RELIEF OF INDEBTED AGRICULTURISTS. 155 



the village shop-keeper and money-lender, he enables the peasantry to derive full 

 benefit from a good season, and to moderate the recurring disasters of drought and 

 flood. Without his aid the rent would not be realized. His functions in normal 

 times are most important, but in the abnormal times of famine they are indispen- 

 sable. Then the banker and shop-keeper is stimulated to double activity in both 

 capacities. He advnnces from his stores, food, seed, stork, and even money to the 

 peasantry, who can offer nothing but their credit in return. By relieving the better 

 classes of the community he lessens the pressure on the public purse. But he does 

 more than this. * * * Experience has proved the advantage of leaving the 

 transport and distribution of food-supplies to private trade. * * * It is the 

 sowkar who spans the gulf which separates want from plenty, and fulfils the functions 

 of distribution which no State agency can perform ! 



The problem before us is how to keep the money-lender in his 

 place, to encourage and support him in all useful functions, but to 

 restrain him, as he is restrained in Native States, from becoming the 

 enemy and oppressor of the poor. The leading principles of our new 

 measure, then, should be to give both sides fair play, instead of setting 

 the two classes by the ears; to diminish the risks of fraud in 

 borrowing and extortion in repaying ; to diminish the risks of loss 

 in lending and excessive delay in recovery; to obliterate any stigma 

 resting on our judicial institutions. We must foster due credit, check 

 that which is undue, and allow free scope to all civilising processes 

 and healthy relations between capital and labour. We must hold 

 the ryot responsible in our Courts for what he has really borrowed, 

 not for what he has not, and make him repay by his own exertions all 

 that he reasonably can repay, not set him free, by sudden, one-sided 

 or ' heroic ' remedies, to enter on a fresh career of indebtedness. In 

 short, we must see the parties as they really are, in a condition of 

 Oriental, not of European, civilization, and deal with them by the 

 Indian experience of success in past generations and failure in the 

 present, rather than by the intrusion per stilhtm of alien institutions 

 which are in their own land the i\sult of centuries of experience under 

 totally different conditions. 



I will now endeavour to set forth, PS clearly and fully as time and 

 the occasion permit, the principal provisions of the Bill I am intro- 

 ducing, premising that, as the latter is intended to supplement, modify 

 and dovetail into the Civil Procedure Code, and it therefore in some 

 parts presents to the unskilled reader a confused and imperfect aspect, 

 I shall discard its arrangement, and endeavour to express in plain 

 English the effect which its provisions (coupleel with the code) are in- 

 tended to produce. 



