account, the sacrifices prove to have been made in vain.  Whilst the skilled artisan, and even the unskilled labourer, can often command from 12 annas to 1 rupee (1s. to 1s. 4d.) a day, the youth who has sweated himself and his family through the whole course of higher education frequently looks in vain for employment at Rs.30 (L2) and even at Rs.20 a month.  In Calcutta not a few have been taken on by philanthropic Hindus to do mechanical labour in jute mills at Rs.15 a month simply to keep them from starvation.  Things have in fact reached this pitch, that our educational system is now turning out year by year a semi-educated proletariat which is not only unemployed, but in many cases almost unemployable.  A Hindu gentleman who is one of the highest authorities on education told me that in Bengal, where this evil has reached the most serious dimensions, he estimates the number of these unemployed at over 40,000.  This is an evil which no change in the relative number of Europeans and natives employed in Government and other services could materially affect.  Even if every Englishman left India, it would present just as grave a problem to the rulers of the country, except that the bitterness engendered would not be able to vent itself, as it too often does now, on the alien rulers who have imported the alien system of education by which many of those who fail believe themselves to have been cruelly duped.

Similar causes have operated to produce discontent amongst the teachers, who in turn inoculate their pupils with the virus of disaffection.  It was much easier to multiply schools and colleges than to train a competent teaching staff.  Official reports seldom care to look unpleasant facts in the face, and the periodical reports both of the Imperial Department of Public Education and of the Provincial Departments have always been inclined to lay more stress upon the multiplication of educational institutions and the growth in the numbers of pupils and students than upon the weak points of the system.  Nevertheless, there is one unsatisfactory feature that the most confirmed optimists cannot ignore.  Hardly a single one of these reports but makes some reference to the deficiencies and incapacity of the native teaching staff.  The last quinquennial report issued by Mr. Orange, the able Director-General of Public Education, who is now leaving India, contains a terse but very significant passage.  “Speaking generally,” he writes, “it may be said that the qualifications and the pay of the teachers in secondary schools are below any standard that could be thought reasonable; and the inquiries which are now being made into the subject have revealed a state of things that is scandalous in Bengal and Eastern Bengal, and is unsatisfactory in every province.”  Very little information is forthcoming as to the actual qualifications or pay of the teachers.  It appears, however, from the inspection of high schools by the Calcutta University that out of one group of 3,054 teachers over 2,100