Nor was this all the mischief done.

It quickened the impulse already given by the Education Commission by formally recommending that the recruitment of Englishmen for the Education Department should be reduced to a _minimum_, and, especially, that even fewer inspectors of schools than the totally inadequate number then existing should be recruited from England.

It is interesting to note in view of subsequent developments that, whilst this recommendation was tacitly ignored by the Provincial Governments in some parts of India, as in Madras and in Bombay, it was accepted and applied in Bengal--i.e., in the province where our educational system has displayed its gravest shortcomings.
From that time forward the dominant influence in secondary schools and colleges drifted steadily and rapidly out of the hands of Englishmen into those of Indians long before there was a sufficient supply of native teachers fitted either by tradition or by training to conduct an essentially Western system of education.

Not only did the number of native teachers increase steadily and enormously, but that of the European teachers actually decreased.

Dr.Ashutosh Mookerjee, the Vice-Chancellor of the Calcutta University, told me, for instance, that when he entered the Presidency College about 1880 all the professors, except a few specialists for purely Oriental subjects, were English, and the appointment, whilst he was there, of an Indian for the first time as an ordinary professor created quite a sensation.