Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/308

248 but with the population which by reason of age may be assumed to be capable of committing crime; and, second, because the proportion of instruction possessed by the population above 14 can be correctly compared only with the proportion of crime committed by the population of the same age. The conclusion to which this comparison or rather contrast conducts is most curious and interesting, and is the more so to me because it is wholly unexpected. It will be seen from the table that, in the district of Burdwan, where the proportion of instruction is highest, there the proportion of crime is lowest; and in the district of Tirhoot where the proportion of instruction is lowest there the proportion of crime is highest. The intermediate proportions have the same correspondence. In South Behar, where instruction is double in amount of what it is in Tirhoot, crime is only one-half of what it is in the same district. In Beerbhoom the proportion of instruction is a little higher than in South Behar, and the proportion of crime a little lower; and in the city and district of Moorshedabad where instruction rises still a little higher, there crime falls to a still lower proportion. I have said that this conclusion was unexpected, for although I had no doubt of the general salutary effect of education, yet I saw little in the native institutions and in the systems of native instruction from which to infer that they exercised a very decided moral influence on the community, and I therefore did not anticipate that the state of education would have any observable or striking relation to the state of crime. It is impossible, however, to resist the conclusion from the preceding data that the relation is most intimate, and that even the native systems of instruction, however crude, imperfect, and desultory, most materially contribute to diminish the number of offences against the laws and to maintain the peace and good order of society.

If we pass from the consideration of crime in the aggregate to the particular crimes enumerated in the table at pp. 245 and 246, other inferences will be suggested illustrating the relation of instruction to crime, although the conclusions to be drawn are not very definite in consequence of the form in which the returns have been made, crimes against the person and crimes against property not being in all cases distinguished. Taking, however, the returns as they stand, we find that in Tirhoot, where instruction is lowest, dacoity or gang robbery was almost wholly unknown during the six years in question, and that it prevailed in an increasing degree in South Behar, Burdwan, Beerbhoom, and Moorshedabad in the order in which those districts are now mentioned. Thus, therefore, the description of crime ordinarily attended with the greatest violence to the person is apparently neither promoted by ignorance nor checked by education. Highway robbery prevailed during the period under consideration more in South Behar than in any of the other districts; but it is when we look at the