RELIEF OF INDEBTED AGRICULTURISTS. 175 



danger, and even the legislation of ]869 has failed through his 

 ingenuity ; in India fraud by the creditor has almost solely to be 

 guarded against. In England insolvency is presumably a man's 

 fault; in India it is presumably only his misfortune. In England 

 embarrassment ordinarily arises from gross extravagance or reckless 

 trading; in India one or more bad seasons, the loss of a bullcck 

 or two, or the religious necessity of marrying a child, are 

 its most frequent origin ; extortion and fraud by crcditois help 

 its onward course. Yet in England insolvency has hitherto 

 been treated more leniently than in India. Misfortune has here been 

 made a crime, for which even life-long slavery might not atone. 

 Surely, we must divest ourselves of much confusion of ideas. Whether 

 a man is insolvent or not is a mere question of fact, quite uncon- 

 nected with the enquiry how he came to be so. How much he can 

 repay, without being made a useless or dangerous member of society, 

 is a mere matter of calculation, into which the moral aspects of his past 

 conduct cannot enter. To such enquiries, ideas of revenge and punish- 

 ment arc altogether irrelevent. Imprisonment is only appropriate 

 for concealment, contumacy and other forms of fraud. To declare 

 an agriculturist insolent when he is so; to set a reasonable time 

 before him during which he shall work himself free and reserve the 

 means therefor; and eventually to start him afresh with the lesson 

 of experience, seem more sensible than to lock him up for a time 

 while his family are starving, and then turn him adrift a beggar. To 

 the creditor certainly the former course will be the more profitable, as 

 also to society. 



In accordance with these principles, the Bill, in the first place, 

 provides (section 20) for the numberless petty cases in which the 

 means of the debtor, the claims against him, and his partial or total 

 inability to satisfy them, come before the Court in the course of the 

 suit or application for execution. Where this is so, it is far shorter, 

 simpler and less troublesome to all parties to empower the Court at 

 once to settle the matter than to let it go on through the perfectly 

 useless, but costly and vexatious forms of taking out execution, and 

 applying for declaration of insolvency. Where the case is quite 

 simple, the Court will, therefore, release the debtor from any balance 

 which it is satisfied he cannot pay. When there are several creditors 

 or other complications, and the amount exceeds Us. 50, it may at 

 once direct the taking of insolvency proceedings. Again, where such 



