NOTES ON INDIAN AFFAIRS.
No. XXXV.
on the injustice of compelling the people of india to adopt a foreign language and character.
Is a rational attempt to educate the people of this great country to be made? Or are they to be allowed to remain in their present state of ignorance? i. e., as far as relates to the assistance of their English masters.
Is one great impediment to the due administration of justice to be removed? Or is it still to remain, to the discredit of the British system of legislation?
These, I grieve to say, are the two real questions into which this subject may be resolved. What has been, and what ought to have been, the course pursued by the British rulers? Certainly it was their duty, first, to have ordained, that the language and character of the country should be that of the courts of justice; secondly, to have established schools, or at least to have encouraged those that already existed for the education of the people, in their own language and character; thirdly, to have promoted the translation of books of knowledge into the vernacular tongue; and, fourthly, to have afforded to all who had leisure or inclination, the means of acquiring that language, in which the most general information is concentrated,—the English.
What has been the course hitherto pursued? We have actually imitated the example of a nation whom we affect to consider barbarians, and centuries behind us in civilization, and have attempted to inflict a foreign language on a hundred millions of people! We have even gone beyond our model. On the first conquest of India, by the Muhammedans, one party at least—the conquerors—understood the language of the courts of justice;vol. ii. b
