144 BELIEF OF INDEBTED AGRICULTURISTS. 



remark, ' rather in the short-sighted improvidence of an ignorant 

 class, ready to relieve present necessity by discounting future in- 

 come on any terms, and unable to realize the consequences of obliga- 

 tions foolishly contracted, than in an extravagant expenditure and 

 misapplication of income/ To this may be added an honest and 

 confiding, rather than vigilant, temperament. A soil yielding but 

 one crop, and therefore the whole year's income at one period, a 

 climate so capricious as to preclude at seed-time any safe estimate 

 of what the harvest, if there be one, will be worth, and prices 

 varying above cent, per cent., as they twice have done in this century, 

 might well derange the calculations, and produce the bankruptcy, 

 even of sober men of business. 



Besides these normal causes conducive to indebtedness, there 

 exists a long array of special ones, some general in their operation, 

 others peculiar to the Bombay Presidency or the Deccan alone. 

 These I propose to notice in four groups namely, those increasing 

 credit, diminishing ability to repay, proceeding from the revenue 

 system, and comprised in the term 'arming of the money-lender.' 



Increased credit obviously flowed primarily from our establishment 

 of a settled government, and the consequent immunity of the ryot 

 from being plundered and murdered by hostile armies, or drawn 

 from his fields, perhaps killed in battle, on his own side, as also from 

 the grosser forms of private crime. A like effect followed our land- 

 settlements. The meaning of the phrase ' land revenue ' varies 

 greatly in different parts of India. In Bombay the State is the land- 

 lord, entitled to the entire rent that is, to the whole net produce 

 or surplus after deducting the cost of cultivation and of the subsistence 

 of the peasant and his family. The State has no intermidiary or land- 

 lord to think of, to whom a certain proportion of the rent must be 

 left. It may relinquish to the peasant-cultivator as much or as little 

 of the rent as it chooses. The Native governments preceding us 

 relinquished but little, and the cultivator was rack-rented. Hence, 

 even a small debt pressed heavily, and complaints of indebtedness 

 were general when we acquired the country. Gradually we reduced 

 our land-revenue demands, producing immediate relief and recovery 

 of agriculture, until by the revenue survey system, founded by GOLDS- 

 MID and WINGATE in 1838-40, and gradually extended throughout 

 the Presidency, we levy, says MR. PEDDER, only one-half, at most, of 

 the net produce or rent, thus leaving the cultivator a liberal margin 



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