Page:Allan Octavian Hume, C.B.; Father of the Indian National Congress.djvu/44

 supply of manure that this fearful mortality amongst the cattle, and their resulting paucity, so greatly restricts ; it is the little hoarded capital of the peasant, the very mainspring of agriculture in India, that is thus flung away." Village plantations for fodder, the establishment of Veterinary Colleges, the spread of useful information among the people, and other well considered measures, organized by a competent Agricultural Department ; these were the practical remedies advocated by Mr. Hume : "The Indian climates, varying as these do, appear to be specially favourable to cattle. Every one who has kept cattle here knows that if moderately fed, and given plenty of work, and kept away from contagion, they never seem to be sick or sorry, but work on, hardy and healthy, from youth to extreme old age. They are very prolific too. If our poor beasts had only reasonably fair play, the whole Empire would swarm with cattle, and cattle able to work the heaviest ploughs, and, in soils and situations where this was necessary or desirable, to plough as deep as you like."

He held the Civil Courts in the rural districts directly responsible for the bondage of the cultivators to the moneylender ; and he recommended that rural debt cases should be disposed of summarily, and finally, on the spot by selected Indians of known probity and intelligence, who should be "sent as judges from village to village, to settle up, with the aid of the village elders, every case of debt of the kind referred to, in which any one of its inhabitants was concerned." The expected result is thus graphically described : "These judges would be fettered by no codes and no forms of procedure, and they would hear both parties' stories coram populo, on the village platform of the debtor's own village. It is needless to tell any one who knows the country that while, when you get him into court, no witness seems