The students were as little likely as army or navy cadets to become un-English; and they were much less likely to form a caste at Haileybury than if they had been sent to an Indian college. The details of this extinct controversy need not detain us. It is enough to say that Malthus discharged his part with great vigour and something of his early vivacity. At the best, it must be confessed, the college was a compromise; and the unavoidable difficulties of the situation were quite enough to try the mettle of the teachers. The cadets of the first year might be fifteen or they might be eighteen, and there was no natural aristocracy of senior boys to check the juniors. Those of the younger age were physically and mentally more like schoolboys than undergraduates, and unfit, as yet, for the quasi-independent life of the latter. Many were unwilling to go to India at all, and it was their parents or guardians who really feared the expulsion of incorrigibles. But it was better that the unfit should be rejected in England, where they could find other openings, than in India, where they could find none; and it was better their training should be carried on where the climate, the expense, and the moral, social, and intellectual advantages were in keeping with their age and their state of pupilage. “Little other change is wanting,” in the system as it then was, “than that an appointment should be considered in spirit and in truth, not in mere words, as a prize to be contended for, not a property already possessed,[1023] which may be lost. If the Directors were to appoint one-fifth every year beyond the number finally to go out, and the four-fifths were to be the beat of the whole body, the appointments would then really be prizes to be contended for, and the effects would be admirable. Each appointment to the college would then be of less value; but they would be more in number, and the patronage would hardly suffer. A Director could not then, indeed, be able to send out an unqualified son. But is it fitting that he should? This is a fair question for the consideration of the Legislature and the British public.”[1024] In these matters, at least, Malthus was no reactionary.