Page:Report on public instruction in the lower provinces of the Bengal presidency (1850-51).djvu/31

Rh English language, and in European literature and science. These measures have been attended with a degree of success which, considering the short time during which they have been in operation, is in the highest degree satisfactory, and justifies the most sanguine hopes with respect to the practicability of spreading useful knowledge among the natives of India, and diffusing among them the ideas and sentiments prevalent in civilized Europe.'

"In a despatch of the same date, addressed to the Government of Bengal, the same view which I have taken of the services to be performed by the English and vernacular languages in the common cause, is thus enforced:

While we attach much more importance than is attached by the two Committees (of Calcutta and Delhi) to the amount of useful instruction which can be communicated to the natives through their own languages, we fully concur with them, in thinking it highly advisable to enable and encourage a large number of the natives to acquire a thorough knowledge of English; being convinced that the higher tone and better spirit of European literature can produce their full effect only on those who become familiar with them in the original languages. While we thus approve and sanction the measures which you propose, for diffusing a knowledge of the English language, and the study of European science through its medium, we must at the same time put you on your guard against a disposition, of which we perceive some traces in the General Committee, and still more in the Local Committee, of Delhi, to underrate the importance of what may be done to spread useful knowledge among the natives, through the medium of books and oral instruction in their own languages. That more complete education, which is to commence by a thorough study of the English language can be placed within the reach of a very small proportion of the natives of India: but intelligent natives who have been thus educated may, as teachers in colleges and schools, or as the writers or translators of useful books, contribute in an eminent degree to the more general extension among their countrymen of a portion of the acquirements which they have themselves gained, and may communicate in some degree to the native literature, and to the minds of the native community, that improved spirit which, it is to be hoped, they will themselves have imbibed, from the influence of European ideas and sentiments. You should cause it to be generally known that every qualified native, who will zealously devote himself to this task, will be held in high honour