It is the women of India who are at this moment impeding the advance of improvement; they have hitherto been so ill-educated, their minds left so entirely uncultivated, that they have had nothing to amuse or interest them excepting the ceremonies of their religion, and the customs with which it is encumbered.  These, notwithstanding that many are inconvenient, and others entail much suffering, they are unwilling to relinquish.  Every departure from established rule, which their male relatives deem expedient, they resolutely oppose, employing the influence which women, however contemned as the weaker vessel, always do possess, and always will exert, in perpetuating all the evils resulting from ignorance.  The sex will ever be found active either in advancing or retarding great changes, and whether this activity be employed for good or for evil, depends upon the manner in which their intellectual faculties have been trained and cultivated.

It appears to me that, although education is making great progress in Bombay, all it has yet accomplished of good appears upon the surface, it not having yet wrought any radical change in the feelings and opinions of the people, or, excepting in few instances, directing their pursuits to new objects.  I give this opinion, however, with great diffidence—­merely as an impression which a longer residence in Bombay may remove; meanwhile, I lose no opportunity of acquainting myself with the native community, and I hope to gather some interesting information relative to the probable effects of the system now adopting at the different national schools.

As far as I can judge, a little of Uncle Jonathan’s fervour in progressing is wanting here; neither the Anglo-Indian or native residents seem to manifest the slightest inclination to “go ahead;” and while they complain loudly of the apathy evinced at home to all that concerns their advantage and prosperity, are quite content to drowze over their old dustoors (customs), and make no attempt to direct the public attention in England to subjects of real importance.

Though unwilling to indulge in premature remarks, these are pressed upon me by the general complaints which I hear upon all sides; but though everybody seems to lament the evil, no one exerts himself to effect a remedy, and while much is talked of individually, little is done by common consent.  One great bar to improvement consists, I am told, of the voluminous nature of the reports upon all subjects, which are heaped together until they become so hopelessly bulky, that nobody can be prevailed upon to wade through them.  In England, at all public meetings, a great deal of time and breath are wasted in superfluous harangues; but these can only effect the remote mischief threatened by Mr. Babbage, and produce earthquakes and other convulsions in distant lands, in distant centuries; whereas the foolscap is a present and a weighty evil, and has probably swamped more systems of improvement, and more promising institutions, than any other enemy, however active.