294 



PROVISION OP BORROWING FACILITIES. 



rate for interest, as to this day in the United States. The German 

 law gives the courts discretion to decide in each particular case 

 whether there has or has not been usury, the circumstances of each 

 contract being considered, and especially any undue advantage which 

 the lender may have enjoyed. A usury law on similar lines may be 

 wholly though tempoiarily useful. Similarly, it is advisable to insist 

 that all persons habitually dealing in credit as a business, shall keep 

 a fixed set of accounts entered clearly and distinctly in proper books ; 

 the lack of such registers is daily felt. 



The real method, however, of bridling the money-lender is by 

 stimulating competition with him ; in Switzerland thirty years ago 

 the complaints against the usurer were as elsewhere ; banks sprang 

 up in obedience to the demand and in consonance with favourable 

 laws of mortgage, registration and other stimulating circumstances ; 

 the result now is that the money-lender is authoritatively declared 

 to be of no account as a factor in general credit, there being about 



900 credit banks of various classes to less than 3,000,000, people. 

 # * * 



While it is desirable to develop the suggestive and educative 

 functions of the law and of the executive in the matter of thrift and 

 credit institutions, and to give, by law, certain privileges to societies 

 established to promote national thrift, providence, and productivity, 

 it is to be remembered that neither the existing law, nor the 

 Government, nor the state of society, offers any actual obstacles to 

 the establishment of any class of bank or benefit association ; if the 

 law does not suggest, it does not prevent ; if the executive does not 

 help, neither does it hinder ; if the conditions of society are not all 

 that can be desired, neither are they specially unfavourable. Compared, 

 in fact, with the conditions of Europe, especially in the middle of 

 the century when banks for the people first arose, the conditions of 

 this Presidency (Madras) must be regarded as distinctly favourable. 

 The right of association for any purpose, political, social, or Economic 

 is absolutely free ; fiscal burdens are light ; communications, by rail, 

 post aud telegraph, are good ; justice is accessible, pure, aiid fairly 

 prompt, while, in the village courts, this Presidency has at hand an 

 unequalled instrument for the enforcement of small claims and con- 

 tracts ; education, though popularly backward, has produced a large 

 class of men who are or may become fully acquainted with Western 

 ideas and methods^ while sufficiently in touch with the people to be able 



