Secret Correspondence of the Court of the Peshwa. 1 65 



have occasionally met with enlarged views of policy, and a knowledge of the 

 principles of statistics and political economy, that would not disgrace the 

 ministers of any government. 



I believe that at this moment, India contains natives who would do honour 

 to any country : men who are capable of rendering themselves eminently 

 useful to our government, not only by their intelligence and information, 

 but by the weight which their influence would bring into our administration. 

 They deserve to be more highly estimated, to be treated with more con- 

 fidence, to be better rewarded, and to receive higher distinctions and 

 consideration, than they usually meet with from us. 



The eminent individual, who has just quitted the government of Bombay,* 

 has endeavoured to promote the objects to which I have alluded ; and I 

 feel confident his successor will be disposed to tread in the same path ; but, 

 to have its full effect, the system must be general. If adopted, it seems to 

 promise at no very distant period to bring about a revolution in the opinion 

 of our Indian government among the natives, which it is of the utmost im- 

 portance to effect. The more general employment of them in offices of trust 

 will give respectability to the upper classes, which our present system is 

 calculated to depress ; it will elevate that branch of society which must 

 always carry the body of the people along with it ; it will give to it an 

 interest in a government with which it will become identified ; and, instead 

 of exhibiting, as at present, a body of proud and broken-down families of 

 rank, it will raise them to a respectable station in tlie community, which they 

 will be unwilling to lose ; and by giving them a greater degree of interest 

 in the existence and welfare of the government, will strengthen it against 

 internal commotion and foreign danger. 



It would be presumptuous in me to expect that any sentiments of mine on 

 such subjects should have much weight with the authorities with whom making 

 these alterations must necessarily rest, even if I could venture to intrude them; 

 but I look upon it as one of the most happy effects of our labours here, that by 

 the diffusion of the knowledge of the state of society in the East, and of its 

 institutions, a general acquaintance with tliese subjects will be spread 

 tluoughout the public in England, and that the information brought home 

 from India will, by being communicated through the pages of our Trans- 

 actions, be a means of enlightening our countrymen, and of indirectly 

 contributing to the happiness of many millions of the human race. 



• Tlie Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone. 



