Page:The Indian Musalmans.djvu/191

Rh duced in support of their acknowledged private estates. During seventy- five years we had submitted under protest to a gigantic system of fraud, and the accumulated penalty fell upon a single generation. Meanwhile the climate and the white-ants had been making havoc of the grants and title-deeds which might have supported their claims. There can be Httle doubt that our Re- sumptions fell short of what had been stolen from us; but there can be no doubt whatever, that from those' Resumptions the decay of the Muhammadan system of education dates. The officer now in charge of the. Wahdbi prosecutions cites them as the second cause of the decline of the Musalmdn community in Bengal.

The justice of these proceedings may, however, be defended; the absolute misappropriation of scholastic funds, with which the Musalmdns charge us, cannot. For it is no use concealing the fact that the Muham- madans believe that, if we had only honestly applied the property entrusted to us for that purpose, they would at this moment possess one of the noblest and most efficient educational establishments in Bengal. In 1806 a wealthy Muhammadan gentleman of Hugli District died, leaving a vast estate in pios usus. Presently his two trustees began to quarrel. In 1810 the dispute deepened into a charge of malversation, and the English Collector of the District attached the property, pending the decision of the Courts. Litigation continued till 1816, when the Government dismissed both the trustees, and assumed the management of the estate, appointing itself in the place of one trustee, and nominating a second one. Next year it let out the estate in perpetuity, taking a suitable pay- ment from each of the permanent lease-holders. These payments, with the arrears which had accumulated dur-