Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/41

Rh will concur in this opinion, that there is any necessity for argument to shew the futility of such assertions. SimiliarSimilar [sic] objections were made to the imposition of the Income Tax, and they are as groundless in the one case as in the other.

“In the North-Western Provinces, in the Punjab, and in Oude, the proprietors of land pay on this account a tax amounting to one per cent, on the Government demand. They pay the same in the permanently-settled districts of the Benares Division. In the Central Provinces they pay two per cent. In Madras the rate may be as much as 3 per cent. In Bombay, assuming that one-half of the cess lately imposed is devoted to roads, the proprietors of land pay at the rate of 3 per cent. In Bengal they pay nothing, although there is no part of India in which the means of the landholders are so large, in which the construction of roads and other works of local improvement is more urgently required, or in which such works have hitherto made so little progress.

“It was pointed out in my letter of the 28th October last, that 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 had voluntarily agreed to the imposition of an educational cess on condition that the Government should give an equal amount; it was added that the Governor General in Council would be glad if the Zemindars of Bengal could be similarly brought to tax themselves for Vernacular education, and that in such case, without pledging the Government to any specific condition. His Excellency would willingly give such aid as the finances of the empire could, from time to time, fairly afford. Those remarks are equally applicable to the question of local taxation for the construction and maintenance of roads.

“If, however, in either or both of these cases, it should be found impracticable to provide, by any such voluntary arrangement, the means of meeting the necessary expenditure, the Governor General in Council is decidedly of opinion that recourse should be had to legislation, and that a special tax should be imposed for these purposes upon the landholders of Bengal.”

The following letter on the best mode of extending Vernacular Education has been sent to the Government of Bengal for their consideration by the Governor General:—

“From Revd. J. Long, to His Excellency Sir, , and , Governor General of India,—Dated Simla, the 24th August 1867.

“Sir,—, the Private Secretary, has informed me that your Excellency is pleased with the general principles relating to Vernacular Education laid down in my letter of the 14th instant, and wishes to have my views as to a practical scheme for imparting Vernacular Education in Bengal.

“2. I beg to submit the following sketch of the measures I would recommend as urgent in the existing crisis in Bengal. Additional measures can be adopted after these are in successful operation.

“3. It would be well, I believe, to take as a basis the existing system of Vernacular education in Bengal, which has worked well on the whole, and has been tested by experience; now it mainly needs development and expansion with more decided efforts to work downwards from the upper middle class to the masses.

“The following are the chief features in the existing system in Bengal and Behar:—

“(a.) A Director General in correspondence on one side with the Government of Bengal, and on the other with European Inspectors and Native Sub-Inspectors.

“(b.) Twenty Normal Schools established in various parts of the country, in which natives receive an education qualifying them to convey superior Vernacular instruction, but almost exclusively in schools of the middle classes. The supply of these is only limited by the want of money to augment the number of teachers under training and the opening of additional Vernacular Schools.