In searching for a guide at this point of our inquiry, we have hit upon
the work standing last upon our list, the production of a gentleman who
has extraordinary claims upon the attention of English as well as Indian
readers. Mr Cameron carried out with him to India a mind stored with the
best learning of the West; and during twelve years spent out there in
the high posts of Law Commissioner, Member of the Supreme Council, and
President of the Committee of Education, his best powers were exerted,
not merely to impart instruction, but to inspire with a true love of
knowledge, the native youth attached to the various institutions within
the sphere of his influence.
His work is truly one of which his country may be proud, for a more
disinterested zeal in the cause of a conquered people was never
exhibited by one of the dominant race, than is evinced in this noble
address to the Parliament of England on behalf of the subject millions
of India.
Many, however, as Mr Cameron’s qualifications are for the task which he
undertakes, there is one of much importance not to be found among them.
He never served in the interior; never was burdened with the charge of a
district; never spent six hours a day, at the least, in the crowded
Babel of a Cutcherry,[45] with the thermometer at 98° in the shade. His
Indian day was very different from that of the magistrate collector of
which we have inserted Mr Campbell’s lively description. It was passed
in the stillness of his library, or in the well-aired and well-ordered
halls of a college, among educated young natives, mostly Bengalees, who
were about as true specimens of Indian men as the exotics in a London
conservatory are of British plants.
Such a life is compatible with the acquirement of great Oriental lore,
but not with the attainment of that ready knowledge of native character
which is picked up by far inferior intellects in the rough daily school
of Cutcherry drudgery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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