"I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic.--But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value."

If, as Yglesias says, we are talking about recreating the British Raj in Iraq, then does that make Jimmy Baker our Thomas B. McCaulay?

In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose general views I am opposed. I feel with them, that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.

It isn't a promising comparison, but it is perhaps an accurate one. Can we ever be friends?

They said in their hundred voices, 'No, not yet,' and the sky said, 'No, not there.'