286 PROVISION OF BORROWING FACILITIES, 



peasant and the infinite morcellement of the land even in industrial 

 Europe. The problems threatening Indian agriculture are precisely 

 the same in nature, though not yet in degree. Human nature is 

 everywhere the same, and an uneducated nation largely composed of 

 isolated, ignorant units, suddenly endowed with new rights and new 

 values, suddenly placed under the regime of complete individual 

 liberty of action, will invariably pledge those rights and those values, 

 till it is found that it is only the form and not the fact of servitude 

 and dependence, that has been altered. 



When, therefore, we are considering the poverty and indebtedness 

 of the ryot and suggestions for his relief, it is idle, even mischievous, 

 to fasten attention on one cause or set of causes, and equally idle to 

 insist each upon his own special remedy as the one panacea for rural 

 difficulties. The eradication not of indebtedness, but of undue 

 indebtedness, can only be effected by the slow, persistent, simultaneous 

 action of a diversity of active remedies, the nature of which is partly 

 indicated above, but necessarily differs for each community. 



But the present study is expressly confined to the remedy found 

 in the organization of credit, a remedy, however, of almost unbounded 

 potentialities, provided that it is so prepared as to contain the alternative 

 and tonic elements of national vigour. The mere supply of cheap 

 capital ab extra is no sufficient remedy ; it would probably intensify 

 the difficulty by increasing the load of debt ; even the supply of such 

 capital by the "organization of credit/'' i.e. by the establishment of 

 banks, is inadequate as a radical means of relief. 



It is not merely cheap and facile credit that is required ; it is a 

 credit which must indeed be cheap and facile in that it shall be ever 

 at hand, but it must be credit which shall only be so obtainable that 

 the act and effort of obtaining it shall educate, discipline and guide 

 the borrower ; it should be granted only to those who have learned 

 to think, to plan, to save ; the method of providing it must tea^h the 

 lessons of self and mutual help, and suggest the extension of those 

 lessons to matters outside of mere credit ; it must be safe not merely 

 in eliminating the dangers of usury, but in being controlled, heedful, 

 and productive. 



Hence, while studying credit aud preparing for its organization, 

 the object to be borne in mind is not the introduction merely of 

 cheap capital or of banking credit, but of that system which shall most 



