Page:Adam's reports on vernacular education in Bengal and Behar, submitted to Government in 1835, 1836 and 1838.djvu/40

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question whether the Government has not done too much; for, as the Secretary of State wrote in 1864, the true principle by which the expenditure of the Government upon education ought to be governed is this—‘That, as far as possible, the resources of the State should be so applied as to assist those who cannot be expected to help themselves, and that the richer classes of the people should gradually be induced to provide for their own education.’

“However this may be, whether we have done, in this respect, more than was necessary or not, the duty that remains to be performed is clear. It was described as follows in the Despatch of 1854, which has been quoted above:—“Our attention should now be directed to a consideration, if possible, still more important, and one which has been hitherto, we are bound to admit, too much neglected, namely, how useful and practical knowledge, suited to every station in life, may be best conveyed to the great mass of the people who are utterly incapable of obtaining any education worthy of the name by their own unaided efforts.

“While the Governor General in Council is not content to bear any longer the reproach that almost nothing has been done for the education of the people of Bengal, it is altogether out of the question that the Government can provide the funds without which the removal of that reproach is impossible. At the present time, the total number of pupils in Government and in Aided Schools is probably 630,000, and the estimate of the expenditure upon Education, Science, and Art amounts, for the current year, to £904,000.

“It is evident that if the Imperial expenditure on education be allowed to go on increasing much longer at the present rate, the result must be a serious aggravation of the financial difficulties of the Government.

“While the Governor General in Council will always be ready to view, in the most liberal spirit, all questions that may arise, and to afford every help that the Government can reasonably be expected to give, he will decline, in future, to listen to any proposition, the effect of which would be to throw upon the State the main burden of the cost of educating the people of Bengal. The only way in which that cost can be met is, unless some voluntary arrangement be possible, by means of local taxation, especially imposed for the purpose.

“The Home Government, in the Despatch of 1859, pointed to ‘the levy of a compulsory rate as the only really effective step to be taken.’ ‘The appropriation,’ it was stated, ‘of a fixed proportion of the annual value of the land to the purpose of providing such means of education for the population immediately connected with ⟨the land⟩ seems, per se, unobjectionable; and the application of a percentage ⟨for the⟩ construction and maintenance of roads appears to offer a suitable precedent for such an impost.’

“The Despatch then regarded, in terms which are not altogether applicable at the present time, to the manner in which this principle had been already acted on in the North-Western Provinces, and went on to say, with special reference to Bengal, that ‘it seems not improbable that the levy of such a rate under the direct authority of the Government would be acquiesced in with far more readiness and with less dislike than a nominally voluntary rate proposed by the local Officers.’

“This principle has been already carried out in Bombay, in the North-western Provinces, in Oude, in the Central Provinces, and in the Punjab. Although the educational cess in those Provinces is imposed as a percentage on the Government demand, it is, as was stated in my letter of the 28th October last, ‘clearly taken from the proprietors of the soil as a separate tax for special local purposes.’ Not only can there be no reason why a similar tax should not be imposed for similar purposes in Bengal, but in the opinion of the Governor General in Council there is no part of India in which the proprietors of the land can be so justly expected to bear local burdens of this nature.’

“The Governor General in Council is aware that it has been sometimes asserted that the imposition of such a tax would be an infringement of the conditions under which the permanent settlement of the land was made. He does not think, and he believes that His Honor the Lieutenant-Governor