Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/212

198 The Emperor Akbar followed up this policy in India, Arabicised Persian was adopted as the language of his dynasty; and the direction thereby given to the national sympathies and ideas greatly contributed to produce that feeling of veneration for the family which has long survived the loss of its power. This feeling, which in Europe would be called loyalty, is common to those who have been brought up in the old learning, but is very rarely found in connection with an English education. The policy of our predecessors, although seldom worthy of imitation, was both very sound and very successful in this respect. If we adopt the same policy, it will be more beneficial to the natives in proportion as English contains a greater fund of true knowledge than Arabic and Persian: and it will be more beneficial to us in proportion as the natives will study English more zealously and extensively than they did Arabic and Persian, and will be more completely changed by it in feeling and opinion.

These views were not worked out by reflection, but were forced on me by actual observation and experience. I passed some years in parts of India, where, owing to the comparative novelty of our rule and to the absence of any attempt to alter the current of native feeling, the national habits of