until it became vernacularised. It consisted entirely of thorny dialectics, or of flowery mysticism: and this, notwithstanding that its stock and root was the eminently useful and practical lore of Greece and of Rome! Can proof more strong be offered or required as to the debasing and disutilitising tendency of a foreign medium, however valuable itself, that is, as an organ of thought! I think not: and therefore would I not employ such a medium in India!

Had it been possible to emasculate the Teutonic national character, the Greek and Roman languages would have laid their chains on it: had it been possible among those energetic races of men to divorce learning from every species of utility, again the Greek and Roman languages would have accomplished the divorce. And yet those languages, in their natal soils, were the very heralds of liberty and of utility!

To the Greeks and Romans themselves, the breathing words lent double power to the burning thoughts; because those words were autochthonous, were the heritage of every single Greek and Roman, blended inseparably with his daily experiences, as well as with every movement of those more generous impulses, which made all Greek and Roman weal and woe a part of his own.

The very same noble and useful ideas when transplanted to foreign soils were stripped of their nobility and their usefulness, by that very same instrument of their communication, which at home had so well sustained and diffused the energy of both those splendid qualities.

And how was change so singular wrought? for the instrument, as an instrument, retained its identical character. Was it that the Teutons, the Franks and Saxons, had in their own hearts no chord responsive to the majesty of Greek and Roman ideas, to all compact of liberty and of practical usefulness?

No supposition could be less true! What was it, then? It was that the difficulty of acquiring the use of the instrument coinciding with the intrinsic difficulty of knowledge, compelled the many to abandon the pursuit of knowledge altogether, and thus enabled the few to turn it into an engine of deception: it was that the unfamiliar nature of the instrument coinciding with the intrinsic tendency of knowledge to abstraction, speedily shut out utility from the view of scholars, and left them, a segregated

and separate caste, with the sole alternative of becoming syllogists or mystics. If we may trust the concurrent experience of the Middle Ages in Europe, and of all ages in Asia, it would seem that a vernacular medium is the only expedient for preserving either the generous, or the simply useful, properties of knowledge. Would you, then, make English knowledge a wholesome food-would you prevent its speedily becoming innutritive or poisonous-to the people of India, give it a vernacular organ; for by such an organ only can it acquire and preserve those vital principles of accessibility, and of proneness to identification with household experiences, upon which it must wholly depend, whether that knowledge shall ever be a blessing, and shall not presently be a curse, to this land.

August 1835.

LETTER II.

SIR,-Should the picture I have drawn of the difficulties and hazards inseparable from the adoption of the English language as the organ of education (and of administration) be allowed to be, upon the whole, correct, it will follow that paramount considerations connected with the weal of the many enjoin and enforce the rejection of that organ. Should, on the other hand, the indication I have given of the advantages inseparable from the adoption of the vernaculars as the media of education (and of administration) be allowed to be, on the whole, accurate, it will follow that paramount considerations connected with the weal of the many enjoin and enforce the acceptance of those media.

Before considerations weighty as those adverted to, the question of merely instrumental efficiency sinks into an insignificance from which nothing could redeem it, but demonstrative proof of such an utter and extreme degree of feebleness attaching to the vernacular languages, in this view, as absolutely to compel a resort, at whatever risk, to other instruments. But that no semblance of such proofs has been, or can be adduced, I think I have satisfactorily shown in my preceding letter; and by so doing, I have, I trust, placed the preference due to a vernacular organ

upon unassailable grounds. It can scarcely be necessary for me to say, that my objections to an English organ of instruction are, in substance, not less applicable to a Sanskrit or an Arabic one. V And, as I freely admit that the latter languages, notwithstanding their difficulty, lead to nothing deserving of general study, but to much, the even partial study of which, as heretofore, is on every higher account to be deplored, it may be asked with what possible aims I can seek to uphold the dead languages and literature of India, and to uphold them by public patronage?

I answer distinctly that those aims are, 1st. The improvement and literary application of the living languages, considered as the principal organs and instruments of general instruction in European lore. 2d. Means of facilitation and inducement, suited to the prejudices and ineptitude of the unlearned many, and of conciliation and check, adapted to the adverse interests and unbounded influence of the learned few, with reference to the introduction and establishment of our knowledge, considered as the sole subject matter of general instruction. The use of the learned languages of the country I contemplate merely as subsidiary to the first purposes; that of its literature sheerly as conducive to the last; and whilst I concede that these purposes are entirely preliminary, I expect, in the course of this letter, to be able to prove their indispensableness in that view.

