Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/38

24 Mr. Woodrow suggested a mode of paying by results, thus:—

"“Nothing for boys who cannot read, spell, and write at dictation words of three letters and say the multiplication table up to 10 times 10,

“One pice monthly for every boy who can read and explain the meaning of words and sentences in ‘Infant Teacher’ Part 3rd, and can do easy sums in addition, subtraction, multiplication.

“One anna monthly for every boy up to ‘Infant Teacher’ Part 4th, and the four simple rules of Arithmetic.

“Two annas monthly for every boy who can read and write without gross blunders, copy a map, and has learned some accounts.

“Four annas monthly for every boy who completes the highest course prescribed for indigenous schools.”"

The last phase of the Vernacular Education question appeared in the Supplement to the Bengal Government Gazette for May 20th, 1868. In a correspondence between the Governments of Bengal and India relating to Elementary Vernacular Education for the lower classes, the main question being as to the mode of levying a local Educational Cess, the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal expressed an opinion in favor of an increase to the salt tax. The Director of Public Instruction estimated the cost:—

"“Assuming the population of Bengal at 40,000,000, I calculate that with the machinery of this plan we shall be able to provide Elementary Schools for the whole country at the rate of one School to each 3,000 of the population at an annual charge of the State not much exceeding 20 lakhs of Rupees, or £200,000, including expenditure for inspection and administration; and I should hardly suppose that the Finance Department will consider this an excessive outlay for such a purpose, especially when it is informed that for England and Wales, with a population of 20,063,793, the expenditure from the Parliamentary grant, during the year ending 31st March 1866, amounted to no less a sum than £378,003 for day-scholars in Elementary Schools alone, exclusive of all charges for administration and inspection.”"

Mr., the Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, argues in favor of this expense being met by the land:—

“Consequently, as was originally the case in Bengal, so in the North-Western Provinces, the proportion of the rent taken as revenue by Government has been fixed on calculations into which the element of a provision for the general education of the people did not enter.

“There is no part of India in which the Imperial revenue can with less fairness be called upon to contribute to local objects.

“Whatever may have been in reality the share of the income of the proprietors of the soil which the permanent settlement originally gave to Government, there can be no doubt that it is now far less than in other Provinces; for, while the area under cultivation has enormously increased (perhaps, on an average, doubled,) on the other hand, the prices of produce have undoubtedly risen in even a still greater ratio, so that the gross assets of the proprietors have probably increased four or five fold, if not more, and the amount of the Imperial demand remaining stationary, its incidence has proportionably diminished.”

“The main burden, therefore, of Vernacular Education in Bengal should, the Governor General in Council thinks, fall, not on the Imperial revenues, but, as elsewhere, on the proprietors of the land.

“In the permanently-settled Districts of the Benares Division of the North-Western Provinces (between which and the permanently-settled Districts of the Lower Provinces the most complete analogy exists), the proprietors of the soil have voluntarily agreed to the imposition of an educational cess, on condition that Government should give an equal amount.