MALAY LAND TENURE. 137 



" or other person holding under the person in possession. The 

 " land-holder's right is not called proprietary, because it is 

 " restricted not only by the duty of paying revenue, taxes, and 

 " cesses, which is a restriction on all property in land in India, 

 " but also by the fact that all mines and mineral products and 

 " buried treasure are reserved to Government, as also the right 

 " to work or search for those products on paying compensation 

 " for the surface damage/' 



*,.#■*.' .*-.•#■■* *■■#.•.#■ # 



" Any ' land-holder ' can obtain an authoritative declara- 

 " tion that he is such, by applying to have his right recorded 

 " on a register provided for the purpose, and getting a certi- 

 " ficate of the record. There are, of course, provisions in the 

 1 ' Act regarding the cancelment and calling in question of such 

 « record. " * 



J AY A . 



It has already been stated that, under native rule, the Java- 

 nese were mere serfs, without proprietary interest in the land 

 which they cultivated. Under Dutch rule, prior to the con- 

 quest of Java by the English in 1811, no proprietary tenure 

 was introduced, and the native system remained unmodified if 

 the following description given by Raffles is a correct one : — 



" The Dutch Company, actuated solely by the spirit of gain, 

 " and viewing their Javan subjects with less regard or consi- 

 " deration than a West Indian planter formerly viewed the 

 " gang upon his estate, because the latter had paid the pur- 

 " chase money of human property which the other had not, 

 " employed all the pre-existing machinery of despotism, to 

 " squeeze from the people their utmost mite of contribution, 

 " the last dregs of their labour, and thus aggravated the evils 

 " of a capricious and semi-barbarous government by working 

 " it with all the practised ingenuity of politicians, and all the 

 " monopolising selfishness of traders/' f 



* Baden- Powell — Land Revenue and Land Tenure in India, 700-702. 

 f History of Java, 1, 168, ( 2nd edition ), 



