Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/62

2 Without this moral force, which education only can create, Government, however benevolently administered, is but the will of the strongest which finds no response where physical power does not reach, and legislation, however wisely devised, is but a dead letter, which reposes in the statute book, is barely enforced in the Courts, and out of them is inert and unknown.

3. Such being the understood objects of Government in promoting education in this country, the question arises—“What are the best means to be employed for that purpose?” Without disputing any of the answers that have been or may be returned to this question, I have ventured to suggest that a preliminary inquiry without which every scheme must want a foundation to rest upon is—“What is the actual state of education amongst the various classes into which the population of the country is divided?” When the population of a country is homogeneous, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, and having common interests, such an investigation might be the less necessary; but where the more instructed portion of the population is separated from the less instructed portion by difference of language, as in Scotland; by difference of language and religion, as in Ireland; and by the further difference, as in India, caused by the relative position of foreigners and natives, conquerors and conquered, it is indispensable. In such cases it is only by a careful attempt to map the moral and intellectual condition of a people that we can understand either the extent of their knowledge or of their ignorance, discover either what they possess or what they need, and adapt the means employed to the end we desire to accomplish. In a recent investigation into the state of education in the Highlands of Scotland, it was proved that thousands could not read, natives of a country where it had been proudly boasted that all were educated. A similar investigation into the state of education in India may perhaps show, not that the people are less, but that they are more, instructed than we suppose, and that