INDEBTEDNESS OF THE LAND-HOLDING CLASSES. 



which the land revenue bears to the gross produce of the land, there 

 cannot be much foundation for this view, though numerous instances 

 have been given of men who in times of calamity have been forced 

 to borrow, and who have never been able to recover themselves 

 afterwards ; and it is to prevent such a misfortune as this that we 

 have already recommended that on such occasions greater leniency 

 should be shown in postponing the demand till better times. But we 

 think that too much weight should not be attributed to this cause ; 

 the fact that landowners who have no land revenue, or only a light 

 quit-rent to pay, are often also deeply embarrassed, proves, if indeed 

 it required proof, that the payment of the land revenue is not the 

 main cause of debt. If a man spends all his income on himself, and 

 borrows to pay his rent or taxes, it can hardly be said that his 

 indebtedness is due to the fact of his having rent and taxes to pay, 

 when these charges bear so light a proportion to income as the land 

 revenue does to the gross out-turn of the land. 



9. It has, again, been alleged that the action of the Civil Courts 

 has contributed to the indebtedness of the agricultural classes, and 

 various suggestions have been made for constituting tribunals and a 

 procedure which may provide more effectually against this result. 

 Sufficient regard is not, it is said, in all cases, paid to those equitable 

 considerations which are of such essential importance in the adjudica- 

 tion of disputes in which the ignorance, improvidence, or the necessity 

 of the one party, places him at the mercy of the superior intelligence 

 and resources of the other. Contracts, the extravagant one-sidedness 

 of which bespeaks a sense of hopeless weakness on the one side, and a 

 spirit of unscrupulous exaction on the other, have been enforced by 

 the Civil Courts with too mechanical an adherence to the letter of the 

 law, and too little regard to the circumstances of the parties and the 

 substantial merits of the case. Native customs which tempered the 

 severity of contracts, such, for instance, as that which restrained the 

 rate or amount of interest, have been swept away, and a rigid and 

 elaborate legal system has too often proved only an additional instru- 

 ment of oppression in the hands of the more wealthy or better 

 instructed litigant, and an additional cause of ruin to the impoverished 

 agriculturist. 



10. Several alterations have, however, within the last few years, 

 been made in the Code of Civil Procedure with a view to providing 

 adequately for the relief of insolvent debtors, to guarding against 





