582
Morrison Education Society.
Oct.
will be found not only that the health of my family has been benefit- ed, but that the facilities for prosecuting the business of education here have been increased. For both those results, I am directly indebted to the gentlemen in whose hands the management of the concerns of the Society is placed.
The state of the Chinese schools at Singapore and Malacca, has already been concisely laid before you. I will, therefore, only take this opportunity to express my conviction in regard to one matter but slight- ly touched upon before, and no longer interrupt the deliberations of the meeting.
It is not because it is new that I introduce the subject now, for it was one of the persuasions that led to the formation of this Society. It is this, sir, that the founders of the Morrison Education Society selected the best spot for the sphere of their operations, and that if we would hope to effect any great change in the system of education prevalent in China, it must mainly be done, by efforts made in China itself. I am far from wishing to discourage those benevolent persons who have undertaken to educate the Chinese in their colonies abroad. I have seen too many happy fruits of their labors, to indulge such a thought even if any à priori reasoning of my own had ever suggest- ed it. The schools among the Chinese colonists are of great value to those for whom they were intended: they are exerting a silent steady influence upon those communities, slowly but surely elevating them in the scale of society, and lending their aid to the cause of Christianity. But as means of affecting this country, they ought not in my present judgment, much to be relied on. Many things concur to strengthen this opinion. The very relation of a colony to the mother-country is one of them. Who would think of bringing about any great revolution in England, by measures set on foot in New South Wales or the Canadas? It were opposing one's self to a cur- rent of influence that always sets in the opposite direction. The co- lonies on the other hand, would soon feel the effect of changes wrought at home. The argument is still more applicable to the case in hand. The Chinese who go abroad, by that very act outlaw them- selves. The communities they form in other lands are not reckoned as belonging to the empire, aud have as little to do with the Chinese government as if they did not exist. Now, what, humanly speaking, can be expected of them, so perfectly isolated from the mass of their countrymen? Not certainly, that they will do much to improve the condition of China.
But perhaps it may be said, that many of the colonists will return to