No More Learning

" The ideas of patriotism
and of honour were seldom known in the cabinets of the eastern princes
till the arrival of the Europeans. Every species of assassination was
the policy of their courts, and every act of unrestrained rapine and
massacre followed the path of victory. But some of the Portuguese
governors, and many of the English officers, have taught them that
humanity to the conquered is the best, the truest policy. The brutal
ferocity of their own conquerors is now the object of their greatest
dread; and the superiority of the British in war has convinced their
princes,[27] that an alliance with the British is the surest guarantee
of their national peace and prosperity. While the English East India
Company are possessed of their present greatness, it is in their power
to diffuse over the East every blessing which flows from the wisest and
most humane policy. Long ere the Europeans arrived, a failure of the
crop of rice, the principal food of India, had spread the devastations
of famine over the populous plains of Bengal. And never, from the seven
years' famine of ancient Egypt to the present day, was there a natural
scarcity in any country which did not enrich the proprietors of the
granaries. The Mohammedan princes, and Moorish traders have often added
all the horrors of an artificial, to a natural, famine. But, however
some Portuguese or other governors may stand accused, much was left for
the humanity of the more exalted policy of an Albuquerque, or a Castro.
And under such European governors as these, the distresses of the East
have often been alleviated by a generosity of conduct, and a train of
resources formerly unknown in Asia. Absurd and impracticable were that
scheme which would introduce the British laws into India without the
deepest regard to the manners and circumstances peculiar to the people.
But that spirit of liberty upon which they are founded, and that
security of property which is their leading principle, must in time have
a wide and stupendous effect. The abject spirit of Asiatic submission
will be taught to see, and to claim, those rights of nature, of which
the dispirited and passive Hindus could, till lately, hardly form an
idea. From this, as naturally as the noon succeeds the dawn, must the
other blessings of civilization arise. For, though the four great castes
of India are almost inaccessible to the introduction of other manners,
and of other literature than their own, happily there is in human nature
a propensity to change.
Nor may the political philosopher be deemed an
enthusiast who would boldly prophesy, that unless the British be driven
from India the general superiority which they bear will, ere many
generations shall have passed, induce the most intelligent of India to
break the shackles of their absurd superstitions,[28] and lead them to
partake of those advantages which arise from the free scope and due
cultivation of the rational powers. In almost every instance the Indian
institutions are contrary to the feelings and wishes of nature. And
ignorance and bigotry, their two chief pillars, can never secure
unalterable duration. We have certain proof that the horrid custom of
burning the wives along with the body of the deceased husband has
continued for upwards of fifteen hundred years; we are also certain that
within these twenty years it has begun to fall into disuse. Together
with the alteration of this most striking feature of Indian manners,
other assimilations to European sentiments have already taken place. Nor
can the obstinacy even of the conceited Chinese always resist the desire
of imitating the Europeans, a people who in arts and arms are so greatly
superior to themselves. The use of the twenty-four letters, by which we
can express every language, appeared at first as miraculous to the
Chinese. Prejudice cannot always deprive that people, who are not
deficient in selfish cunning, of the ease and expedition of an alphabet;
and it is easy to foresee that, in the course of a few centuries, some
alphabet will certainly take the place of the 60,000 arbitrary marks
which now render the cultivation of the Chinese literature not only a
labour of the utmost difficulty, but even the attainment impossible
beyond a very limited degree. And from the introduction of an alphabet,
what improvements may not be expected from the laborious industry of the
Chinese! Though most obstinately attached to their old customs, yet
there is a tide in the manners of nations which is sudden and rapid, and
which acts with a kind of instinctive fury against ancient prejudice and
absurdity. It was that nation of merchants, the Phoenicians, which
diffused the use of letters through the ancient, and commerce will
undoubtedly diffuse the same blessings through the modern, world.

To this view of the political happiness which is sure to be introduced
in proportion to civilization, let the divine add what may be reasonably
expected from such opportunity of the increase of religion. A factory of
merchants, indeed, has seldom been found to be a school of piety; yet,
when the general manners of a people become assimilated to those of a
more rational worship, something more than ever was produced by an
infant mission, or the neighbourhood of an infant colony, may then be
reasonably expected, and even foretold.

In estimating the political happiness of a people, nothing is of greater
importance than their capacity of, and tendency to, improvement. As a
dead lake, to continue our former illustration, will remain in the same
state for ages and ages, so would the bigotry and superstitions of the
East continue the same. But if the lake is begun to be opened into a
thousand rivulets, who knows over what unnumbered fields, barren before,
they may diffuse the blessings of fertility, and turn a dreary
wilderness into a land of society and joy.