RELIEF OF INDEBTED AGRICULTURISTS. 169 



circumstances, it is proposed to restore, by section 72, the old 

 Bombay law. 



I now proceed to the second head the mode and extent of 

 enforcement of equitably determined liability. In the execution of a 

 decree by sale of movables, the necessary wearing apparel of the 

 judgment-debtor and his wife and children, his implements of 

 husbandry, and such cattle as the Court may deem necessary to enable 

 him to earn his livelihood as an agriculturist, are now protected by the 

 amended Code of 1877 ; so it has not been thought necessary to go 

 further. As to execution against the person by arrest and imprison- 

 ment, I rejoice to state that it is now considered expedient to 

 abolish it altogether. Imprisonment will still be inflicted as a 

 punishment for fraud detected on insolvency ; but that is a totally 

 different thing. The maintenance of imprisonment for debt, as 

 found in the Indian law, is equally indefensible in principle and in 

 practice. As to principle, the Deccan Riots Commission make 

 clear that point, utilizing the opinions of JOHN STUART MILL. Their 

 appendices teem with evidence in detail as to the extortion and 

 wrong of which the warrant of arrest becomes in practice the engine. 

 Unacknowledged payments, fresh bonds for sums unadvanced, life- 

 long slavery, and even female dishonour may all be obtained the first 

 three constantly, by the mere production of the warrant of arrest 

 without enforcement. They say, for instance, that in 1874 'it 

 would seem probable that somewhere about I 50,000 warrants had been 

 used as threats only.' The outcry against imprisonment from 

 officers well qualified to judge of it has been uniform and persis- 

 tent. Its abolition is unanimously recommended by the Deccan 

 Riots Commission. MR. PEDDER and Miss NIGHTINGALE have in The 

 Nineteenth Century brought the evils it causes prominently before 

 the British public. SIR ERSKINE PERRY gives its abolition his 

 'unqualified approval' in a note dated December 1st, 1877. Judicial 

 officers and pleaders take the same view as the executive. Were it 

 even defensible in theory, which we have seen that it is not, the 

 abuses to which, in a country like Western India at least, it is 

 proved to lead in practice, afford sufficient ground for its condemna- 

 tion in the districts to which the Bill is to apply. The case has 

 already been once laid, though less perfectly and authoritatively 

 tharl at present, before the Governor General's Council in the 

 debates on the Civil Procedure Bill, The representations I then 



