SUGGESTED REMEDIES 115 



the money-lender appears ; establish equal rights, and 

 as a consequence equal inheritance, and the mortgage 

 becomes a necessity, or the estate a mere farmlet ; 

 reduce overwhelming State demands, and the result- 

 ing surplus is taken by the money-lender, or the small 

 proprietor becomes the petty landlord with a pauper 

 tenantry ; establish banks and facile credit, and in- 

 debtedness may be far more than doubled, or the 

 individual money-lender may be replaced by syndicates 

 of land-grabbers and dividend-hunters. The agrarian 

 problem, like the national, or, rather, the human 

 problem, is full of unknown or undervalued factors ; 

 it passes the wisdom of man to foresee and to provide 

 against the difficulties produced by ignorance, by want 

 of forethought, by imperfect legislative and adminis- 

 trative measures — nay, even by what seemed, and still 

 seem, measures of justice, civilization, and political 

 progress, such as equal inheritance, the abolition of 

 feudal services and inordinate State demands, the 

 introduction of cheap communications, etc., through 

 which the present agricultural crisis has arrived for 

 Europe, and is beginning in India. Hence it does not 

 necessarily follow that a limitation of the power to 

 transfer or mortgage lands is necessarily an error in 

 all conditions of society. Where a peasantry has 

 learnt the full lessons of thought and prudence, the 

 full use of credit and capital applied productively; 

 where the conditions of society and the demands of 

 the State are such as not to compel resort to the 

 money-lender, the power to mortgage to the full can 

 hardly be an error. In other conditions it is possible 

 that such power may only lead to undue indebtedness 

 and to a degradation of the agriculturist and his art.'* 



Such reflections as these suggested one of the re- 

 medies which are now being tried in India for agri- 

 cultural indebtedness. As the peasant proprietor's 

 readiest way of raising money consists in mortgaging 



* ' Report on Land and Agricultural Banks,' F. A. Nicholson. 



8—2 