If I have succeeded in demonstrating by my precedent letter the cardinal importance and necessity of vernacularising our knowledge, it would seem that systematic means to that end form an indispensable feature of our plans for the regeneration. of India: And unless it be meant to be asserted, that the most rooted maxims and most cherished opinions of Indian society do not necessarily militate against the direct and unqualified acceptance of our staple truths, it would seem that systematic means of accommodation and compromise constitute another indispensable feature of those plans. I shall recur to these features of educational reform (heretofore so miserably obscured with dust and rubbish), in the sequel, in order to prove the obligation of Government to fix them in a collegiate establishment having for its object the cultivation, with exclusive reference to them, of the learned languages and literature of the country. Meanwhile, having I trust established the necessity of vernacularisation, and

its dependence upon the dead languages, I proceed to consider the necessity of accommodation and conciliation, with their dependence upon the literature.

In approaching this topic, I feel a singular perplexity arising, not out of the difficulty of the subject, but out of that hardihood of assertion which has, of late, attempted to confuse and invalidate the clearest, largest, best-grounded inductions from our experience of the character and condition of the people of India. Until recently, the extremity of their poverty had been as little liable to question as the extremity of their prejudices. But now, it seems, the general acquisition of the English language is as entirely compatible with their means, as the direct adoption of English ideas with their inclinations. Fie upon such stultifying extravagances! for, who not wholly blinded by his impetuous pursuit of some favourite theory, can fail to perceive that were the people indeed so easy in their circumstances, and so liberal in their minds, as is here assumed, there could be little or no occasion for our educational interference? Nay, were the assumption in question anything but the very reverse of truth, we towering Europeans should be ourselves demonstrably reduced to take shelter under the most grovelling scepticism, entirely without motive to amend others or ourselves, how much soever they or we might need it. Because if extreme moral and physical evil and hindrance did not practically flow from such notions as prevail in this land, the relative value of all conceivable human notions, must be reduced, universally, to such stuff as reveries are made of! How comes it that the advocates of these extremely liberal opinions do not perceive, that their tenets lead distinctly to the conclusion that all opinions whatever are matters of indifference? Take away from gross error its practical malignity and impotence, and you take away, at the same time, the practical importance of truth! God forbid that I should dwell upon the hostility, the alienation, the imbecility, of the natives with a view to make them objects of execration or contempt. But for the physician to deny the disease at the very moment of prescribing the remedy, is surely too monstrous a procedure to be attended with advantages. Familiar as I am, and long have been, with the deep seat, and the wide spreading taint, of the disease, I could as soon dismiss the conscious

ness of my own identity as the awfully solemn impression I entertain, that if this malady be at all remediable with the means at our disposal, it can be so only by a treatment as nicely as possible adapted to the constitution and habits of the particular patient, whilst it is, at the same time, consistent with the general rules of the healing art. I oppose myself unwillingly to the opinions of those who have recently so much distinguished themselves by philanthropical efforts on behalf of the people of India. But, the more I consider the drift and scope of these opinions, the more am I convinced that the great cause of native regeneration would be retarded, not advanced, by their adoption into general practice; and that in proportion to the unparalleled obstacles which exist to the mental emancipation of Indians by Britons, is the inexpediency of direct measures to that end. If we would indigenate a European plant to the plains of India, it is universally admitted that the first stock must be sent to the Hills in the hope of procuring seed; that there, to the advantage of climate the utmost care must be superadded, if we would realise that hope; and that, in the retransfer of the gradually-acclimated produce to the plains, we must redouble our previous pains in order to be ultimately successful in the experiment. And will those who make this admission, assert that the moral and intellectual regeneration of the people of India by the people of England is an experiment which may be safely and successfully essayed without any sort of preparation? Yet what but this is the assertion-the proposition of those, who, having in view the dissemination of our knowledge throughout India, contemptuously repudiate all connection with its literature, or with its living languages? Our institutions, civil and religious-political, social, and domestic, are not merely dissimilar from, but the very antipodes of, those of the Hindoos. And our knowledge-what is it but the fused extract of our institutions? And is not their knowledge the same of theirs? And is the prodigious gulf which now separates their minds from ours, to be, indeed, bridged over by measures involving an equal and utter neglect of the pride and power of the learned, of the necessities and imbecility of the unlearned, and of all the prepossessions, prejudices, and accustomed thoughts and feelings, of both? Surely not: nor, in a choice of difficulties, can the adoption of such measures be,

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