There is, however, one great defect in Anglo-Indian society; it is
composed too exclusively of the servants of government, civil,
military, and ecclesiastic, and wants much of the freshness, variety,
and intelligence of cultivated societies otherwise constituted. In
societies where capital is concentrated for employment in large
agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing establishments, those who
possess and employ it form a large portion of the middle and higher
classes. They require the application of the higher branches of
science to the efficient employment of their capital in almost every
purpose to which it can be applied; and they require, at the same
time, to show that they are not deficient in that conventional
learning of the schools and drawing-rooms to which the circles they
live and move in attach importance. In such societies we are,
therefore, always coming in contact with men whose scientific
knowledge is necessarily very precise, and at the same time very
extensive, while their manners and conversation are of the highest
polish. There is, perhaps, nothing which strikes a gentleman from
India so much on his entering a society differently constituted, as
the superior precision of men's information upon scientific subjects;
and more especially upon that of the sciences more immediately
applicable to the arts by which the physical enjoyments of men are
produced, prepared, and distributed all over the world.
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