Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/397

Rh to ascertain and report the progress of the pupils of different teachers at fixed periods, or as a check upon such reports by receiving the certificates of heads of families as to the amount of instruction communicated by the teachers to their female relatives within the periods in question.

Without going further into details, it is sufficient to indicate the general views which have occurred to me on this subject, and to add that this mode of promoting female instruction is one which respectable native families have themselves shown a disposition to adopt, and that the stimulus which the encouragement of Government would supply would probably give it general acceptance and prevalence.

My chief object in this Section is to re-call attention to recommendations proceeding from the highest authorities which do not appear to have received all the consideration they deserve.

Lord Moira, in the Minute of 1815, to which I have had occasion repeatedly to refer, speaking of the state of public tuition in the principal towns, adds—“In these towns will also be found the same medium scale of education for the class of shop-keepers, artificers, and laborers as in the country villages, but in these towns and principally in the chief station of the zillah, and in the neighborhood of our jails, will be found a numerous population which seems to call for the particular attention of Government. I allude to the offspring of mendicants and vagrants who, nurtured in idleness and vice, are destined to recruit the ranks of the professional thieves infesting all great cities. Houses of industry for the education, employment, and reformation of these infant profligates appear to he particularly needed.”

The Court of Directors in a revenue letter to Bengal, dated 15th January 1812, makes the following remarks on the means of improving the system of Indian agriculture:—“To a Government taking an interest in the improvement of the country with a view to the increase of its own revenue, it might be a farther subject of consideration whether more could not be done than has hitherto been attempted towards bettering the system of Indian agriculture. The rural economy of the Hindus we understand, generally speaking, to be wretched in the extreme. The rudeness of their implements, the slovenliness of their practice, and their total ignorance of the most simple principles of science, are said to be equally remarkable. It has, however, been stated in a late publication that the agriculture of some parts of Mysore constitutes an exception to this remark; while it shows the Hindoo farmer in