11EL1E1' OF INDEBTED AGRICULTURISTS. 131 



enactment, the law gave a period of twelve years, and in practice it 

 was found that the creditor was content to allow debts to run on 

 without any settlement of accounts, and bearing simple interest at 

 the ordinary rate for ten or eleven years ; whereas after the change in 

 the law, the custom of coming to a settlement and renewing bonds on 

 the terms of adding interest to the amount of the original obligation 

 every second year gradually sprung up and had become one of the 

 chief causes of the ryot's embarrassments. At each recurring 

 renewal of a bond or other instrument of obligation, the opportunity 

 of enhancing the proportions of the previous debt by the addition of 

 fictitious charges of various kinds was largely taken advantage of 

 by the money-lender, and the effect of a renewal, even where no 

 additional consideration was given, was frequently to double the pre- 

 vious debt. 



The mode of dealing with cases between the sow&or and the ryot 

 when brought into Court, and the whole procedure of the Civil Courts 

 in reference to such cases, were wholly to the advantage of the 

 creditor. He could, by collusion with the Court's officers, delay or 

 prevent the service of the usual process giving notice of his claim 

 being about to be adjudicated ; and where this fraud was not 

 resorted to, the ryot, from his incapacity, through ignorance, to 

 set up an answer to the plaintiff's claim, or his inability to give the 

 time required for a possibly prolonged attendance at a distant Court, 

 put in no appearance ; and so it resulted that, in the case of an 

 overwhelming majority of suits instituted by the money-lenders, the 

 Courts granted ex parte decrees. 



It was shown further that the sowkar, having thus obtained a 

 decree without any examination of the circumstances of his claim, 

 had thereby acquired a fresh instrument of oppression and exaction ; 

 for under the the pressure of the process issued by the Court in 

 execution of the decree, he could extort from his judgment-debtor 

 almost any terms that he chose to impose upon him, the fear of 

 having to go to jail upon the issue of a warrant of arrest being 

 sufficient to induce the latter to agree to anything. 



That warrants of arrest were largely applied for with no Loud fide 

 intention of imprisoning the debtor, was clearly established by the 

 very small proportion of cases in which such imprisonments had 

 followed on the issue of warrants of arrest; for, seeing that the 

 average ryot would only in the gravest extremity voluntarily 



