Page:Narrative of a journey through the upper provinces of India etc. (Volume III.).djvu/50

32 ADAWLUT COURTS.

The greatest evil of the land here, as elsewhere in India, is the system of the Adawlut Courts, their elaborate and intricate machinery, their into- lerable and expensive delays, and the severity of their debtor and creditor laws. Even in the Adaw- lut, however, a very essential improvement had been introduced by Mr. Elphinstone in discarding the Persian language, and appointing all proceed- ings to be in that of Guzerdt. Still there remained many evils, and in a land so eaten up by poverty on the one hand, and usury on the other, the most calamitous results continually followed, and the most bitter indignation was often excited by the judgements, ejectments, and other acts of the Court, which though intended only to do justice between man and man, yet frequently depopulated villages, undid ancient families, pulled down men's hereditary and long possessed houses over their heads, and made the judges hated and feared by the great body of the people as practising severities in the recovery of private debts, which none of the native governors, however otherwise oppressive, either ventured to do, or thought of doing. One good effect has, indeed, followed, that by making a debt more easy to recover, the rate of interest has been lessened. But this is a poor compensa- tion for the evils of a system which, to pay a debt, no matter how contracted, strips the weaver of his loom, the husbandman of his plough, and puUs the roof from the castle of the feudal chieftain, and which, when a village is once abandoned by its in- habitants in a time of &mine, makes it next to