Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/215

Rh class of society from which they are drawn, except so far as those feelings may be modified by professional interests and habits. The native officers rise from the ranks; and the ranks are recruited from the labouring class, which is the last that will be affected by any system of national education. Not one in five hundred of the boys who are instructed in the Zillah seminaries, will enlist in the army. If the Sepoys are educated anywhere, it must be in the village schools; and the organisation of those schools will be the concluding measure of the series. The instruction given to the labouring class can never be more than merely elementary. They have not leisure for more. But, such as it is, they will be indebted for it to us; and as it will form part of a system established and superintended by ourselves, we shall take care that it is of a kind calculated to inspire feelings of attachment to the British connection. After this, the young men who enlist in the army will become imbued with the military spirit, and moulded by the habits of military obedience. I leave to others to judge whether this training is calculated to make better and more attached, or worse and more disaffected, soldiers than the state of entire neglect, as regards their moral and intellectual improvement, in which the whole class