THE ABOEIGINAL TRIBES. 153 



cent, per annum. Seed grain has also to be borrowed ; and 

 this, as well as sufficient food to last the cultivator till his 

 crop is ready, is generally borrowed in kind, the arrangement 

 being that double the quantity borrowed shall be repaid at 

 harvest-time. As grain is cheaper at harvest than, at seed 

 time, this does not quite represent 100 per cent, interest! 

 Such rates of interest seem high, but the risk of such specu- 

 lations is very great, the principal being not seldom lost 

 altogether. The short-sighted policy long followed by our 

 legislature, which rendered the recoveiy of such debts a 

 matter of the greatest difficulty and uncertainty, greatly aided 

 in maintaining these rates of interest. This policy is not 

 even yet extinct, there being, in the Central Provinces at 

 least, a rule which prohibits procedure against the farm-stock 

 of a debtor, although it may all have been purchased with the 

 borrowed money to recover which execution is sought. 



It is obvious that transactions of this' nature are really of 

 the nature of a partnership between the labourer and the 

 capitalist, the former furnishing nothing but his personal 

 labour and supervision. Sometimes the partnership takes a 

 more explicit form, when the man of money furnishes the 

 oxen against the manual labour of the cultivator. All the 

 other expenses, including the wages of the cultivators family 

 if he has any, are deducted from the gross produce of the 

 farm, with interest to the capitalist if he has advanced any 

 part of such expenditure, and the balance is then divided 

 equally between the owner of the oxen and the cultivator. In 

 either case the result usually is that all the profit, beyond the 

 bare wages his labour would fetch in the market, is absorbed 

 by the man that supplies the money and takes the risk. But 

 the cultivator is far better off also than if he had been 

 working for hire, for then he would not have laboured half so 



