106 MALAY LAND TENURE. 



security of rights of property * and everything depends upon 

 the personal energy and family influence of the person who 

 claims the superior rights. There will always be other candi- 

 dates for royal favour who will seek to supplant him in his 

 rights if they are profitable (the rights of minors are almost 

 certain to be invaded in this way), and the cultivator is always 

 anxious to be recognised as an independent proprietor. One 

 man will make good his right to receive tenths from a whole 

 district and to regard the cultivators as his tenants, while his 

 successor may, perhaps, on some show of opposition, tacitly 

 abandon all such claims and leave the cultivators to be recog- 

 nised in course of time as separate proprietors. All this is 

 quite inconsistent with any notion of " ownership of the soil/" 

 though it is easy to see how a systematic and continuous ex- 

 ercise of proprietary rights would lead an English Court to 

 assume that such ownership existed. I entirely repudiate the 

 theory of " ownership of the soil " as incidental in any way to 

 the Malay system of land-tenure, and all the evidence shows 

 that the Dutch grantee in Malacca had simply the rights of a 

 Malay hi an tanah, such a one as I have described as being put 

 in by the Raja over the heads of the cultivators. 



The right of the proprietor to require obedience from his 

 tenants raises a new question — the liability of the cultivator to 

 forced labour. 



* " From the facts already adduced, regarding the state of landed tenures, 

 " it will have appeared that the proprietary right to the soil is unqnestion- 

 " ahly vested in the Sovereign. This principle is so universally established, 

 " and so frequently exercised, that it is almost superfluous to offer any proof 

 "of it. Such is the fluctuation of landed property from the operation of 

 " this principle that there is not, perhaps, all over the country, at the present 

 " day, ten jungs of land in the possession of the descendants of those who 

 " held them fifty, nay, thirty years ago. The actual effect of the principle 

 " is, indeed, even more violent than we should be led at first sight to argue. 

 " The descendants of those who, no great number of years ago, were in 

 11 affluence, holding the highest employments of the State, and, consequently, 

 " important and valuable tracts of land, may now be seen not only not 

 " inheriting the possessions of their forefathers, but hardly enjoying the 

 " bare means of subsistence, and reduced to a level with the meanest of the 

 " people." Ckawfued — Report on Nature and Condition of Landed lemurs 

 under the Native Government of Java. Quoted by Raffles : Minute on Ad- 

 ministration of Java, p. 92. 



