Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/353

Rh ground of satisfaction, if the amount of assessment, instead of being absorbed into the general revenue of the country, had been devoted to the purposes of education to which, in part at least, it had been hitherto applied. I must add, however, that the education which this person had probably in view was not vernacular, but Persian and Arabic education.

Fourth.—If all other resources fail, there is still one left, the general revenue of the country on which the poor and the ignorant have a primary claim,—a claim which is second to no other whatsoever, for from whence is that revenue derived, but from the bones and the sinews, the toil and sweat of those whose cause I am pleading? Shall £10,000 continue to be the sole permanent appropriation from a revenue of more than twenty millions sterling for the education of nearly a hundred millions of people?

By these means, and from these sources, I propose to qualify a body of vernacular teachers, to raise their character and provide for their support, and to give a gradual, a permanent, and a general establishment to a system of common schools. Without competent instructors all efforts at educational improvement must be futile, and I have, therefore, directed my principal attention in all that has yet been advanced to the means of making and keeping them efficient. With this view, according to the plan now sketched, teachers will not only be taught, but provision will be made for their subsistence. They will feel that, to the extent of at least one-half of an average income, they are dependent during good behaviour on Government,—the common trustee of all the endowments that may be created for this purpose; and to the extent of the remaining half upon the degree of repute and acceptance they enjoy in the village communities to which they attach themselves. The recommendation of those communities will be essential to the enjoyment even of the former moiety, and their well-founded complaints should be sufficient to ensure deprivation. If, as I anticipate, the co-operation of the village communities in this object shall have the effect in time of eliciting public spirit and awakening and directing proper domestic and social feeling, the appointment and displacing of teachers should be vested in them, and ultimately the power of imposing a common rate upon all householders in substitution of unequal and uncertain school fees and perquisites. In finetime [sic], I look to these village communities, if wisely estimated and treated by Government, as the germs from which the real prosperity of the country must spring, local and municipal improvement and efficient district and provincial administration.

If I were to stop here, and to obtain the sanction of Government and the co-operation of the native community to accomplish the views now propounded, I should hope that a sure foundation would thus be laid for a national system of education. But something else may be done to facilitate the operation of the