in a classical education, but the mental discipline, the intellectual and moral training that a learner is put through under an accomplished and skilful teacher, are advantages of no small moment-advantages for which our European friends would do well to ask for adequate compensation before they sacrifice that system which has trained their senators and statesmen, their merchants and men of business to take their place above those of any other country in the world. Now what the learning of Latin and Greek is to the youth of Britain, the learning of English ought to be made to the ingenuous youth of India. Up to a certain point the cases are precisely parallel; but the parallelism does not exist throughout; for,

Thirdly, the English language is the vehicle of all sound knowledge. European youths are obliged for the sake of learning the Latin and Greek languages to study the useless and indelicate writings of Ovid and Anacreon, but Indian youth in the very act of acquiring the English tongue are, or ought to be, imbued with all that is correct in science, all that is sound and pure in morals, all that is saving and sanctifying in religion. And if this be a fact which cannot be denied by those who are inimical to the introduction of English education into this country, it is incumbent on them to shew by what means the requisite amount of sound knowledge is to be communicated. The major part of the knowledge that is communicated in the course of what is ordinarily styled education is derived from books. Now where are the books to be found in a vernacular dress from which such an amount of sound knowledge may be derived as will fit a man for becoming the instructor of his countrymen? It is a very easy matter to say, "Translate works into the language of the country," but we apprehend that those who so dream not of the real meaning of what they say. Suppose that we wish to provide a complete series of books in any one department of human knowledge-say theology. First of all, we must have a work on systematic theology. Perhaps, we fix upon Turretine's Theologia Elenctica, or as they are smaller books, on Calvin's Institutes or on Mastrecht's Theoretical and Practical Theology. Very well, others can tell better than we can how long time would be required to render the smallest of these books into Bengálí. Then we must have a book or books on Church History, and we find that no single book will serve our purpose; we must have both Mosheim and Milner "done" into Bengálí. Then we probably would wish a work on the Evidences of Christianity, and might fix upon Paley, or Chalmers, or Wilson or any other. But to make our course complete we should have a Commentary on the entire Scrip

say

tures; and we are sure we cannot tell how long we should be occupied in translating Poole, Henry, or Scott, but we suppose that with the best possible arrangement, and the greatest possible division of labour, "and all appliances and means to boot," we might in the course of 30, 40, or 50 years, get these indispensable books translated into Bengálí. But what ring-streaked or speckled or spotted translations they might be expected to be, when each book had had four or five translators, we leave to others to judge. But when all this is done, the work is but little more than begun. Bengálí is the language of a vast multitude of people, but it is very, very far from being the language of India; and so when we had got quit of our pandits we must commence afresh with an order of Maulavís, and we must spend another 30, 40, or 50 years in translating the same works into Hindustání. But even when this is done our work is yet to commence. We have to provide for our Oriya, and Tamuli, and Cingalese, and Marathi, and Guzerati students, and a host of others whose very names it is no easy task to enumerate. Then these are all to be printed, and they will occupy, if printed in the characters belonging to the various dialects, far more volumes than we can tell; and then the printing must be paid for, and that would require ten times more money than we possess, and thus in the course of some two or three hundred years, at the expense of many thousands of pounds, we have a very meagre, but still a passable theological library in the vernacular languages of India. And then we may proceed to translate a whole Encyclopædia of literature and science into the same dialects, and for that we may well allow a thousand or two thousand years, and five or six millions of pounds more. We judge of what may be done by what has been done, and it were mere enthusiasm and romance to judge on any other principles. Although there have been vernacular schools in existence under the direction and superintendance of Europeans for very many years, there has not yet been produced in any one of the various languages of India even a set of tolerable elementary school-books.

We hold it then to be as clearly established as any point can be, that those of the natives of this country who for very many years to come are to receive a liberal education must receive it through the medium of the English language. There may, and we have no doubt there will, come a time when there shall be an independent native literature, and then the English language may be advanced or shall we say, degraded from the rank of a necessary to that of a merely ornamental branch of education. But till then, if any of the natives are to receive more than the merest smattering of knowledge, we see no means of educating them but by means of the English

tongue; and unless they be so educated we see not how in the ordinary course of things a sound vernacular literature can even be furnished.

Do we wish then to abolish the languages of India and substitute the English in their stead? No such thing. We have hitherto been dealing only with our first question, as to how the future teachers of India are to acquire that knowledge which they are afterwards to dispense to the mass of their countrymen. But it is another and altogether a different question which relates to the medium of dispensation itself. In general this medium must be the vernacular languages of the several districts. This no one will dispute, and therefore we need not at all enlarge upon it. Our conclusion then is in the words of the resolution adopted unanimously by the Missionary Conference, and of which we believe all who will take the trouble really to consider the question fully, will cordially approve

"That while so many thousands of teachers are wanted in order to the evangelization and civilization of India, the English is the most effective medium of contribution in the way of imparting to them the whole range of European knowledge; that the native languages must be the medium of distribution, and that therefore these vernacular languages ought to be cultivated and improved to the utmost."

