BELIEF OF INDEBTED AGRICULTURISTS. 



of living on income, anticipated perhaps, but still only income. The 

 process of living on capital is but a short one, all the world over. 

 Abolish the whole land-revenue to-morrow, and the process would 

 merely be somewhat prolonged. The inevitable end must come at 

 last, but its concomitants of eviction and penury will, where the evil is 

 wide-spread, lead to large charitable relief in famine perhaps 

 eventually to a poor law, and are also, in parts of India at least, 

 politically dangerous. But the conclusion of this Council when 

 passing the Civil Procedure Code, as explained most fully by SIR 

 ARTHUR HOBHOUSE in a remarkable speech on March 28th, 1877, was 

 that, though special measures might be admissible in particular 

 localities, the plan of temporary alienation through the Collector for 

 a term of years, whenever the property would be ultimately saved 

 thereby, being in accordance with the past course of legislation 

 regarding land in England, and not inequitable, deserved a fair trial ; 

 and that, before going further, an attempt should be made to give 

 life to the intentions of the legislators of 1859, which have to a great 

 extent failed of effect. 



My object in this statement of the position of the land question, 

 which I fear may be deemed a digression, is to account for the absence 

 in the Bill of any attempt at a linai comprehensive settlement of it, 

 and at the same time to show the connection and admissibility of the 

 two limited measures which are proposed. Section 23 exempts the 

 land of agriculturists from attachment and sale unless it has be 211 

 specifically pledged. The equity of thus restricting a creditor's 

 security has able champions in the general correspondence already 

 referred to. But in Bombay the question is mainly one of fact, 

 whether the existing debt can be held to have been, on the whole, 

 contracted in view of the security of unpledged laud. Keeping in 

 mind the large proportion of such debt which the Commission found 

 to be ancestral, the recent date (1865) of the legalization of transfers 

 of occupancy, the known reluctance of the ryots to pledge their 

 land, and other considerations, the first local authorities have decided 

 that it cannot. I must confess to some misffivin^s as to how the 



o o 



exemption may work in practice. The money-lender may everywhere 

 make the execution of a bond, laying on the land all his existing 

 unsecured advances, an indispensable condition of further accommoda- 

 tion. At the same tima, the exemption rests as to the past upou a 

 perfectly intelligible and reasonable basis, while as to the future, the 



