prejudices. Why should we imagine that the natives of India will give up their character for ours? They are not illiterate savages; hundreds of thousands among them are able to read and write, and carry on their public and private concerns through this medium, like all other civilised people[1]. We have, unfortunately, regulated our conduct towards them, both officially and as individuals, so as to have excited the strongest prejudices against us, and to have rendered our authority odious to them; but still, as long as it prevails, it will be their interest to submit to our will, and accommodate themselves to our whims and wishes. All those who aspire to official employment will, therefore, learn whatever we choose to dictate; but, with respect to the mass of the people, the very attempt to introduce the proposed change even in the mildest manner, will only still further exasperate their feelings against us; and, as to success, it may undoubtedly be attained by such means as are above described, but certainly not by any less decisive[2].
But, with regard to the expediency of the measure, what object is to be gained? What benefit will result? The four classes into which those who, in this country, can read and write may be divided, are described in No. XXX.
The Roman character, as it at present exists, has been found so deficient in proper symbols to express the sounds of the oriental letters, that all sorts of diacritical marks, points, and dots, are to he adopted, and attached to different letters in order to denote the sounds required. After the labours of Davy, Williams, Halhed, Sir William Jones, Forster, Carey, Shakspeare, Haughton, Arnot, and Forbes, we are still so far from the desideratum, that a system different from any of these is now
- ↑ We know so little of the people that the majority are, perhaps, unacquainted with the fact, that for one school or college, in any way supported by the English, there are at least a hundred, including village-schools, supported entirely by the people without any connexion with us, to say nothing of the immense number of children who are taught privately in their parents‘ houses.
- ↑ By such measures as these, we might even contrive to make them change their language. We have only to station a tutor and a police-officer in every family,—the one to teach English, the other to punish any who presumed to speak any other tongue. But “Le jeu ne vaut pas la chandelle.”