No

Some seem to have a fear on this point, lest the learning of English should so distract the attention of the Natives as to make them fail to learn their own. If this even do take place it must be from mismanagement on the part of those who have the superintendance of their education. Englishman ever knew his own language the less for being well and judiciously taught the dead languages of Greece and Rome; and if any Hindu know his own language the less for his being taught the English language, it must be because he has not been well or judiciously taught.-T. S.

VII.-The Cooly Trade.-Report of the Commission appointed at the request of a Public Meeting of the Inhabitants of Calcutta, &c. &c.

With what a burst of indignation would the proposal be met to revive the Slave Trade, were the proposition to be made in plain and definite language. Many would be the voices raised in indignant condemnation of the scheme, and vast would be the amount of energy which would be employed to frustrate the design. The natural rights and acquired liberties of mankind-the breaking up of national and tender ties

the horrors of the middle passage, and all the miseries of actual slavery, would be themes on which with impassioned eloquence the philanthropist would dilate fully and freely. The insult offered to an enlightened and humane community, not less than the injustice to be inflicted on the colored races would cause such a tide of feeling to set in against the proposers of the plan, that they must be overwhelmed by the impetuous stream. We are threatened with the revival of the Slave trade and Slavery.

The source from whence the slaves are to be derived is not the pestilent and almost unfrequented shores of Barbary, but the shores of India-not the Bight of Benin, but the Bay of Bengal. The procurers are to be not the semi-fiends who scour the shores of Africa equally to plunder and murder civilized and uncivilized mankind, but the merchant princes of Calcutta. The vessels in which the victims of avarice are to be carried to their Egypt are not to be the cramped slavers of south America, but the noblest and most commodious craft that human ingenuity and skill can contrive. Nor are they to sail under any flag deemed most expedient for the purpose; but under the honored and beloved flag of free and happy Britain. Nor are they to traverse the deep blue sea in constant dread of the raking fire, or the still more dreaded search of Her Majesty's cruizers-nor will the unhappy victims ever live in the hope of finding peace and rest in a watery grave when hotly pressed by the chase of a man-of-war. No; the noble vessel bearing proudly at her main the honoured flag of Britain, and in her hold a cargo of incipient slaves, shall bound over the swelling bosom of the ocean, free as the air that wafts her along, and undisturbed as the bird which wings its airy flight over the almost undisturbed deep. And why? Because the slaves are colonial passengers the vessel, a colonial passage ship; and the whole trade has been legalized and sanctioned by the parliament of Great Britain in the year We pause here, for we hope the blank may never be occupied. The evil is but prospective; but it is so likely to fall out that we earnestly entreat all and every well-wisher to the best interests of his race to bestir themselves to frustrate a design fraught with such misery to the enslaved, such a brutalizing tendency on those concerned, and such irreparable disgrace to that land which proclaims liberty to every man be he what he may, if once he find an asylum within its borders. We refer of course to the Cooly Trade. This traffic, it will be remembered, was commenced some years ago-it was, in fact, co-existent with the emancipation of the African slaves. The object of the traffic was to convey the people of the Hill tribes of India to the before

slave Colonies of Great Britain, to supply the places of the former serfs who are represented as exorbitant in their demand for wages, violent in their exactions, and unwilling to labor in some cases at all, and in others inadequately for the remuneration demanded-the whole of which charges we are prepared to prove from official documents utterly and entirely at variance with truth when applied to the mass of the emancipated. The interest to be subserved was clearly that of the employer not of the employed, although superficial reasons were assigned commendatory of the trade, based on religious, moral, humane and advantageous (to the exported) grounds. We do not hesitate to say that all such arguments are an idle mockery of these sacred names, and were but employed to deceive the unwary. Happily the evils which must result from such a trade presented themselves to the minds of a few; they remonstrated, but it extended, until all classes, from the highest functionary to the lowest vassal, men of all castes and grades in politics and religion, united to request that the traffic should cease until a full and unbiassed inquiry should be instituted into the whole matter. At the request of the inhabitants of this city, the trade closed-the inquiry was instituted, and the report containing the result of that inquiry, is now before the public. The commission consisted of the Rev. Jas. Charles, Senior Chaplain of the Scotch Church; T. Dickens, Esq. Registrar of the Supreme Court; J. P. Grant, Esq. Secretary to Government; William Dowson, Esq. one of the firm of Henly, Dowson and Bestel, the principal cooly-exporting firm; Major Archer, a gentleman who had visited the Mauritius, and who defended the Mauritius planters at the public meeting, and Babu Russomoy Dutt, one of the Commissioners of the Court of Requests. The Commissioners were vested with no power to suborn witnesses, nor to compel any witness to state more than it suited his own purpose to reveal. The parties therefore whose evidence we have were in a great measure voluntary witnesses. Therefore as far as the Report goes it is valuable. That it is deficient in matter criminatory of the system as it operated at Mauritius, or in the Hills of India, both on those taken away, and those who were left behind, we are not astonished at; for it is scarcely possible that an unpaid commission could devote sufficient time to the subject considering the other claims upon their time and energies. Nor could a powerless commission, though paid and without the means of defraying one tittle of the expense of the most important witness, do much more than did this. We do not blame the members of the commission but those that appointed them for this, but