A journey over land to India

Having, in compliance with your reiterated solicitations, determined to give you a narrative of my journey to the East Indies, and the singular turns of fortune which befel me there, I think it necessary, on reflection, to prepare you still further for the reception of it, by proposing certain terms to be fulfilled on your part; and as, in my last, I told you that I expected you, and, with your assistance, your brother, to turn my relation to a more useful account than the gratification of mere idle curiosity, by letting the moral deducible from my errors and misfortunes strike deep and take root in your mind——so there are other things, which, though not so extremely important, are too weighty to be neglected; to which I desire to direct your attention.

I believe you must have already perceived, that the wellbeing of yourself and your brother is my first——I might, perhaps, without trespassing much upon truth, say, my only object in life; that, to the care of your education, and the cultivation of your mind, I exclusively devote my time and my thoughts; and that, to insure your future happiness, I would sacrifice every thing I have a right to dispose of, and risk even life itself. The time, I trust, is not far distant, when your brother will be as well qualified to understand this as you are now——when both will feel alike the important duty it enforces on you——and when your only emulation will be, who shall produce the most luxuriant harvest to reward the labours I have taken——to reward yourselves.

In order, therefore, on my part, to give every thing I do a tendency to the great object of my wishes, and induce you, on your’s, to contribute your share to it, I shall give you, as I proceed in my narrative, a topographical description of the various Countries through which I shall have occasion to conduct you, and, as concisely as may be, an account of their manners, policy, and municipal institutions, so far as I have been able to collect them; which I hope will serve to awaken in you a thirst for those indispensable parts of polite education, Geography and History. I expect that you will carefully attend to those sciences, and that you will not suffer yourself, as you read my Letters, to be carried away by the rapid stream of idle curiosity from incident to incident, without time or disposition for reflection: you must take excursions, as you go along, from my Letters to your Geographical Grammar and your Maps——and, when necessary, call in the aid of your Tutor, in order to compare my observations with those of others on the same places, and by those means to acquire as determinate an idea as possible of their local situation, laws, and comparative advantages, whether of Nature or Art. You will thus enable yourself hereafter to consider how Society is influenced, and why some Communities are better directed than others.

Here I must observe to you, that as Geography is a science to which rational conversation, as supported by Gentlemen of breeding and education, most frequently refers, the least ignorance of it is continually liable to detection, and, when detected, subjects a man to the most mortifying ridicule and contempt.

The ingenious George Alexander Steevens has, in his celebrated Lecture upon Heads, given a most ludicrous instance of this species of ignorance, in the character of a Citizen, who, censuring the incapacity of Ministers, proposes to carry on the War on a new plan of his own. The plan is, to put the Troops in cork jackets——send them, thus equipped, to sea——and land them in the Mediterranean: When his companion asks him where that place lies, he calls him fool, and informs him that the Mediterranean is the Capital of Constantinople. Thus, my dear son, has this satirist ridiculed ignorance in pretenders to education; and thus will every one be ridiculous who betrays a deficiency in this very indispensable ingredient in forming the character of a Gentleman. But a story which I heard from a person of strict veracity, will serve more strongly to shew you the shame attendant on ignorance of those things which, from our rank, we are supposed to know; and as the fear of shame never fails to operate powerfully on a generous mind, I am sure it will serve to alarm you into industry, and application to your studies.

During the late American War, about that period when the King of France was, so fatally for himself, though perhaps in the end it may prove fortunate for the interests of Mankind, manifesting an intention to interfere and join the Americans, a worthy Alderman in Dublin, reading the newspaper, observed a paragraph, intimating, that in consequence of British cruisers having stopped some French vessels at sea, and searched them, France had taken umbrage! The sagacious Alderman, more patriotic than learned, took the alarm, and proceeded, with the paper in his hand, directly to a brother of the Board, and, with unfeigned sorrow, deplored the loss his Country had sustained, in having a place of such consequence as Umbrage ravished from it!——desiring, of all things, to be informed in what part of the world Umbrage lay. To this the other, after a torrent of invective against Ministers, and condolence with his afflicted friend, answered that he was utterly unable to tell him, but that he had often heard it mentioned, and of course conceived it to be a place of great importance; at the same time proposing that they should go to a neighbouring Bookseller, who, as he dealt in Books, must necessarily know every thing, in order to have this gordian knot untied. They accordingly went; and having propounded the question, “what part of the globe Umbrage lay in?” the Bookseller took a Gazetteer, and, having searched it diligently, declared that he could not find it, and said he was almost sure there was no such place in existence. To this the two Aldermen, with a contemptuous sneer, answered by triumphantly reading the paragraph out of the newspaper. The Bookseller, who was a shrewdshrewd fellow, and, like most of his Countrymen, delighted in a jest, gravely replied, that the Gazetteer being an old edition, he could not answer for it, but that he supposed Umbrage lay somewhere on the coast of America. With this the wise Magistrates returned home, partly satisfied: but what words can express their chagrin when they found their error——that the unlucky Bookseller had spread the story over the City——that the newspapers were filled with satirical squibs upon it——nay, that a caracature print of themselves leading the City-watch to the retaking of Umbrage, was stuck up in every shop——and finally, that they could scarcely (albeit Aldermen) walk the streets, without having the populace sneer at them about the taking of Umbrage!

Thus, my child, will every one be more or less ridiculous who appears obviously ignorant of those things which, from the rank he holds in life, he should be expected to know, or to the knowledge of which vanity or petulance may tempt him to pretend.

I am sure I need not say more to you on this subject; for I think you love me too well to disappoint me in the first wish of my heart, and I believe you have too much manly pride to suffer so degrading a defect as indolence to expose you hereafter to animadversion or contempt. Remember, that as nothing in this life, however trivial or worthless, is to be procured without labour——so, above all others, the weighty and invaluable treasures of erudition are only to be acquired by exertions vigorously made and unremittingly continued.

“Quid munus Reipublicæ majus aut melius afferre possumus quam si juventutem bene erudiamus.”——Thus said the matchless Tully. If, then, the education of youth interests so very deeply a State, can it less powerfully interest him who stands in the two-fold connection of a Citizen and Parent? It is the lively anxiety of my mind, on this point, that obliges me to procrastinate the commencement of my narrative to another Letter, and induces me to entreat that you will, in the mean time, give this the consideration it deserves, and prepare your mind to follow its instructions.