BRITISH NATIVE POLICY FIAT JUSTITIA. 127 



or work done by each family in each village is settled by the 

 town chief, aided by the elders of the township. 



' The mode in which the articles are raised is left to the 

 people themselves to determine, and the methods adopted have 

 been very various. In some places each village has grown its 

 own tax produce along with what it grew for sale or domestic 

 use ; in others, several villages have combined to grow their 

 produce in one large plantation. These latter are what, 

 by those who wish to discredit the scheme, are called " Govern- 

 ment gardens ;" but, in fact, no such gardens exist. The soil 

 and the produce both belong to the people themselves. 



' This machinery recognises the primitive community system, 

 on which all political and social institutions in Fiji are based, 

 and which, even in the matter of taxation, I found to be still 

 in use as regarded the rates for local purposes, such as payment 

 of schoolmasters and village police, which, quite irrespectively 

 of the Government (and, as some would say, illegally), were 

 imposed by the provincial councils by a species of voluntary 

 assessment. 



' This species of taxation is, consequently, familiar to the 

 natives, and thoroughly understood by them ; a fact which 

 causes the pressure of the impost to be more lightly felt than 

 it would be if demanded directly from the individual by the 

 Government. It moreover renders the natives themselves, to 

 a very large extent, active and responsible agents in the collec- 

 tion of revenue. 



' Both of these are, I need hardly say, points of very con- 

 siderable importance. 



' But these were not the only results which the system was 

 aimed to effect, nor are they the only objects which have been 

 attained by its adoption. 



'As was anticipated by the framers of the Ordinance, 



