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debt much fewer advances would be required, and 

 the majority of these would not be to save ancestral 

 holdings, but only to improve them ; advances always 

 more readily obtainable and at easier rates, because 

 often made by classes of capitalists who will not deal 

 with nearly ruined men. 



In the second place, the native mofussil capital 

 employed in usury is believed to be more than three- 

 fold that employed in trade. By no possible means 

 could the amount of the latter be more than doubled 

 for many years, so that for a long time two-thirds at 

 least of the capital now employed in money-lending in 

 the mofussil must continue to be so employed. 



In the third place, as a matter of fact (and this 

 assertion is based on the repeated assertions of scores 

 of village bankers in the Doab), many money-lenders 

 would be perfectly content to have all their money out 

 in agricultural advances at nine per cent, if they 

 might make these at the village platform, before the 

 rural judge, without going near any other court, with- 

 out any bonds or stamps, and could then look for the 

 recovery of any items not voluntarily repaid, to the 

 revenue officers of the circle, and they would gladly let 

 Government keep half per cent, of all it realised for 

 them (and this would more than cover any expense 

 incurred), and accept such slight losses as might prove 

 inevitable. 



It is necessary here to explain that losses, under 

 such circumstances, would be rare in the extreme. 

 Aside from the fatal lotteries of the civil courts, and 

 dealt with in his own village, the Indian peasant is 

 very honest, and he is still a great respecter of autho- 



