Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/401

Rh administration, by the approaching general use of the languages of the people in transacting the public business of the country, and by the legalized freedom of the press. These immunities and powers were equally demanded by justice and conceded by wisdom, but it must not be forgotten by the friends of improvement in this country that just in proportion as civil and political privileges are extended, is the obligation increased to bestow upon the people that instruction which can alone enable them to make a fit and salutary use of their expanding liberties. Take, for instance, the measure which bestowed on the country the liberty of unlicensed printing. The press is in itself simply an instrument, a power, an agency which may be employed either for good or for bad purposes. The capacity of such an instrument to subserve useful purposes is an exact measure of its liability to abuse; and the only effectual security against the possible abuse of its power must be sought in the intelligence and morality of those who wield the instrument and in the check imposed on them by the intelligence and morality of the community which they address and to which they belong. The measure, therefore, legalizing the freedom of the press and all other measures tending to enlarge the civil and political rights of the natives of the country are not in themselves either erroneous in principle, or necessarily injurious in their consequences, but without a national system of instruction they will remain essentially imperfect, since it is instruction only that can give a right direction to the use of these new powers. As yet no time has been lost; but if we would raise an adequate safe-guard against evils which may be distant, but which are both possible and avoidable. Government will by a general system of instruction, timely established, teach the people the proper use of the mighty instrument that has been put into their hands, and of the various franchises that have been, and from time to time may be, bestowed.

Under any circumstances, our position in this country requires wary treading. In the actual case we have done and are doing little to conciliate and not a little to alienate the good feelings of the people. Individual cases, sometimes enlarging into classes, no doubt exist where a feeling of attachment to the English rule called forth by peculiar circumstances is strong and decided so long as those circumstances last and so far as their effect is felt. But among certain other classes dissatisfaction is not sought to be concealed; and the utmost that can be said of native society in general, even in its most favorable aspect, is that there is no hostility, but in place of it a cold, dead, apathetic indifference which would lead the people to change masters to-morrow without a struggle or a sigh. A system of national instruction, if judiciously executed, would be the commencement of a new era in the spirit and principles of our Government. Excluded as we are from much social intercourse with the natives of the country, it would be one of the most effectual means that could be employed to throw down