Page:Calcutta Review Vol. II (Oct. - Dec. 1844).pdf/361

356 teristic achievements, in the favourite department of antithesis and alliteration, was the production of the celebrated mock heroic, the Pugna Porcorum per Publium Porcium Poetam, consisting of hundreds of lines and thousands of words, selected with such singularly mis-studied artifice that every one of them began with the letter P!!

We have thus, as we trust, calmly and dispassionately portrayed the genuine nature and character of indigenous instruction, throughout all its divisions and sub-divisions of elementary and learned Education. In doing so, we have purposely followed, and for the most part, only faithfully epitomized the official reports of Mr. Adam, the special government commissioner—reports, the accuracy of whose minute yet comprehensive details has hitherto been as unimpeached, as from its very nature, it is seemingly unimpeachable. It now only remains, therefore, that we should shortly endeavour to point out the extent to which indigenous instruction, such as it is, may be communicated. And for this end, we shall appeal to the same authentic source—the same high and indisputable authority.

If the instruction conveyed were better and more unexceptionable than it has been found to be, it would be sad to reflect that, as has already appeared, whole castes and classes of the native community are entirely excluded from its benefits. Or, if no whole classes were virtually or entirely so excluded, it would still be melancholy to consider not merely the utter inadequacy but the anomalous inequality of the supply in point of local distribution. In the city and district of Moorshedabad, for example, there are four thanas, or police sub-divisions, without any institution of education whatsoever; four others, in each of which there is only one vernacular school; and two others, in which there are a Persian and an Arabic school, or a Sanskrit and a Persian one, but no vernacular school at all. So, in Tirhoot, there are two thanas, in each of which there is only one vernacular school; and a third, in which not even one is to be found; while this latter is the one in which is the largest number of Sanskrit institutions! Or, if once more, the instruction were of a superior quality, and its denial to particular classes less extensive or complete, and its local distribution less unequal, there would still remain, to distress and harrow us, the appaling fact, that everywhere, with scarcely any exceptions, the entire half of every class from the highest to the lowest grades of Native Society is systematically deprived of any of its benefits! Mr. Adam’s elaborate census amply proves what our experience of all other lands would lead us antecedently to anticipate, viz., that the numerical proportion between the male and