been discarded, and public officers cannot discharge any of their duties unless they are familiar with it. As candidates for civil employ in India will now have only the vernacular language to attend to, the preparatory course of instruction ought to be lengthened and the examinations increased in strictness; and as, after they enter upon active life, almost every thing they hear, and speak, and read in the performance of their public duties, will be in the popular language, they must soon acquire the same, or nearly the same, facility of transacting business in it as in English.
This great point having been gained, every thing else will come out right. Being now brought into direct communication with the people, the European officers will be more independent of their executive officers: they will see and know
h 3
When I left Calcutta only one judge of the Sudder was believed to know it; and perhaps now there is not one. Every kind of judicial business was transacted in Persian, which is a language very unlike Bengalee; and the evidence of parties in criminal proceedings, which, by positive orders from the Court of Directors, is taken down in the language in which it is delivered, was, and perhaps still is, translated from the vernacular language into Persian, on the papers being submitted to the superior court. Public officers in the Upper Provinces were always acquainted with the vernacular language; and now that they have to transact business in it, they will become more familiar with it than ever.
