HO MALAY LAND TENURE. 



" may, in fact,, be called his slaves, except that they are at 

 " liberty to quit his service for that of another chief when 

 i( they choose. But as they seldom do change, it may safely 

 " be presumed that they are contented with the arrangement, 

 " and their healthy and pleasant faces sufficiently prove that 

 " they are well-fed and happy." * 



Forced service in a Malay State, too, is not merely the result 

 of the application of the law of the stronger ; it is well under- 

 stood to be an incident of the lot of the cultivator of land, he 

 acquiesces in it as one of the conditions on which he holds his 

 fields, and he usually submits quietly to the orders of his supe- 

 riors until they reach the pitch of oppression at which he 

 decides that emigration is preferable to slavery. He knows 

 that, by emigrating, he will forfeit his land, and in fact it is at 

 once seized by the Penghulu and held for the Raja. 



The cultivator may perhaps receive forgiveness and the re- 

 stitution of his fields if he returns and submits at some later 

 time, but he will probably have to pay a fine if he is known to 

 possess the means of doing so. 



No incident of native rule has contributed so much to swell 

 the Malay population of Penang and Province Wellesley as 

 this. Kedah has been half denuded of its inhabitants, and 

 Patani, Perlis, Situl, Trang, etc., have contributed numbers of 

 emigrants anxious to escape the unjust exactions of native 

 rulers. But when the system is worked with justice and 

 moderation, there are seldom complaints from the people. In 

 the Krian district of Perak, the people (many of them British 

 subjects), under the orders of the Orang Kay a Mantri, made 

 roads and canals without murmuring, and in the same district, 

 after its cession to the British Government, there was no diffi- 

 culty in turning out nearly a thousand men in 1874, to com- 

 mence clearing a line through the forest for a proposed road, f 



The Mr ah, or forced levy of men for labour, is effected 

 through the headmen of villages or districts. A Penghulu 

 receives the orders of his Chief or Raja to have a certain num- 

 ber of men ready at a given time or place, and runs a risk of 



* Tennent's Ceylon, II, 459. 



f Government Gazette, Feb. 6th, 1875, 



