learning; to rouse the mind and elevate the character of the whole people, not to keep them in a state of slavish submission to a particular sect. The laity, the great body of the middle and upper classes of native society, are now, for the first time, invited to enjoy the benefits of a liberal education. The key of knowledge has been restored to them; and they have been compensated for their long exclusion, by having opened to them fields of science with which the
poor often devote their leisure hours to giving gratuitous instruction;—they all aid in the good work to the extent of their ability. There may be something of the zeal of new converts in this, and of a desire to secure their own footing by increasing the number of the followers of the new learning: but, whatever may be the motive, the practice shows that Sanskrit and English literature inspire exactly opposite views of relative duty; and that while one is eminently selfish and exclusive, the other is benevolent and diffusive in its tendency. I believe that, in the great majority of instances, the educated natives are actuated in promoting the spread of European learning by a sincere desire to benefit their countrymen, by communicating to them that from which they have themselves derived so much pleasure and advantage. The same class of persons are distinguished by their liberal support of the public charities at Calcutta, a duty in which the native gentlemen who have been brought up under the old system miserably fail. We shall not be surprised at this, when we recollect that our literature is deeply impregnated with the spirit of our beneficent religion; and that even the modern philosophy, which rejects religion, or professes to supply motives of action independent of it, has for its avowed object the amelioration of the condition of the mass of mankind.
