158 MALAY LAND TENURE. 



incessant for the next ten years. Each of the three Settle- 

 ments had its separate history and its peculiar administrative 

 difficulties, and. it was no easy task to find out and apply the 

 proper remedies in each. In 1837 the Supreme Government 

 in Calcutta gave effect to some of Sir B. Malkin's recommen- 

 dations by repealing the local Land Regulations ( the legality 

 of which was more than doubtful ),* with a view to the intro- 

 duction of a general Land Law, and by passing an Act ( No. 

 XX of 1837 ) which modifies, in the Straits, the English law 

 of succession and makes all immoveable property descend to 

 the executor or administrator and not to the heir, f In the 

 same year a Commissioner ( Mr. Young ) was despatched 

 from India to the Straits Settlements to settle existing disputes 

 and difficulties about titles to land and to report on the whole 

 subject. He visited Malacca in 1838, and again there was an 

 opportunity of putting the land revenue system on an intelli- 

 gible basis, either by ascertaining, and formally enacting as 

 law, the native customs relative to the collection of the tenth 

 ( as was done in Ceylon a few years later J ), or by establish- 

 ing by law the principle of an assessment in money, instead of 

 the tax in kind, to be levied on the cultivated area as in India. 

 Mr. Young recommended neither. He deprecated legisla- 

 tion, and preferred to trust ( the result has shewn how vainly ) 

 to argument and persuasion to induce the Malays to commute 

 the tithe for a fixed annual payment in money. The idea 

 started in Regulation IX of 1830, that each cultivator was to 

 have a title-deed for his holding, seems to have taken complete 

 possession of that generation of Land Revenue officials and 

 the object of every succeeding administration seems similarly 

 to have been to force documents of title upon an unwilling 

 population. The toll-houses were discontinued and the volun- 

 tary commutation plan was tried. Its complete failure was 

 thus described bv Mr. E. A. Blundell in 1848 : — 



* Act X of 1837, s. 1. 



t See Sir B. Malkin's letter to the Government of India, dated July 17, 

 1837 ; