170 RELIEF OF INDEBTED AGRICULTURISTS. 



made had the warm concurrence of SIR EDWARD BAYLEY and the 

 learned Advocate General for Bengal (MR. BAUL). The discussions in 

 Select Committee as well as in Council showed that the objections to 

 the measure related less to its principle than to the other arrange- 

 ments, such as an effective insolvency-law and a speedy recovery of 

 bonafide debts, by which it ought to be accompanied. These the Select 

 Committee and the Council could not see their way to, owing to the 

 insufficiency of the judicial machinery in the mofassal ; and the 

 matter may be held to have been deferred rather than negatived. 

 But the present Bill provides all these necessary accompaniments 

 for the districts to which it is to apply. Imprisonment was, at 

 best, a barbarous device to meet the case of a debtor's concealing 

 his property or refusing to give it up. Under the draft Bill, it 

 will be quite unnecessary for these purposes, and reserved for cases 

 of flagrant fraud or dishonesty in insolvents. In this altered 

 position, I trust that no hesitation will now be felt by the Council 

 in abolishing a system which has been proved to be grossly abused 

 as an engine of extortion, and is in opposition to the legislation 

 of the civilized world. 



The case of execution of a decree by sale of immovable 

 property remains for notice. The problem of whether such sales 

 should be enforced one of the most difficult by which Indian 

 administration is beset is entirely the creation of British rule. 

 Although the later Hindu law permitted the sale of land 'on proof 

 of necessity' and Mahomadan law placed no bar to it whatever, the 

 general feeling of the country against alienation of ancestral 

 lands, coupled with the trifling value of the right of occupancy 

 and the political objections to expropriation felt under a Native 

 Government, to which I have already alluded in my sketch of the 

 system of Native States, appear to have co-operated to prevent 

 sales to any noticeable extent. But under our judicial system 

 'the sale of land registered in the collector's book is' (as observ- 

 ed by LORD STANLEY in a despatch of January 25th, 1859) 'the most 

 ready way of enforcing a judgment : it gives the least trouble to 

 both the creditor and the Court, and holds out every inducement 

 to both to resort to that mode of satisfying the decree in pre- 

 ference to any other, even in the most trifling cases/ The Code 

 provides, indeed, an alternative to sale of the nature of an efogit, 

 or temporary alienation, by allowing the land to be placed under the 



