HERTFORD COLLEGE. The extension of our empire in India, which now contains sixty millions of people, has made it necessary to pro vide a succession of able men to fill the various departments, both of the civil and military govern ment. Whilst at first the Royal Academy at Wool.. with, and recently the Military College establish ed near Croydon, furnished instruction to those destined to hold commissions in the artillery and engineer corps, the education of those who were to fill the most important civil offices had not been provided for. During the brilliant admini stration of the Marquis Wellesley, that intelligent observer saw and lamented this want of previous in struction, and founded at Calcutta a collegiate insti tution, to provide the means of acquiring a know ledge of the languages, the laws, and the local usages of our Indian empire. The Directors of the Com pany disapproved in part of the plans of the Gover nor-general ; but they at the same time felt the neces sity of giving some knowledge to those whom they had nominated as Writers ; for so those are still call ed, in compliance with early custom, who are design ed to fill the highest offices, both judicial and execu tive, under the Indian government.
With this view the College of Hertford was founded ; the design of the institution being to train up a race of youths, who should in succession fill the various and important offices of the civil govern ment and administration. " To dispense justice to millions of people of various languages, manners, usages, and religions; to administer a vast and com plicated system of revenue, through districts equal in extent to some of the most considerable king doms in Europe; to maintain civil order in one of the most populous and litigious regions in the world; these," says Marquis Wellesley, " are now the duties of the larger portion of the civil servants of:the Company. The senior merchants, composing the courts of circuit and appeal under the presiden cy. of Bengal, exercise in each of these courts a ju risdiction of greater local extent, applicable to a larger population, and occupied in the determination of causes infinitely more intricate and numerous, than that of any regularly constituted courts of justice in Europe. The senior or junior merchants employed
in the several magistracies and courts, the writers or factors filling the stations of registers, and as sistants to the several courts and magistrates, ex ercise, in different degrees, fbnctions of a nature purely judicial, or intimately connected with the ad ministration of the police, and with the maintenance of the peace and good order of their respective dis tricts." The Marquis points out, in the same strong manner, the arduous dutiesof the several departments which the Europeans are required to perform in In dia, and sums up by saying, " that the civil servants of the East India Company can no longer be consider ed as the agents of a commercial concern ; they are, in fact, the ministers and officers of a powerful sove reign ; they must be viewed in that capacity with a reference not to their nominal, but to their real oc cupations. They are required to discharge the func tions of magistrates, judges, ambassadors, and go vernors of provinces, in all the complicated and ex tensive relations of those sacred trusts and exalted stations, and under peculiar circumstances, which greatly enhance the solemnity of every public obli gation, and the difficulty of every public charge. Their duties are those of statesmen in every other part of the world ; with no other characteristic dif ferences than the obstacles opposed by an unfavour able climate, a foreign language, the peculiar usages and laws of India, and the manners of its inhabit ants." The final result of the various discussions of the Court of Directors has at last been to maintain the College of Calcutta, for the sole purpose of affording instruction in the different languages and dialects of India, and to devote a college in England to those branches of knowledge which can be cultivated un der more favourable circumstances in Europe than in India.