RESTRICTIONS ON THE ALIENATION OP LANDS. 25 



peasantry that we apprehend. It is a despondent, debt-ridden, 

 expropriated and impoverished laud-owning class, particularly 

 a class recruited from the stable and conservative elements so 

 forcibly described by the HON'BLE MR. TOPPER, which would be both 

 a source of weakness to the province and of alarm to the State. 

 Again, it has been said today that the soiokar is a very useful and 

 even indispensable factor in rural life, who is quite content if 

 he secures his reasonable profits, and has no a priori appetite 

 for land. So far as I can see, the model money-lender whom I have 

 described, and whose utility I do not dispute, will not be at all 

 injured by this Bill. The zamindar will still require money, and 

 the laniya will continue to provide it. But it is the SHYLOCK, who 

 insists upon his pound of flesh, and who, under the existing- system 

 is in the habit of taking it in land, because it is the one security 

 which his debtor can furnish, at whom we aim. A money-lending 

 class I fully believe to be essential to the existing organisation 

 of agrarian life in India ; but we do not desire to see them convert- 

 ed into land-grabbers, either voluntary or involuntary, at the 

 expense of the hereditary occupants of the soil. 



I do not, therefore, feel any doubt as to the seriousness of 

 the malady which we have been called upon to diagnose, and for 

 which, if we value our responsibility, it is our duty to prescribe. 

 But there arises the second question, whether we have or have not 

 adopted the right prescription. 



Now, there is one objection that has been raised to our Bill 

 which would equally apply to any Bill. It has been said that social 

 customs and institutions cannot be changed by arbitrary dispositions, 

 either of law or executive authority ; that they should be allowed 

 to work out their own salvation ; and that, in the process of what 

 is described as evolution, but is in reality only blind and irres- 

 ponsible abnegation of control, the desired reform will some day 

 come. With me this argument carries no weight ; for it is the 

 argument, both of the optimist, in so far as it cheerily but thought- 

 lessly assumes that things, if left to themselves, will come 

 right in the end, which I may observe in nine cases out of ten 

 is not the case ; and of the pessimist, in so far as it contends 

 th*t Governments ought not to attempt to solve problems, because 

 their solution is hard ; while it is also in direct violation of 

 historical facts. If successive British Governments, had contentedly 



