Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/400

340 can do little, these without education cannot do all, and that even what they can accomplish will be much less complete and stable than when matured, directed, and steadied by the intelligence, the foresight, the consistency of purpose, and the morality of conduct which are the proper fruits of mental cultivation. Further, if it may be truly affirmed that education alone is inadequate to reform a people, a fortiori it will be admitted that instruction of any one kind, through any one medium, to any one division of the population, or by means of any one class of institutions must be insufficient for the purpose; and above all must this insufficiency be maintained in a country like India more resembling a continent, inhabited not by a single nation or people of one language, the same religion, and similar manners, customs, and habits, but by numerous and wide-spread nations and tribes, speaking different languages, professing different religions, and existing in totally dissimilar grades of civilization. No one means, no one language, no one system of institutions, can be adequate. All means, all the languages of the country, all existing institutions should be made subservient to the object.

The actual position and prevailing policy of Government demand the adoption of comprehensive measures for the promotion and right direction of national education. The position of Government is that of foreigners on a strange soil among people with whom no common associations exist. Every district has a single encampment of civil functionaries who administer its affairs, and who are so engrossed with details of public business while they remain in any one district, and are involved in such a constant whirl of change from one district to another, that it is almost impossible that any attachment can arise between them and the people, or that either can generally appreciate what is good in the other. We are among the people, but not of them. We rule over them and traffic with them, but they do not understand our character and we do not penetrate their’s. The consequence is that we have no hold on their sympathies, no seat in their affections. Under these circumstances, we are constantly complaining of the want of co-operation on the part of the people, while we do nothing to elicit it where it would be useful, or to make it intelligent and enlightened, if it were afforded. A wisely framed system of public instruction would, with other means, help to draw the people closer to the Government, give the Government a stronger hold on the affections of the people, and produce a mutual and answering sympathy between the subject many and the ruling few.

The prevailing policy of Government is characterized by various measures more or less directly bearing on the present question; by the equal eligibility to office of all classes of Her Majesty’s natural-born subjects without distinction of religion, place of birth, descent, or color; by the extended, and constantly extending, employment of native agency for the purposes of local