Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/310

250 school instruction has been ascertained in the City of Moorshedabad in one thana or police sub-division of the districts of Rajshahi and Moorshedabad in the entire districts of Beerbhoom, Burdwan, South Behar, and Tirhoot, and, with the aid of Mr. Malet, in the entire district of Midnapore.

In so extensive a country, inhabited by so numerous a population, it would have been impossible, without far more ample means than were placed at my command, to extend the inquiry over the whole without exception, and to exhaust the subject, so as to leave nothing unexamined and unknown. The investigation therefore, with the distinct contemplation of this impossibility, has been conducted on the principle of learning something with precision and certainty; of causing the information thus acquired to embrace such an extent of space, such an amount of population, and such a diversity of conditions and circumstances as would afford the grounds of legitimate inference; and consequently of inferring from the known the unknown, from what is certain that which is doubtful. Accordingly from the state of domestic and adult instruction ascertained in one large city and in one thana of each district, I infer the same or a similar state of domestic and adult instruction in all the thanas of the same districts. The population of which an actual census has been taken to afford the basis of such an inference is 692,270, and the additional population to which the inference is made to extend is 7,332,500, together amounting to 8,124,770. In like manner, from the state of school instruction ascertained in one large city, in two thanas of two different districts, and in five entire districts, I infer the same or a similar state of school instruction in all the remaining districts of Bengal and Behar. The population of which an educational survey has been made to afford the basis of such an inference is 7,789,152, and the estimated additional population to which the inference is made to extend is 27,671,250 together amounting to 35,460,402. There is no reason to suppose that the state of domestic and adult instruction diffiersdiffers [sic] materially in the thanas in which that branch of the inquiry was carried on from its state in those to which it was not extended; nor is there any reason to suppose that the state of school instruction differs materially in the districts in which it was investigated from its state in those which the investigation did not embrace. There is probably no district in Bengal and Behar in which the amount and proportion of juvenile and adult instruction are so high as in Burdwan or so low as in Tirhoot, and we may thus assume without much danger of error that we have ascertained both the highest and the lowest existing standard of intructioninstruction [sic] in those two provinces. Actually the state of instruction of nearly eight millions of its subject is before the Government with a degree of minuteness which, even if it should fatigue, may give some assurance of an approach to accuracy, and exhibiting an amount of ignorance which demands