"All direct attempts at religious conversion made by the English, especially in Bengal, have completely failed. The Indians, though sounded everywhere, have nowhere been willing to exchange Mohammed or Brahma for Jesus Christ or the Trinity, but for some years past the Government has wisely withdrawn its support from the missionaries (and courageously too, for it takes some courage for the East India Company to provoke the stupid or hypocritical wrath of Parliament) and opened free schools in Calcutta, Benares and Delhi, to which it attracts children of the middle class by every means of influence in its power, for the purpose of instructing them in the languages and sciences of Europe without ever telling them about our follies. I visited these schools, especially in Calcutta, where they have a larger number of pupils, and I talked with a number of young men in their higher classes who had quite naturally been converted from Mohammed or Brahma to reason by their European education. Many of them complained, however that the possession of this treasure only made them more wretched, by cutting them off from the rest of their nation and giving them a conception of happiness and a desire for it under forms forbidden them by their caste; and none of them has yet had the courage openly to cross this infernal barrier. Yet if there is any hope of ever civilizing the East, it is by this means alone. The English Government would hasten its action enormously if it were to substitute the use of the English language in courts of justice and all public transactions for that of Persian, introduced by the Mogul conquerors, but the knowledge of which has remained quite foreign to the mass of the people and has only survived in certain hereditary professions. This change could easily be carried out within less than ten years, for the Indians learn English more quickly than they do Persian, and Persian is no use to those who know it except in the routine of their profession, whereas English would be a key to the whole of European knowledge."