Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/143

Rh But if it be really true that the cultivation of the ancient classical languages is necessary to qualify the popular dialects for the reception of European knowledge, the progress of this salutary change must be arrested in the midst; the intellect of the country must be rechained to the heavy burden which has, for so many ages, prevented it from standing upright; and a pursuit which absorbs the time of the literary class, to the exclusion of those studies which can alone enable them to regenerate their country, must be indefinitely persevered in. It is true that neither the law, nor the administration of it, nor the established system of public instruction, any longer require this enormous sacrifice. But the philological system lately propounded by the advocates of Oriental education does require it. Such is the expense at which this theory is to be maintained. If crores, instead of lacs of rupees, had been spent in founding Sanskrit colleges and printing Sanskrit books, it would have been as nothing compared with this. The mental and moral energies of India are to be kept for ages in a state of worse than Egyptian bondage, in order that the vernacular dialects may be improved from congenial, instead of from uncongenial, sources. The ordinary terms on which the God of wisdom has