Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/139

Rh lects of India will, by the same process, be united among themselves. This diversity of language is one of the greatest existing obstacles to improvement in India. But when English shall every where be established as the language of education, when the vernacular literature shall every where be formed from materials drawn from this source, and according to models furnished by this prototype, a strong tendency to assimilation will be created. Both the matter and the manner will be the same. Saturated from the same source, recast in the same mould, with a common science, a common standard of taste, a common nomenclature, the national languages, as well as the national character, will be consolidated; the scientific and literary acquisitions of each portion of the community will be at once thrown into a common stock for the general good; and we shall leave an united and enlightened nation, where we found a people broken up into sections, distracted by the system of caste, even in the bosom of each separate society, and depressed by literary systems, devised much more with a view to check the progress, than to promote the advance, of the human mind. No particular effort is required to bring about these results. They will take place in the natural course of things by the extension of English education, just as the inhabitants of the