m 



to adapt the abstract propositions laid down in the law to the 

 customs, usages and sentiments of the people in their practical 

 application, that it is necessary that all petty offences which 

 can be left to be dealt with by popular tribunals should be so 

 left, while the graver offences, on the suppression and punish- 

 ment of which the well-being and safety of the State depend, 

 should be enquired into by single judges with the aid of juries, 

 or where the conditions of the country preclude the employ- 

 ment of juries, by benches of judges containing a due admix- 

 ture of the native element. 



YI. — Local Fund and Municipal Administration and 

 Legislation affecting Social Usages. 



111. The last group of questions we have to consider re- 



lates to the disintegration of village com- 

 la^comSties."* ^'^" ^^^^ities and the decay of the spirit of 



co-operation among the villagers for the 

 purpose of carrying out large undertakings and warding 

 off common dangers ; and also to the evils arising from the 

 absence of a trustworthy machinery for ascertaining when 

 Government can safely undertake legislation affecting laws 

 of inheritance or social usages corresponding to changes 

 which are taking place in the economic condition of the 

 people. 



112. It is commonly believed that the solidarity of the 



village communities was undermined by 

 of ^communal sjfri?''^^ ^^^ ryotwar systom introduced by Sir 



Thomas Munro. The fact, however, is 

 that village communities, which were originally composed of 

 kinsmen, were, at the beginning of the century, becoming 

 disintegrated by the introduction of strangers even in those 

 parts of the country where they still retained their original 

 form ; common holdings were in process of transformation 

 into individual holdings, and the intermediate stage of hold- 

 ing lands of whole villages in defined shares subject to the 

 condition that each sharer was to cultivate the lands allot- 

 ted to him for a period of years had been reached. Thus 

 we find in the Tan j ore district, where village communities 

 flourished in an unimpaired condition down to recent times, 

 the Collector, Mr. John Wallace reported in 1805 that, out 

 of 5,063 villages, 1,087 villages were owned by single owners 

 or families, that 2,202 villages were owned by mirassidars 

 who held th^ir lands in severalty in distinct plots and that 

 1,774 villages were held in common by the mirassidars* The 



