Page:On the education of the people of India (IA oneducationofpeo00trevrich).pdf/205

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the people of india.
191

rive any advantage from the ignorance of their subjects. As long as we study the benefit of India in our measures, the confidence and affection of the people will increase in proportion to their knowledge of us.

But this is not all. There is a principle in human nature which impels all mankind to aim at improving their condition: every individual has his plan of happiness: every community has its ideas of securing the national honour and prosperity. This powerful and universal principle, in some shape or other, is in a state of constant activity; and if it be not enlisted on our side, it must be arrayed against us. As long as the natives are left to brood over their former independence, their sole specific for improving their condition is, the immediate and total expulsion of the English. A native patriot of the old school has no notion of any thing beyond this: his attention has never been called to any other mode of restoring the dignity and prosperity of his country. It is only by the infusion of European ideas, that a new direction can be given to the national views. The young men, brought up at our seminaries, turn with contempt from the barbarous despotisms under which their ancestors groaned, to the prospect of improving their national institutions on