They were drawn mostly from the better classes, and they were brought into direct contact with their English teachers, many of them very remarkable men whose influence naturally, and often unconsciously, helped to form the character of their pupils as well as to develop their intellect--and most of all, perhaps, in the mission schools; for the Christian missions were at that time the dominant factor in Indian educational work.

In 1854 when there were only 12,000 scholars in all the Government schools, mission schools mustered four times that number and the rights they acquired, under the Orders of 1854, to participate in the new "grants-in-aid" helped them to retain the lead which in some respects, though not as to numbers, they still maintain.

For more than 50 years after the Minute of 1835, and especially during the two or three decades that followed the Orders of 1854, the new system produced a stamp of men who seemed fully to justify the hopes of its original founders--not merely men with a sufficient knowledge of English to do subordinate work as clerks and minor _employes_ of Government, but also men of great intellectual attainments and of high character, who filled with distinction the highest posts open to Indians in the public service, sat on the Bench, and practised at the Bar, and, in fact, made a mark for themselves in the various fields of intellectual activity developed by contact with the West.

It is much to be regretted that no _data_ have ever been collected to show what proportion men of this stamp bore to the aggregate number of students under the new system.

The proportion was certainly small, but it was at any rate large enough to reflect credit upon the system as a whole and to disguise its inherent defects.
It is characteristic of the narrowness of official interest in educational questions that, whereas abundant statistics are forthcoming on all subjects connected with material progress, no attempt seems to have been made to follow the results of Western education statistically into the after-life of high school pupils and college students.