n6 AGRICULTURAL INDEBTEDNESS 



his farm, it is expedient to declare his holding inalien- 

 able, and thus make him incapable of pledging it as 

 security for a debt. This has actually been done in 

 the Panjab and in Bundelkhand. In the first case the 

 Government directly aimed at securing the manly 

 peasantry of the Panjab in the possession of their 

 ancestral fields. By the Land Alienation Act XIII. of 

 1900 a peasant in that Province cannot sell his land 

 to any but members of certain agricultural classes 

 who are recognised by statute as agriculturists. Even 

 more recently the Government of the United Provinces 

 passed similar legislation for the relief of the landed 

 proprietors in the Bundelkhand district. The Govern- 

 ment cleared the estates of debt and restored them to 

 the owners, coupled with a new provision limiting the 

 proprietor's right of alienation. The local govern- 

 ments were influenced by other than purely economic 

 considerations in passing these two Acts, and the 

 legislation will probably have fulfilled the object of 

 its originators if it succeeds in maintaining the peasant 

 proprietors of these tracts in the hereditary posses- 

 sion of their farms. 



But these measures do not offer a complete and 

 final solution of the problem of agricultural indebted- 

 ness. An essential factor of that problem is that the 

 agriculturist, whether in India or Europe, must and 

 will have credit ; if he cannot have it cheap, he will 

 have it dear. At the same time the village money- 

 lender has hitherto made such a good thing out of 

 rural usury that he is not likely to abandon his calling 

 without reluctance. When borrower and lender are 

 so anxious to come together, it will be strange if they 

 do not manage to meet upon some terms or other, and 

 there is no reason whatever for supposing that those 

 terms will be more advantageous to the borrower than 

 before the passage of the Land Alienation Acts. It is 

 worth noticing that in France also special obstacles 

 have been placed in the way of the peasant seeking 



