Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/320

260 peculiar to them as systems of religious faith and practice, and certain other institutions peculiar to the people professing those systems, but forming no part of their religious faith and practice. To attempt to interfere with the former would be equally inconsistent with the principles and character of a Christian government, and opposed to the rights and feelings of a Hindu and Mohammadan people. But to revive the latter, and gradually to mould them “into a regular system of instruction for both those great classes of the community,” is the dictate both of sound wisdom and of the most obvious policy.

The question arises in what manner native institutions may be most effectually employed, with a view to the gradual formation of a regular system of instruction for the benefit of all classes of the community; and the answer which, after mature consideration, I am disposed to give is by proposing the establishment of public and periodical examinations of the teachers and scholars of those institutions and the distribution of rewards to the teachers proportioned to their own qualifications and the attainments of their scholars,—the examinations to be conducted, and the rewards bestowed, by officers appointed by Government and placed under the authority and control of the General Committee of Public Instruction. This plan appears adapted to the character of the people and to the present condition of native society. Mr. Wyse in his recent work entitled Education Reform, Vol. I. p. 48, remarking on those dispositions which, in some manner, form the public character, the moral physiognomy, of nations, says—This peculiar public character, formed of the aggregate of private, again acts in a very striking manner upon the character of the individual. But this action is still further affected by the changes of the times. A period of total quiet, resulting from a long continued acquiescence in old institutions, leaves a very different imprint upon the national mind from that which is the necessary consequence of a general breaking up of old principles and forms, and an earnest search after new. In the first instance, an education of stimulants becomes necessary, it is essential to the healthy activity of the body politic; in the second, steadiness, love of order, mutual toleration, the sacrifice of private resentments and factious interests to general good, should be the great lessons of national education.” At no period in the history of a nation can lessons of steadiness, love of order, mutual toleration, and the sacrifice of private to public good be deemed inappropriate; but if any where an education of stimulants is necessary to the healthy activity of the body politic, it is here where a long continued acquiescence in old institutions, and a long continued subjection to absolute forms and principles of government have produced and continue to perpetuate a universal torpor of the national mind. This education of stimulants I propose to supply on the basis of native institutions, and by means of a system of public and periodical