Page:Reports on the State of Education in Bengal (1835 & 1838).djvu/73

Rh of the East India Company, 16th August 1832. The memoir and supplement are chiefly occupied with details of Government institutions which are purposely excluded from this report, but they also contain several notices which I have not found elsewhere of philanthropic and private institutions. In addition to the principal sources of information, I have drawn several facts from works incidentally or partially treating the subject, whose authority will be acknowledged in the proper places. I have not introduced into this report any statement of facts resting on my observation and authority, but have merely attempted to bring into a methodised form the information previously existing in detached portions respecting the state of education. The details, therefore, which follow must be regarded as the results of the observations of others, and as depending upon their authority, and all that I have done is to connect them with each other and present them in consecutive order. I have not sought to multiply details except in so far as they are necessary to show the nature and extent of the educational means, apart from Government institutions, 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