RELIEF OF INDEBTED AGRICULTURISTS. 188 



for risks, lower rates will thus prove as remunerative as the present 

 high ones. For a loan on mortgage, the principle of calculation and 

 the advantage are the same as for a loan on personal bond ; but in the 

 end there is this difference, that in the latter case, if the sow/wr lends 

 beyond the limits, he will lose his money, while in the former, if the 

 ryot borrows beyond them he will loss his land. 



All this, it may be said, is very well in theory, but in practice 

 the conditions of advances depend far more upon ' the degree of 

 simplicity in the borrower and of rapacity in the lender than on any- 

 thing else'; and to this existing uncertainty you have added the 

 fresh one as to what rate of interest each individual Judge will think 

 reasonable. I reply that the former uncertainty will be diminished by 

 the Bill ; and that the second will prove more imaginary than real. 

 There will be far less temptation to extortionate bargains and frauds, 

 and far more risk in them, now that the whole history and merits of 

 the case are to be laid bare in court. And the provisions for manage- 

 ment and recovery by the collector, standing behind all agreements, 

 will reduce the factor of uncertainty in credit which arises from in- 

 dividual character, and will assist the courts in gradually establishing 

 rates of interest varying within but a moderate range. Their decrees 

 will thus in time afford the advantage, without the well-known evils, 

 of usury laws, of which MR. JUSTICE WEST has well observed in his 

 pamphlet on ' The Land and the Law/ that ' they set up a standard, 

 and gave fixity to men's vague ideas of what might reasonably be 

 asked for the use of money in those numerous cases in which the 

 loan partook but slightly of the character of a true mercantile tran- 

 saction.' 



While thus contending that the Government are justified in 

 believing that the ultimate effects of the Bill will prove beneficial, 

 I do not conceal from myself for a moment that a trying time of 

 transition must intervene before all parties have understood and 

 settled down to their new relations. It is to be fully expected that 

 difficulties between debtor and creditor will arise in many individual 

 cases, and even in villages or 1alnqx generally, and that their 

 effects may appear in the recovery of the land-revenue. But if 

 judicial and revenue officers alike strive to remove misconceptions and 

 fears ; if the former are even-handed and temperate in their judg- 

 merfts, and the latter efficient in their management of attached 

 land ; and if, I venture to add, the revenue demand can be so timed 



