Vested rights are the cry of the West. Let the Anglomaniasts inquire how many of these, appropriated to native instruction, have been violated directly by our indiscriminating resumptions, or indirectly by our levelling system of rule, and they will be better prepared to judge of the justice of Lord William Bentinck's sudden refusal of the Parliamentary dole! The Government's discretion in India is, like the Parliamentary omnipotence in England, sufficient for all things but the changing of wrong into right; and whether I advert to the absorption of native seminaries by the progress of our sway, to the enormous portion of the annual produce of industry which we sweep into the Exchequer, or to our obligation to consult the sentiments of the people (let them square with our own or not) upon a question of this sort, I must equally deny the title of the Governor-General in Council, to withhold public patronage from the indigenous literature of our subjects. This is my view of the question, as one of right; but as I have no wish to push the plea of merum jus on behalf of the people, to the extent of injuring them by compliance with their wishes, I shall proceed to assign some reasons for the opinion I entertain, that their essential welfare, not less than their rights, may be urged against the scheme implied by Lord William Bentinck's decretum. It may be granted at once, as a general proposition, that that sound knowledge, to diffuse which throughout India is our purpose, is to be found in the European languages, and not in those of the East. What we want is the best instrument for the free and equal diffusion of that knowledge. One party contends that English is the desideratum, the other party that the vernacular languages are. It is assumed by the former that the English language is a perfect and singly sufficient organ, whilst the native languages are equally objectionable from their plurality and their intrinsic feebleness. These assumptions appear to me somewhat hasty and unfounded. A large portion of the sound knowledge of Europe is not to be found in the English language, but must be sought in those of France and Germany-to go no further. Does not every educated Englishman daily resort to the languages of France and Germany for those useful and important ideas which are strangers to his own tongue; and must not, therefore, the

assumption that English is coequal with sound knowledge be received with great reserve? Certainly it must; and without pushing the argument beyond due limits, it will be found to be worth something, when placed fairly in the scales against that plurality which is so extravagantly objected to the colloquial media of India, for Bengalee is the speech of at least thirtyseven millions of people, and Hindee is every where current from the northern frontiers of Bengal to the Indus and the Himalaya, not to mention the ubiquitarian Hindoostanee! This surely is a range of language enough to satisfy the most ardent of reasonable reformers -is a range rather above than below the average of Europe. With like cautious circumspection let us now endeavour to ascertain the real extent of that intrinsic force, as an instrument for the communication of thought, which is ascribed to English by those who insist so much upon the feebleness of the native languages.

Truth and precision require, that, in making this estimate of English, we should exclude the consideration of the unmixed sciences, as well as of most of the applied ones which are strictly physical. Those sciences have a language of their own, which is admitted on all hands to be highly efficient, and which is disconnected with all ordinary colloquial media, as well as with the passions and prejudices-the ordinary habits and sentiments, of mankind. These circumstances, coupled

with the fact that in reference to the sciences in question the native mind is almost a carte blanche, induce me to join those who propose, as the general rule, to convey our knowledge of them to the people of India directly: and that in all senses of directness, lingual as well as others.t But the case is far otherwise with the moral sciences: for, blended as these branches of knowledge are, from their very nature, with the daily pursuits and thoughts, and quickly responsive as they are to the strongest prejudices and passions, of mankind; appealing, too, as they do, for their ultimate evidence, to universal consciousness, or to almost universal experience, powerful intrinsical • See note at the end of these papers.

+ The exception of astronomy rests, and rests well, on the conversancy of the people with this branch of physical science and on their attachment to their own achievements in it. We should avail ourselves of that attachment as far as possible.

reasons may come in aid of the lingual considerations I am about to show, against the direct communication of our superior lights to the Indians. To those intrinsical reasons I propose to revert in the sequel,* and meanwhile proceed to observe, that, of the lingual considerations, the first I shall note amounts to a demur to the asserted perfectness of our language; and I would request the particular attention of those who lay such undue stress upon the imperfection of the vernacular tongues of India, to the following quotations from two of the most enlightened of English philosophers on the subject.

