immediately apparent to any body who takes the trouble to look into their library, surnamed the Depository, adjoining to the Hindu College. It will there be seen that the shelves are groaning under the weight of hundreds of ponderous Sanskrit and Arabic quartos, while the only books suitable for education which they have published in the English and Native languages, are those printed in connection with the School Book Society, and these are put forward on the table in front of the entrance, as though it were intended to present an unwilling tribute to public opinion. The depository moreover is extremely limited in its object. It is merely an institution for the supply of books to the colleges under the control of the General Committee, and although this rule has lately been relaxed, and a portion of their books has been advertized in the public papers, yet this change was only in favor of the Arabic and Sanskrit ones. The Committee has at last begun to perceive the absurdity of keeping such a number of books on their stores, for which there was no demand, and it has therefore been resolved to offer them for sale at reduced prices. So far, therefore, as the General Committee supply the public with books for education, its operations are decidedly of a noxious tendency, since their Arabic and Sanskrit books teach without a single exception, false religion, false morals, and false science.

The School Book Society also has a fault, though of an opposite character, which equally incapacitates it from meeting the present demands of the country. Its operations, as far as they go, are quite unobjectionable, but they do not go far enough. All books which contain any reference to religion, including all those which are written on the principle of acknowledg. ing the truth of Christianity, are excluded from its catalogue. It is in short

only half a society. The great demand in our day is for English books, and much the largest proportion of our English literature, from the speller to the most obstruse works on moral and political philosophy, contains repeated admissions of the divine authority of the Christian faith, all of which is therefore denied a place in the School Book Society's list. Nor let it be forgotten, that the most active class of philanthropists in the country are the truly devoted Christians, to the full supply of whose wants this Society, in its present constitution, is of course inadequate. May we not hope that the Committee of Management of that institution will soon acknowledge that whatever may have been the case formerly, this illiberal exclusive system is quite unsuited to the present more advanced state of education in India?

Such was the state of affairs at Calcutta when the three gentlemen above mentioned received the call to come forward and assist their friends in the interior. There were two courses open for them to adopt, one of which was to call in the assistance of others, and the other to stand forward in their own persons only. If the first of these plans had been had recourse to, the result would apparently have been nearly as follows. Most of the gentlemen who could have been applied to by them are members of one or other of the existing institutions, and of these a good proportion are staunch advocates of the Sanskrit and Arabic system of the General Committee on the one hand, or of the exclusive system of the School Book Society in the other. To have asked any of these gentlemen to give in their adhesion to the new society would have been the same thing as asking them to declare the existing institutions inadequate to the wants of general education, which you, Mr. Editor, in common with all with whom I have conversed since FAIR PLAY'S letter was published, have now readily acknowledged, but which before was not admitted. The commencement of such a canvass would necessarily have excited opposition, and thus while they ought to have been acting, the time of these gentlemen would have been occupied in controversy, and possibly a bad feeling would have been engendered in the community. This plan would thus have thrown an apple of discord into the society of Calcutta. Controversies would have ensued, and instead of assisting their brethren in the mofussil, they would have had enough to do to settle the question with their Calcutta associates. The other plan, although apparently the boldest, is really the safest and best for all parties. According to this, three gentlemen, without asking any body's assistance, or expecting any person to commit himself to their proceedings, have come forward to make the experiment at their own risk. They desired to involve nobody in the responsibility of their measures. They were prepared to bear, in their own characters, the scoffs with which the illiberal were sure to assail them on such an occasion, but they were resolved to try the experiment for the benefit of the country, and finally to solve the question whether the present generation of people in India are resolved to confine their attention to Sanskrit and Arabic books, and to books from which all roference to Christianity, even a bare acknowledgment of the truth of its fundamental principles, is excluded; or whether there is not also an important demand for the great body of English literature in all its departments. As the plan was not intended for the benefit of the Calcutta people, whose facilities of access to the means of improvement are already of a very superior order, it was not expected that they would fully appreciate it. But I am fully persuaded that the majority of the people residing at a distance, who are at present so much at a loss in this respect, will feel and express their obligations for an effort now universally acknowledged to be essential to their usefulness. In due time it will be seen whether the oriental scholars attached to the General Committee are right in believing that the demand of the country is for the most part confined to Arabic and Sanskrit books, or whether the School Book Society secures to itself the greatest field of usefulness, while it rejects every book which bears on it the impress