Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/306

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The official returns are made twice every year, embracing the periods from January to June and from July to December, and the above table is merely an abstract of the returns for the six years 1829-34. I at first intended to include a period of ten years in the table, but I found, on examination, that the returns for the two years preceding 1829 were imperfect, and those for the two years following 1834 were framed on a different model, both circumstances preventing, that strict comparison which I was desirous of making, and I therefore limited my attention to the six years for which the returns were complete and nearly uniform.

The relation of crime and instruction to each other may be ascertained by classifying all persons convicted of the same crime according to the kind and amount of instruction they have received. The returns of crime would thus exhibit whether the criminals were entirely destitute of instruction; whether they could barely decipher writing or sign their names; whether they could merely read and write; whether they possessed attainments superior to mere reading and writing, including, moral as well as intellectual instruction; whether they had received a learned education; and in each case whether it was a first or a second conviction; and what was the age and sex of the convict. It is only such returns that can enable us to judge satisfactorily of the effect of the different kinds and degrees of instruction upon the increase, diminution, or modification of crime, and of the consequent obligation on this ground imposed on the governing authority in a State to