no AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS 



of State banks, as in Norway, and savings-banks — 

 being found a panacea for rural indebtedness, it has 

 merely increased the gross burden ; the specific gravity 

 of the mass may be less, but the volume is more than 

 proportionately greater. 



' What that burden is may be judged by the following 

 remarks : In Prussia the mortgage debt is £500,000,000 

 on 30,000,000 people, or nearly £17 per head , in Nor- 

 way it is £36,000,000 on 2,000,000 people, or £18 per 

 head ; in Switzerland, Canton Berne has a mortgage 

 debt of £16,000,000 on 538,000 people, or £29 per head; 

 this last country being, amongst countries of small 

 proprietors, more completely provided with banks 

 than any in the world, insomuch that the individual 

 money-lender is of no account. 



' If such are the dangers and difficulties in Europe, 

 those of India can hardly be less. It is useless, how- 

 ever amiable, to believe that the ryot is only thirsting 

 for capital in order to invest it at once in the improve- 

 ment and development of his estate ; that the influx of 

 cheap capital is all that is wanted to enable him to 

 wipe off his old debts in order to start forthwith on a 

 self-denying career of productivity. It is dangerous to 

 confer, whether upon the peasant proprietor or upon 

 the Pariah labourer, a fancy character, born possibly 

 of hope or of an enlightened personal conception of 

 one's own probable or possible action under similar 

 circumstances, and forthwith to start for his aid insti- 

 tutions suited to such character, with the certain result 

 that he will do what more educated and enlightened 

 men did and do, whether in Germany in the early 

 days of land banks, or in Europe generally in these 

 days of competition and facile credit. Credit is a 

 remedy, but, like many remedies, it is also a dangerous 

 poison (a double-edged tool, a consuming as well as 

 a comforting fire, to use metaphors from European 

 writers), and in applying the novelty wholesale to the 

 Indian ryot it must be applied with the caution that 



