Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/146

132 object for which it is proposed to raise up teachers endowed with such rare qualifications, has been already accomplished. A revolution has already taken place in men’s minds, not only among the unlettered, but what is of far more consequence, among the middle and upper classes, whose property, activity, and influence will secure the further extension, and the permanence of the change. The people are greedy for European knowledge, and crowd to our seminaries in greater numbers than we can teach them. What more do we want? Where would have been the wisdom of entertaining the 1,200 English students who besieged the doors of the Hooghly College with lectures on the absurdities of the Pooranic system of the earth? They already fully admitted the superiority of our system, and came on purpose to be instructed in it; and so it is with thousands of youth in every part of the Bengal provinces.

It is in vain to direct our instructions to those whose habits of mind are identified with the old system, and whose reputation and subsistence depend on its continuance. If had addressed the Roman Catholic clergy, and  the schoolmen, instead of the rising generation, and all who were not strongly pre-engaged in behalf of any