100 SUB-DIVISION OF HOLDINGS 



advancing money on the mortgage of land. In any case, 

 it is not a bank's business to lock up money in permanent 

 mortgages ; and the risks connected with uncertainty of title 

 make such business doubly undesirable. Even the private 

 capitalist is none too ready to lend money on mortgage to 

 strangers ; and the high rate of interest required is accounted 

 for partly by the risks attaching to such transactions, as 

 the title cannot be guaranteed secure. I cannot over- 

 emphasize the importance to the prosperity of agriculture 

 and industries in India of undertaking legislation which 

 would have the effect of removing, or at least mitigating, 

 this uncertainty of title. 



Another great reform which seems essential to the 

 economic progress of the country is to modify custom and 

 law in such a manner as to discourage the sub-division of the 

 control of landed property amongst the heirs of the owner 

 on his death. When a man with four sons dies, each of them 

 succeeds to a one-fourth share of the property ; and each 

 usually insists on having a perfect partition of the land so 

 as to have his share under his own direct control. Very 

 largely this is a social custom which can only be modified by 

 the general spread of education and by the opening of 

 alternative occupations for some of the sons. A similar 

 law of inheritance exists throughout France and Belgium 

 and has led there to a considerable sub-division of holdings. 

 In recent times this tendency has been checked by the 

 migration of the vounger sons to industrial occupations, 

 one of the sons, often the eldest, either manages the property 

 on behalf of others, paying them their share, or more 

 usually he manages to accumulate a sufficient capital out 

 of the profits of his cultivation to buy out the other heirs. 

 There are many people who argue in favor of the introduc- 

 tion of permissive or even compulsory adoption of the law 

 of primogeniture with a view to avoiding sub-division of 



