Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/352

292 First.—A sum of one hundred thousand rupees is by Act of the Imperial Parliament devoted to the encouragement of learning in British India, but I am not aware that any portion of this sum has hitherto been employed in the education of the poor through the medium of their own language. Can it be applied to a more needful or a fitter purpose? Half the amount would annually purchase 166 endowments for qualified village school-masters, each worth rupees 30 per annum and bought at 10 years’ purchase.

Second.—Considerable sums of money have, from time to time, been placed by wealthy natives at the disposal of Government for the general purposes of public improvement or of public instruction without any more specific appropriation; and there can be little doubt that similar sums Will continue to be bestowed. May it not be hoped that the sums which have been or may be received in this way will henceforth obtain, in whole or in part, a destination suited to the most urgent wants of the country and be applied to the instruction of the poor and ignorant, those who are too ignorant to understand the evils of ignorance, and too poor, even if they did, to be able to remove the cause that produces them?

Third.—Instructions have been issued to the officers engaged in the prosecution of the measures for the resumption of lakhiraj tenures liable to assessment to report every case that may come under their cognizance in which lands or money have been granted for purposes connected with education, whether falling under the operation of the resumption laws or not. What the effect ot these instructions which were issued in September 1836 may have been, or may yet be, I have not had the means of ascertaining except in one district, that of South Behar, where, according to a statement furnished by Mr. Reid, the Deputy Collector, under date the 30th January 1837, the number of endowments appear to be considerable granted for the joint benefit of fakeers, poor travellers, and scholars but now almost all alleged to be converted to the private uses of the heirs of the grantees or their assigns. The same state of things will probably be found to exist in other districts. In what instances or to what extent these endowments may now be deemed applicable to the purposes of village education it is not for me to judge; but, if found legitimately applicable, the benefit would be great. Seven tenures of this description, of which the details are contained in the statement above-mentioned, include an area of 4,539 bighas which, at the low average rate of one rupee per bigha, would afford the means of establishing in one district 151 such village-school endowments as I have proposed. A remark reported to me in that district as made by a person whose lakhiraj tenure had been assessed under the resumption laws may help to show the way in which the subject would be regarded by the people. He lamented the loss of property he had sustained, and added that even in this loss there would have been some remaining