138 



RELIEF OF INDEBTED AGRICULTURISTS. 



beneath special consideration ? The proportion seems to me, however, 

 to have been nearer one-half than one-third, and to be, moreover, 

 constantly increasing. Finally, it must not be forgotten that the 

 statistics of the Commission, which I have been quoting, are now four 

 years old. Since then, the terrible famine of 1876-77, and the sub- 

 sequent indifferent seasons have passed over the land, and cannot but 

 have left deep traces behind. True, as it is, that the peasant- 

 proprietary struggled nobly and long to maintain themselves and their 

 dependents without State relief, and vast as was the amount of ac- 

 cumulated savings, in gold and silver ornaments and the like, which 

 they were found to possess, we must not forget that those savings 

 were revealed by their passage to the mint, and that their dissipation 

 must have left at the mercy of the money-lender thousands who 

 were never so before. We may admire the honest pride and fortitude 

 which the peasantry, as a body, displayed throughout their long- 

 protracted trial ; but we cannot ignore the obvious effects on their 

 condition. 



Granted, however, that a large proportion of the population are 

 deeply involved, we may well enquire whether such a condition is 

 abnormal. It has been said, and in one sense with truth, that 

 'poverty and debt were the familiar heritage of the ryots before 

 the advent of the British rule.' Our records of the country when 

 first acquired tell of indebtedness extending largely among the pop- 

 ulation. The ryots, it is said, ' though usually frugal and provi- 

 dent', were in many cases 'living in dependence on the soivkar (or 

 money-lender), delivering to him their produce and drawing upon 

 him for necessaries'; and this condition is mainly attributed to the 

 Mahratha system of levying heavy contributions from bankers, to 

 whom the revenues of villages were assigned in repayment, and of 

 collecting the State dues generally through the agency of such capi- 

 talists, who recovered in kind what they paid in cash. Indebtedness 

 thus arising mainly from a vicious system of collecting the land re- 

 venue paid by all, necessarily extended to a large proportion of the 

 population. But the amount of individual debt appears to have 

 usually been moderate necessarily so, it may be added, because the 

 security and means of recovery were small, since land was not sold , 

 for debts, and little or no assistance in recovering them was given 

 by the State. Very much the same condition of affairs is showSi by 

 ample testimony to exist now, to a greater or less degree, in the 



