Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/76

16 employed for the moral and intellectual improvement of the country. I have applied for information in every quarter in which it might be supposed to exist, and while I have faithfully employed the information communicated, I am fully aware that the high repute and salutary influence of several of the private schools and colleges, claim for them a more extended notice than I have deemed compatible with the limited scope of this report.

The sufficiency of the means of education existing in a country depends, first, upon the nature of the instruction given; secondly, upon the proportion of the institutions of education to the population needing instruction; and thirdly, upon the proper distribution of those institutions. I have accordingly endeavored, in collecting and compiling the following details, to keep these three considerations in view. The report includes a brief account of the course of instruction pursued in each large class of schools, or in single institutions whose importance entitles them to separate notice. Some idea may be formed of the relative distribution of the means of education to the wants of the population by comparing the districts with each other; but in the present state of our information, the notion thus obtained must be very imperfect, for it cannot be doubted that, in most districts, there are many Native institutions, of which no known record exists, and the distribution of the means of education within each district can be ascertained only by minute local investigation. The estimates of the population of the different districts are still for the most part merely conjectural. No approach to actual investigation was attempted until 1801, during the administration of the, when, by the directions of the Governor General, the Board of Revenue circulated various questions on statistical subjects to the Magistrates and Collectors, with the view of ascertaining the population and resources of their respective districts. The returns are deemed to have been made with too implicit a dependence upon unchecked Native Authorities; and it would appear from the results of subsequent and more minute investigation that the public functionaries, from whatever cause, kept greatly within the real amount. These are the only estimates that have been made of the population of the districts of Midnapur, Hooghly, Jessore, Nuddea, Dacca, Jalalpur, Backergunge, Chittagong, Tipera, Mymunsingh, Sylhet, Moorshedabad, Beerbhoom, and Rajshahy. In 1807, 1808, and 1809, Dr. surveyed and reported on the Bengal districts of Rangpur, Dinajpur, and Purniya. He had in some instances opportunities of inspecting the original returns of 1801, and satisfied himself of their fallacy; and his own estimates of the population of these three districts, founded on such data as the number of ploughs, the consumption of rice, &c., are greatly in excess of the preceding,—in one instance about double, in another treble, and in a third nearly septuple. In 1814, Mr., then Judge and Magistrate of