KELIEF OF INDEBTED AG1UCI LTL K1STS. 149 



subjected the debtor to compound interest, frequent suits, extra cost 

 and a vast increase of his liabilities. The power of obtaining arrest 

 and imprisonment gives the creditor the means of extorting 1 almost 

 any terms for his forbearance in exercising it. Of all the weapons 

 he has obtained, this has been proved to be the most misused. 

 The power of sale in execution extended, till 1877, to every- 

 thing the debtor possessed : since then certain bare necessaries 

 have alone been exempted. Land remains saleable, whether ances- 

 tral or acquired, subject to certain provisions for saving it analogous 

 to an elegit, which have hitherto "proved inoperative, but are now 

 being amended. Of all sales it is a characteristic that the pro- 

 perty, through technical difficulties, constantly goes for a mere 

 song, and the creditor is the purchaser. Decrees were, till 1877, 

 interminable, and the Commission found numbers to be of twenty 

 years' standing. Now they may be executed for twelve years. A 

 Sub-judge mentions one executed nine times. If the persecuted debtor 

 turned towards the law of insolvency, he, till quite recently, found it 

 little more than a name. Until actually arrested or in jail, he could 

 not resort to it at all ; and whether, after doing so, he escaped its 

 pitfalls and two years' imprisonment or not, his subsequently acquired 

 property and earnings were liable (unless his debt was under Rs. 100 

 and the judge chose to discharge him) until the last pice due, with 

 interest, had been repaid. Finally, the increase of work entailed 

 delay, with loss of time and money, in the disposal of cases, while 

 financial reasons led to reduction in the numbers of the Courts, and 

 consequently to their greater remoteness from the ryot's home. And 

 all this is the more important, in that a vast increase of litigation 

 has followed the new law, so that in 1876 there were 37,128 suits, 

 and in 1878 (after the famine) 27,577, disposed of in our four districts 

 alone. 



The tendency of the change of relations thus gradually brought 

 about by the law will be seen to have been all one way in favour of 

 the party possessing the most intelligence and money. Even of old, 

 the superiority of the money-lender over the ryot was considerable, 

 though the former had little power of compulsion ; but by the law this 

 superiority has been infinitely increased. The likening of the contest 

 between them to one ' between a child and a giant' is no figure of 

 speech; yet the law presumes them both to be equal! That the 

 superiority is fully and often fraudulently availed of is proved by the 



