Page:A Statistical Account of Bengal Vol 1 GoogleBooksID 9WEOAAAAQAAJ.pdf/17

x Under this system, the materials for the whole of British India have now been collected, in several Provinces the work of compilation has rapidly advanced, and everywhere it is well in hand. During the same period the first Census of India has been taken, and furnished a vast accession to our knowledge of the people. The materials now amassed form a Statistical Survey of a continent with a population exceeding that of all Europe, Russia excepted.

In addition to my duties as Director-General of the undertaking throughout India, the Provincial Accounts for Bengal and Assam were placed in my own hands. These now separated administrations comprise one-third of the entire population of British India. The District Accounts which I have myself prepared, as provincial editor for Bengal and Assam, derive their materials from four distinct sources. My inquiries, circulated to the District officers, form the basis of the whole; but they have been supplemented by special reports from the provincial Heads of Departments; by papers on individual subjects, obtained for me by the Government; and by my personal researches in the Bengal Districts, and among the manuscript records of the Government at Calcutta, and in the India Office, London.

No effort has been spared to ensure accuracy. But it would be unwise for a central compiler, drawing his materials from so distant and widely-separated sources, to hope that in this respect he had obtained a complete success. It should not be forgotten that until the Census of 1872 we were without precise statistics of the population of any single District in Bengal or Assam; and that whereas the estimate had stood at forty millions for the Province, the total by the Census amounted to sixty-six and three-quarter millions. But these corrections were only obtained by special Census