CAREY AND FORT WILLIAM COLLEGE 121 Asiatie literature or business but were absolutely aban- doned to pursue their own inclination without guidance or control. Of the languages and manners of the people whose affairs they were called upon to administer, they were not required to know even the rudiments. The Minute denounced in the strongest ee Wellesley’s terms ‘the absolute insufficiency of this class of young men to execute the duties of any station whatsoever in the Civil Service of the Company beyond the menial, laborious and unprofitable duty of a mere copying clerk”. It became evident that there could be no substantive improvement without provi- ding a succession of men sufficiently qualified to conduct it. “The Civil Servants of the English East India Com- pany” says the Minute? “can no longer be considered as the agents of a commercial concern ; they are in fact the ministers and officers of a powerful sovereign: they must now be viewed in that capacity with a reference, not to their nominal, but to their real oceupation.$......Their studies, the discipline of their education, their habits of life, their manners and morals should therefore be so ordered and regulated as to establish.........a sufficient ‘ It appears from the proceedings of the Governor-General in Council dated as far back as Sep. 10, 1790 that with a view to the acquisition of the Indian languages by the Company’s writers, encourage- ment was afforded by offering them allowance and other facilities (Seton-Karr, Selection from Cal. Gazette, ii, 213-14), but it was never enjoined upon them as a matter of duty or necessity. 2 Roebuck, op. cit. p. iv; Buchanan, op, cit. pp. 5-6.
- See Setou-Karr, op. cit. vol. iii, pp. 22-23. Before the formal
establishment of the College, Dr. Gilchrist, an eminent Hindusthani scholar, was appointed provisionally by Lord Wellesley to find out if an experiment of lecturing to young Civilians could be made successful. It succeeded splendidly, as appears from the Report of the Committee appointed to ascertain the progress made in Gilchrist’s class (Roebuck, op. cit. pp.1-14 ; Seton-Karr Selections from Cal. Gazette, vol. iii pp. 58-61). After this the scheme of Fort William College was set on foot. 16
