Page:Europe in China.djvu/365

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THE ADMINISTRATION OF SIR J. BOWRING.
347

interests. The notion of the writer was apparently that of Mr. M. Martin, whose influence came here once more (for the last time perhaps) to the fore, that the Colony was misplaced at Hongkong and should be removed to Chusan, if a British Colony was at all wanted in China. All the advantages of Hongkong were said to consist exclusively in its proximity to the single privileged port of Canton, the writer labouring under the supposition that Hongkong's successes were merely derived from Canton's difficulties.

The educational history of this period is characterized by a sensible decline of the voluntary schools. The Anglo-Chinese College, numbering from 30 to 85 scholars, was closed at the end of the year 1850 owing to the results not justifying its continuance. Though it had trained some useful clerks fur mercantile offices, it had failed from a missionary and educational point of view, and, recognizing the failure. Dr. Legge courageously closed this College. St. Paul's College continued for some years longer, but Sir J. Bowring, weighing its results in the official scales, pronounced it likewise a failure. 'For the last six years' he said, '250 pounds a year has been voted by Parliament to the Bishop's College for the education of six persons destined to the public service, and not a single individual from that College has been yet declared competent to undertake even the meanest department of an interpreter's duty, though I have no doubt of the Bishop's zeal and wish to show some practical and beneficial result from the said Parliamentary grant. To the missionaries alone I can at present look for active assistance, and their special objects do not usually fit them for the direction of popular and general education.' A new educational movement was initiated (March 6, 1855) by a public meeting which, complaining that Hongkong was still without a Public School for English children, who were educationally less cared for than the Chinese, established amid general enthusiasm a school (thenceforth known as St. Andrew's School) under a representative and highly popular Committee (the Hon. J. F. Edger, A. Shortrede, James Smith, B. C. Antrobus, C. D. Williams, Douglas Lapraik, F. W. M. Green,