26 INDEBTEDNESS OF THE LAND-HOLDING CLASSES. 



would be attained by recourse to a less exact procedure and less 

 responsible agency. 



12. The two most important cases to which the attention of 

 Goverment has recently been called by evidences of special distress are 

 those of Jhansi and the Bombay Deccan districts. In both of these 

 the popular tendencies to indebtedness are said to have acquired an 

 increased power for mischief under the novel circumstances created by 

 "the fatal gift of transferable rights in the soil, and the establishment 

 of Civil Courts in an ignorant population." In both, the ruin of the 

 land-owners has been precipitated by the harsh and extortionate 

 practices of an inferior class of money-lenders. In the case of Jhansi, 

 remedial measures are still under consideration, but for the four 

 Deccan districts a special remeady has been devised and is now on 

 trial. 



13. The facts of the case which the Act for the relief of indebted 

 agriculturists in certain parts of the Deccan was designed to meet, 

 explain how a rural population may sink below the level of average 

 prosperity. Much of the soil is poor, the rainfall capricious, and the 

 out-turn of the harvest liable to violent fluctuations. The conditions 

 which prevailed in the Deccan under Mahratta rule were unfavourable 

 to steady industry, and the present generation has come within the 

 influence of a most exceptional disturbance of prices. A sudden rise in 

 the value of cotton at the time of the American War occasioned a 

 vast inflation of credit, which was fed by a corresponding influx 

 of capital seeking investment, whereby the landholders, under cover 

 of the proprietary rights they had acquired, were tempted to 

 improvident borrowing. Being deficient in the qualities of 

 forethought, energy, and self-reliance, they were thus laid 

 open to new dangers, while their improvident habits were such 

 that the low unvarying revenue assessments of our Government 

 brought them no advantage. The extravagant habits engendered by 

 this temporary prosperity were not easily laid aside, and the subsequent 

 collapse in prices, combined with bad seasons, threw them into debt. 

 As indebtedness became more hopeless and inextricable, the money- 

 lender resorted more freely to the aid of legal process, and the debtors, 

 exasperated at the invasion of their cherished rights in their holdings, 

 were driven to despair, and finally on several occasions to rioting and 

 violence. The proportion of land-owners seriously embarrassed does 

 not appear to exceed 30 per cent., but the amount of debt in proportion 



