Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/64

4 respect and veneration. To labor successfully for them, we must labor with them; and to labor successfully with them, we must get them to labor willingly and intelligently with us. We must make them, in short, the instruments of their own improvement; and how can this be done but by identifying ourselves and our improvements with them and their institutions? To do this, we must first ascertain what those institutions are, their actual condition, and every circumstance connected with them that can be made to contribute to the object in view. To make this important preliminary inquiry is the service for which I have offered myself to your Lordship.

5. In obedience to your Lordship's orders, I have now to state the manner in which I would propose that this service should be performed. There are two descriptions of places with regard to which a somewhat different mode of investigation will be necessary, viz., first, principal towns or seats of learning, as Calcutta, Nuddea, Dacca, Moorshedabad; secondly, districts, as Jessore, Midnapore and Purneah.

6. With regard to the former—Taking up my residence at one of the principal towns or seats of learning, I would, with the aid of my Pundit and Moulavee and by friendly communication with the respectable inhabitants and learned men of the place, make an enumeration or list of the various institutions for the promotion of education; classify them according to the denominations of which they may consist, whether Hindoos, Mahomedans, or Christians; public, private, charitable; examine each institution of each class with the consent of the parties concerned, and make a memorandum on the spot of the number of the pupils; the nature and extent of the course of instruction in science and learning, the resources of the institution, whether public or private; if public, whether they appear to be efficiently and legitimately applied, the estimation in which the institution is held by the community to which it belongs, and the possibility or means of raising the character and