"The inadequacy of the words of our ordinary language for the communication, as well as for the discovery of truth, is a frequent complaint of which the justice will be felt by all who consider the state to which some of the most important arts would be reduced, if the coarse tools of the common labourer were the only instruments available in the most delicate operations of manual expertness. The watchmaker, the optician, and the surgeon are provided with instruments which are fitted by careful ingenuity to second their skill: the philosopher alone is doomed to use the rudest tools for the most refined purposes. He must reason in words of which the looseness and vagueness are almost as remote from the extreme exactness and precision required, not only in the conveyance, but in the search of truth, as the hammer and axe would be unfit for the finest exertions of skilful handiwork. He may be compared with an arithmetician compelled to employ numerals not only cumbrous but used so irregularly to denote different quantities, that they not only deceive others, but himself." Again, "In a mathematical definition, although the words in which it is expressed may vary, the meaning which it is intended to convey is always the The case is not the same with the definitions of the less strict sciences. In those of morals and politics it is most difficult to use terms which may not be understood differently by different persons. The terms virtue, morality, equity, charity, are in every day use: yet it is by no means agreed what are the particular acts which ought to be classed under these different heads.

same.

See Letter No. II. on the use that may, and should, be made of the Indian literature as a means of diffusing our sounder knowledge. The present letter is devoted to the consideration of languages.

The terms liberty, constitutional liberty, civil liberty, political liberty, political economy, are frequently understood in a different sense by different persons. The sense of the words wealth, capital, productive labour, value, labour, profits, demand, has been lately called in question, though I think without sufficient reason. As a remedy for these difficulties it has been proposed that a new and more perfect nomenclature should be introduced. But in such sciences as morals, politics, and political economy, it is impossible to suppose that a new nomenclature would be submitted to, or, if it were, that it would render the same service to these sciences as the nomenclatures of Linnæus, Lavoisier, and Cuvier, did to the sciences to which they were respectively applied."

These quotations are from works which were among the last and maturest labours of a Mackintosh and a Malthus; and though their tenor be not entirely correspondent, I apprehend that Malthus's not less than Mackintosh's sentiments demonstrate the inaccuracy and scarcity of our specific terms, or, in other words, the poverty of our language; whilst those of the former have other bearings upon this question, which will be recurred to in the sequel. Those who are disposed to object to mere authority, however high, are requested to advert to the prominent facts, that terminology occupies a large portion of the latest and ablest works on the theory of Government, on jurisprudence, on political economy, on mental and on moral philosophy-in a word, on every branch of knowledge beyond the limits of the exact sciences; and that the new vocables and definitions of one philosopher are continually rejected by another. And such inquirers will find that they can only excuse our language (if determined so to do), at the expense of our ideas or knowledge. If, then, we begin by a fair estimate of the value of our own language as an instrument of thought; and forbear, in proceeding to compare it with the vernacular tongues of India, from undue depreciation of them, I conceive that as much exaggeration will be found to have prevailed relative to the poverty of the latter, as to their multiplicity. When we speak of the multitude of Indian languages we are sadly apt to forget the extent of its territory and population; nor less so, the important distinction between the merely dialectial, and the

essential, differences of language. When, again, we speak of the poverty of those languages, as though they neither were, nor could be easily made, competent vehicles of European knowledge, we assume with equal rashness the power of our own speech, and the powerlessness of those of India-alike inattentive to facts directly bearing upon the matter, and to those general considerations which, unless I am much mistaken, may be made to demonstrate the necessary capacity of the Indian. spoken languages to bear any weight of knowledge coming home to the business and bosoms of mankind that we can lay on them. I call upon you, sir, and upon your fraternity (which is best able to do so), to explain distinctly and to unfold my general assertions, that Bengalee, the language of thirty-seven millions, has good dictionaries and grammars, as well as works which, quoad language, exhibit a respectable share of precision and compass; whilst its connection with Sanskrit, and the peculiar genius of the latter, afford extraordinary means of enrichment by new terms competent to express any imaginable modification of thought. I call upon you, sir, to explain and unfold in detail my further assertions, that throughout the Bengal Presidency wherever Bengalee is not spoken, Hindee is the basis of that almost single vernacular language which is common to all Hindoos and all rural Moslems; that Hindee possesses books which in point of language exhibit very considerable actual and latent power; that the latter may be educed and extended to any requisite degree through the connection of Hindee with Sanskrit; and that, lastly, scarcely any part of the population of our vast presidency, which uses not Bengalee or Hindee, has other language than Hindoostanee—a language rich in grammars, dictionaries, and written works; and from its flexible genius capable of amalgamating with its existing wealth any and every variety of new terms and vocables which Sanskrit. and Arabic can furnish from their inexhaustible fountains.

Let us now, for a moment, advert to those more general considerations above glanced at. That language is an express image of thought is an old and exploded error. Words do not expressly embody ideas-the function of language being limited to putting and keeping two minds in the same train

Stewart's Phil. Essays, pp. 201-211.