152 MALAY LAND TENURE. 



it was only under the British Government, after 1795, that they 

 began to be valuable. 



The land-holders, then, in Malacca, at the time that the 

 British took possession of the place finally in 1825, were of 

 three classes : — 



1. — Holders of land in the town and suburbs, with or 

 without certificates of the Court of Justice ; 



2. — Proprietors of concessions, in the nature of Zamin- 

 ddri rights, over country lands ; 



3. — Native cultivators having a proprietary right ; — 

 all holding under the local customary tenure of the country. 



It was difficult at first for the officers of the new Government 

 to obtain accurate information as to the state of the tenure. 

 The persons belonging to the second of the three classes just 

 enumerated — " proprietors/' as they called themselves, " tithe- 

 owners" or "impropriators/' as Mr. Young termed them* — 

 commenced by making wholly inadmissible claims. For a 

 time it seemed as if the whole of the land of the Province, 

 beyond the town-limits, was the absolute property of "pro- 

 prietors," whether cultivated land, waste land, or forest. There 

 was no one to appeal to for information as to the nature of 

 the tenure except the " proprietors" themselves and their 

 friends and relations. Such information as they could or 

 would give will be found in the minutes of a meeting held by 

 the Resident Councillor on the 10th of October, 1826 

 (Appendix II) . They claimed the unqualified ownership of hun- 

 dreds of square miles of land, the greater part of which was 

 uncleared forest because, though the rights granted in respect 

 of it had been conferred with a view to its bring cleared, the 

 Dutch Government had never enforced this stipulation ! They 

 called the cultivators their " tenants," and denied the right of 

 any one to settle on their alleged estates without permission ; 

 yet they admitted the right of a " tenant" to sell, mortgage 

 and devise his land and to extend his property by taking up 

 waste land at will. They alleged a customary right to collect 



* Correspondence relating to the Land Revenue System, S.S. — Mr. Young's 

 3rd Report, pp, 51-75. 



