ABSTRACT
Three of the four following letters were first published several years back, and lest it should be supposed that the course of time has antiquated their reasonings, I beg leave to suggest that arguments so general are not so rapidly affected by time, and that in point of fact the Macaulayism of one cycle is but the Trevelyanism † of another, and that the recent practical measures of Lord Hardinge are but the effectuation of the doctrines contended against in these letters. I admit the sagacity and decision with which Lord Hardinge has carried out the most accredited educational maxims of his predecessors; I admit the possibility of these measures of our revered Governor-General supplying the public service with a superior class of native functionaries, though I confess the apprehension that this new class of functionaries may prove competent in our special acquirements only by losing all competency in their own! But I contend that anything worthy the name of national education, as being addressed to remedy the intellectual and moral wants of the mass of the people, is not comprised in these measures which address themselves only or chiefly to the wants of the public service; and I would add with submission that the principles and reasonings upon which rest that avowed preference for English, which dates its present ascendancy from the days of Lord Bentinck and Mr. Macaulay, are very far inferior in philosophic comprehensiveness, as well as in benevolence and expediency, to the principles and reasonings whence were deduced, according to the wants of that age, the educational maxims of a Hastings (Warren) and a Wellesley. I confess an unlimited preference for the latter, not only because it is infinitely more practicable to make Europeans familiar with the words and things of India, than to make Indians familiar with the words and things of Europe, but also because the former course tends perpetually to rebuke and subdue, the latter course to excuse and foster, those peccant idiosyncrasies of the haughty island race to whom God has committed this land, which half neutralise the blessings derived from the no less characteristic integrity and energy of that race. The vivifying spirit of our sound knowledge, which it is so desirable to diffuse throughout India, is no way inseparably connected with its lingual vehicle; and, whilst every step we make in the grand project of idigenating that knowledge in India by means of vernacularisation will prove a bond of blessed union between ourselves and the mass of our subjects, and a safe, a sure, and an universally operative agent of the desiderated change in them, the contrary project of Anglicisation will help to widen the existing lamentable gulf that divides us from the mass of the people, and put into the hands of the few among themselves an exclusive and dangerous power, quite similar in essential character to that power which for ages past the scribes and priests of the East have wielded, to the deplorable detriment of the spiritual and temporal welfare of their fellows, and therefore possibly destined only to perpetuate in a new phase the ancient curse of this land, or exclusive learning! Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, have proved the curse of this land, not so much by reason of the false doctrines they have inculcated as by reason of the administrative mystery they have created and upheld; and I hold it to surpass the wit of man to demonstrate that that terrible mystery will not be perpetuated by English; for, long ages must elapse before public institutions and public opinion become omnipotent in the interior of this land, and in the meanwhile, all those who possess the exclusive knowledge will find but too ample a field for the exercise of its power in prosecution of the selfish ends of ambition and avarice, and in despite of our best efforts at prevention. But, without saying more in repetition of the letters themselves upon the dangers incident to an English organ of knowledge, I may glance at the objection founded upon its difficulty of acquisition and consequent unsuitableness to the wants and necessities of the many. But this topic also having been amply treated in the letters, I notice it here only to call attention to the essential fact that in the practical proposition I have deduced from my general reasonings, there is nothing whatever savouring of preference for one over another organ of instruction. The learned languages of the East and of the West, English and the vernaculars of India, all meet with equal favour in the proposed Normal College; and, whilst it is assumed that the vast project of Europeanising the Indian mind calls for express specific measures subsidiary to education properly so called, it is endeavoured so to shape those measures as to reconcile the adequate cultivation of difficult knowledge by the few with an incessant supply of improved means of easy knowledge for the many. It seems to me that English, not less than Sanskrit or Arabic, is far too difficult for the many; that such studies to produce the expected fruit must form the life-long labour of an appropriate body, the pioneers of a new literature; and that if this corps be adequately equipped and provided for, and dedicated to the specific functions of translating and of teaching, in the manner expressed in my fourth letter, the interests of deep learning will be duly attended to without any risk of its running into monastic dreaminess or subtilty, and at the same time that the two great wants of ordinary education, or good teachers and good books, will be systematically provided for. Thus the advocate for English and the advocate for the learned orient tongues, and the advocate for the vernaculars, may all find equal motive and inducement to uphold the proposition of a Normal College; and those who consider the extent of the work to be done in the way of education with the inadequacy of all our means and appliances, will do well to reflect that every ripe scholar trained in this college will not be a mere well-taught individual, at liberty so soon as he is free of his educational course to forget or misapply those gifts which the public has bestowed upon him for better ends, but a teacher, and a permanent teacher or translator, and consequently one to whom thousands may, and hundreds must, be indebted for the elements of learning at least. Mark, then, the diffusable energy, the expansive force of the institution suggested, and support it with active exertion if you deem it worthy of support.
