BELIEF OF INDEBTED AG1UCULTURISTS. 



expatriate himself for any considerable period, the hypothesis that 

 he could evade a real and active pursuit with the object of appre- 

 hending him was wholly untenable. Ample evidence was elicited 

 in the enquiries of the Commission to show that the worst twist 

 was given to the ryot's coil of indebtedness after his creditor 

 had obtained from the Civil Court a decree against him; for the 

 decree formed the basis of a fresh agreement and starting point 

 in a further chain of embarrassments, in which the terms exacted 

 from the debtor were more oppressive than those which marked 

 the stages of bond-renewals to avoid limitation. 



To remedy this state of things, the report of the Commission recom- 

 mended two projects of special legislation : one, designed to protect 

 the debtor in his early dealings with his creditor and mitigate 

 the difficulties of his position during the first stage of those dealings, 

 i.e., the period before the institution of a suit against him in the 

 Civil Court ; the other, for the amendment of the existing law relating 

 to the execution of decrees. 



* * */' # * ** 



In addition to these legislative proposals, the Commissioners 

 further recommended, in view to checking the prevalent practice of 

 granting decrees ex parte, the establishment of special Courts for the 

 trial of small causes, which should hold their sittings in the 

 villages in or near which the persons against whom suits were 

 instituted resided, so as to bring the administration of justice as near 

 as possible to the home of every person sued in connection with 

 his borrowing transactions, and that the Native Judges of the 

 regular Civil Courts should be employed in making tours of inspec- 

 tion of these special village Courts within the local limits of their 

 jurisdiction respectively, so as to insure regularity and uniformity of 

 practice in their procedure and action. 



****** 



In the opinion of the Bombay Government, there was no other 

 way of acting on the rather vague suggestions of the Commission, that 

 greater elasticity in the regulation and recovery of the revenue 

 demand was needed, than reverting to the old system of taking 

 the Government revenue in kind a retrograde course which that 

 Government could never agree to. A fluctuating demand, tin the 

 other hand, under which the revenue-payer would never know what 



