RELIEF OF INDEBTED AGRICULTURISTS. 151 



to stimulate exertion, and the lowering of it so as to pay private debts 

 at the expense of the community in general, are equally out of the 

 question. 



Respecting the remaining causes, action, either executive or 

 legislative, seems open to us. Executively, some little might probably 

 be done to relieve pressure of population by favouring emigration to 

 other districts. Then, though the idea of Government Agricultural 

 Banks appears to me to be unsound in theory and unworkable in 

 practice, the opening of local loans in small amounts, as in France, 

 might offer to bankers an alternative for indiscriminate lending on 



o ~ 



usury, and to cultivators an investment preferable to ornaments. The 

 system of advances by Government for land improvement, also, might 

 be simplified." Again, relief might be afforded by modifying, in the 

 directions I have already indicated, the mode in which our land-revenue 

 demand is imposed and levied. Stamp and process fees and batta seem 

 also capable of revision. Finally, there are exchange and cognate 

 financial questions. But I must not dilate upon these executive 

 remedies, which are beyond the sphere of this Council. I have 

 touched on them merely in order to show that I am not so simple as to 

 suppose that all the ryot's difficulties will be removed by the passing 

 of the Bill before us. Legislatively, what we can do, what is proved 

 by over-whelming evidence to be the thing required, what we un- 

 doubtedly ought to do, promptly and effectively, is to restore, as far as 

 may be, the rude balance between debtor and creditor, which has been 

 disturbed by our own legal institutions. We may take back many 

 of the weapons inconsiderately placed in the money-lender's hand and 

 shown to have been misused ; we may check the undue credit arising 

 from unjustifiable facilities for recovery ; we may increase ability to 

 repay by removing discouragements to industry; we may obey the 

 long-neglected proverbial mandate to hear both parties ; we may 

 substitute for the blind and ruthless operation of legal machinery the 

 intelligent dispensation of justice between man and man. 



As introductory to a fuller definition of the principles upon which 

 our propos'ed measure should rest, and to a detailed explanation of the 

 Bill itself, it may be instructive to survey, briefly, the relations of 

 debtor and creditor as they were found on the introduction of British 

 rule, and as they may now be seen subsisting in some of the l;ost 

 administered Native States. For the former period I can quote no 

 better sketch than that given in the despatch of the Secretary 



