150 BELIEF OF INDEBTED AGRICUL? URISfS. 



vast increase of litigation just mentioned ; by the evidence of judicial 

 and revenue officers and of numberless debtors ; by the scrutiny of 

 accounts by the Commission, and by the use in 1874 of some 150,000 

 warrants as threats only. The general result is that through these 

 undue powers the ryot is enslaved by a vast amount of debt, which 

 has been much enhanced by our legal system, and in part was never 

 incurred by him at all. In concluding this sketch, it seems scarcely 

 necessary for me to add that the law, and not the Judges, are to 

 blame. Some of the most valuable proofs of the defects of the former 

 are derived from judicial officers, Native as well as European; and I 

 fully agree with Mil. AUCKLAND COLVIN that it is ' very much to the 

 credit of the subordinate judicial administration that it has expressed 

 itself so clearly as to the position which it is compelled to occupy.' 



Having thus enumerated the various causes of the ryot's 

 indebtedness, I will briefly classify them according to the possibility 

 or expediency of remedial measures. As causes regarding which 

 little or no special action is practicable we may put down all normal 

 ones. Ignorance, improvidence and extravagant ceremonial or social 

 expenditure can never be eradicated from the world, either in the 

 Deccan or elsewhere, though time, experience and education may 

 reduce their strength. An agricultural population everywhere is 

 Comparatively ignorant ; they are found so even in England under a 

 compulsory educational system, much more in India, where compulsion 

 cannot be thought of. But village-schools are exceptionally numerous 

 and efficient in the Bombay Presidency; cultivators' children form 

 21 per cent, of the pupils, and we may hope for gradual improvement 

 in this respect. Comparative poverty must continue the lot of a 

 peasant-proprietary whose soil is poor and climate capricious. Periodi- 

 cal absorption of savings by famine can, at least, be only diminished 

 in degree by palliatives of partial applicability, such as forest 

 conservancy, railways and irrigation, which, under SIR RICHARD 

 TEMPLE'S vigorous administration, are being promoted as rapidly 

 as means allow. Prices must take their course. 



As causes regarding which interference is undesirable may be 

 mentioned the increased credit due to orderly Government, property 

 in land and competition of money-lenders, and the lessened ability to 

 repay arising from the diminution of waste land for fallows and 

 grazing by the extension of cultivation and forest reserves. The 

 raising of the land-assessment to the level of Native States in order 



