the complete subversion of an old and deeply-rooted system. He, therefore, vests the various heads of departments with a discretionary power to introduce it into their several offices and those respectively subordinate to them by such degrees as they may think judicious, only prescribing that it shall be completely carried into effect within the period abovementioned. For His Honor's information, a report of the progress made in the introduction of this measure will be required on the 1st July next, and again on the 1st January 1839. Ordered that a copy of the above Resolution be transmitted to the General Department for the issue of instructions to the above effect in respect to the offices subject to that Department.”
Judicial and Revenue Department, 23rd January 1838.
It is scarcely possible to over-estimate the importance of this measure to the character of the Government and the welfare of the people. The object is to give the people, or to enable them to acquire through their own language, a knowledge of what may affects their interests—what constantly, deeply, and extensively affect their interests—in the judicial and fiscal departments of Government. The effect will be to bring within the reach of Government for administrative purposes a large amount of cheap and useful native agency of which it has hitherto voluntarily deprived itself, and to rescue the great body of the people who know only their own language from those who, under the covert of a foreign tongue, misrepresent and pervert the cases of prosecutors and accused, the claims of plaintiffs and defendants, the evidence of witnesses, the wishes of petitioners, and the decisions of Judges, defiling the stream of justice, impeding its course, and exciting the disgust and disaffection of those who seek healing in its waters. The facility of complaint through the vernacular tongue will also deter many from the commission of crime and injustice who are now encouraged to the perpetration of them by the knowledge that the injured will be prevented from seeking redress through the difficulty, expense, and liability to abuse of the official medium of communication. But if this measure will prove important and useful, as it undoubtedly will, standing alone and by itself, its importance and utility will be incalculably increased if followed by the establishment of a national system of instruction through the medium of the vernacular tongue. If the use of the language of the people will enable every man to understand the statement of his own case, even when he is wholly ignorant of his mother tongue except as a spoken language, how much more complete his protection if he knows it as a written language. If the employment of a cheap Bengali writer, or pleader, or attorney, or agent instead of a dear Persian one will be economical and protective to the poor man, how much more economical and protective will it be if he can make known his wishes, explain his case,
