Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/178

118 condition that the institutions of learning which it was employed to support should be continued in a state of efficiency.

Two or three other cases were reported to me, but not with sufficient precision to justify their mention in this place. With regard to the whole, as there was a strong feeling in the minds of the complaining parties, of the injustice assumed to be done to them, I assured them that no injustice was intended, and promised that I should not fail to bring the subject to the notice of the collector with a view to its re-consideration, and, after reference to the proper authorities, its final determination; reminding them at the same time, that I could neither answer to the collector for the correctness of their statements which they must themselves support by the necessary proofs, nor to them for the decision to which the authorities might come on a view of all the evidence belonging to the question. They expressed themselves quite satisfied that their claim should be considered on its merits; and accordingly on my return from the interior of the district, I mentioned the subject to Mr. Raikes, who had recently succeeded Mr. Bury as Collector and Magistrate. That gentleman engaged to give the subject his attention as soon as it should come before him in some official shape, and pointed out the mode that should be adopted which, for the guidance of the parties concerned, I communicated to them by letter.

The four endowments I have mentioned amount only to 390 Rupees per annum, or 32 Rupees 8 annas per month. If, as appears probable, it shall be discovered that the discontinuance of these payments has arisen from mistake or oversight, the renewal of them will produce an amount of good feeling amongst a respectable and influential class of the native community of this district, which the smallness of the sums involved would at first view scarcely justify any one in anticipating; but here, as in other matters, smallness and greatness are only relative terms, and small as the sums appear they will give an important impulse to the learning of the district. The Revenue Board in 1813, in recommending the confirmation of one of these endowments in perpetuity, annexed the condition that the institutions of learning conducted by the original beneficiary, should be maintained by his successors under the supervision of the local authorities; and as the Government has been made the almoner and trustee of such endowments, it is worthy of consideration how, without neglecting native learning, the promotion of which was one of the principal objects of the founder, they may also be made subservient to the cause of genuine science through the medium of the learned language of the country, for the enlightenment of those whose influence there can be little hope of winning over to the cause of true and useful knowledge except through that medium.