but it has been the pleasure of the English to carry on business and administer justice in a language alike foreign to themselves, and to their subjects.
But there is reason to hope that some more liberal and enlightened plan will, ere long, be devised for the improvement of the people of India, that the road to knowledge and illumination will at length be thrown open to them, and that those who are willing to follow it, will be at full liberty to take their own course, without being compelled to mount on stilts of our construction, or to measure their steps by the footmarks which we have implanted. No country, and no people, have ever yet risen to eminence, or emancipated themselves from superstition, but by the exertion of native intellect, and the cultivation of indigenous literature; and all schemes of education that have not this object in view, will be found ineffectual as to any general benefit to the people upon whom it is to operate.
With regard to the language in which the affairs of the country ought to be administered, and in which the education of the people can be promoted with any hope of success, common sense seems at length to have asserted her dominion over the arguments of learning, and the visions of enthusiasm. Sanscrit, Arabic, and Persian, will, it is hoped, no longer be permitted to retard the progress of moral and intellectual improvement, which their exclusive study has hitherto effected, while the claims which have been advanced, on the other hand, for the universal establishment of English, to the prejudice of the living language and dialects of the country, must yield to the voice of reason, and matter-of-fact experience.
But common sense has yet another struggle before she can completely attain her end. The visionary schemes which formerly projected the imposition of a foreign tongue upon this mighty population, are not yet quite overthrown; a new position is now to be taken up, or rather a deserted one re-occupied. Old prejudice is again at work, and individual vanity in busy agitation. The question of language being set at rest, a new experiment is now proposed,—the substitution of our written character for that which is now in use among the natives, and by which the
