Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/165

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the people of india.
151

polised by the class of people who are acquainted with Persian.

Lastly; by this measure a great impulse will be given to the study, not of English only, or of the vernacular language only, but both of English and of the vernacular language. Those natives who can afford to give their children a liberal education, will not cease to do so because it is no longer necessary to be acquainted with Persian. They are fully aware that the best educated persons generally succeed best in every pursuit of life; and in particular that they are appointed, in preference to others, to situations under Government. The vernacular language does not furnish the means of obtaining a liberal education: English does so in a much higher degree than any other language to which the natives of India have access; so much so, that the knowledge necessary for the practice of some professions—those of a Physician, a Surgeon, an Engineer, an Architect, and a Surveyor, for instance,—can be acquired through no other medium. These motives will be more than sufficient to stimulate the middle and upper classes of natives to the cultivation of English. Their own languages, on the other hand, have been relieved from the state of proscription and contempt to which they had been for ages

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