Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/364

304 be modified in any district, by the general adoption of the system of endowments, the cost of educating their children will be reduced to the people to the extent of one-half. Even if the amount of fees and perquisites should remain the same without reduction, the value received from the teachers of youth will be far greater, which both to parents and scholars is the best kind of economy.

It is, perhaps, admissible to regard as an advantage arising from the plan that it affords an opportunity of employing for the benefit of the country the class from which I propose to draw the inspectors and examiners. Extraordinary efforts have been made to extend a knowledge of the English language to the natives; but those who have more or less profited by the opportunities presented to them do not find much scope for their new attainments, which, on the other hand, little fit them for the ordinary pursuits of native society. They have not received a good native education, and the English education they have received finds little, if any, use. There is thus a want of sympathy between them and their countrymen, although they constitute a class from which their countrymen might derive much benefit. There is also little sympathy between them and the foreign rulers of the country, because they feel that they have been raised out of one class of society without having a recognized place in any other class. If they were employed in visiting the different districts as the agents of Government for promoting education, they would fulfil a high destination satisfactory to their own minds and would not fail to enjoy the respect and affection of their countrymen. The qualifications required of them would teach them, what is so important to their own usefulness and hitherto so much neglected, to unite the acquirements of an English and a native education, since it is only by means of the latter class of acquirements that English principles and ideas can be generally transfused into, and incorporated with, the native character.

The only other recommendation of the plan which I will now suggest is that it would be a proper complement to a measure that has been already adopted. It would be worthy of the Government which has decreed that the business of the country shall be conducted in the language of the people. This is so important a measure and bears so directly upon the present subject that I subjoin here the Resolutions of Government relating to it. The following is the Resolution of the Governor General of India in Council:—

“The attention of His Lordship in Council has lately been called to the Regulations of the Bengal Code, which positively enjoin the use of the Persian language in Judicial and Fiscal proceedings. His Lordship in Council is sensible that it would be in the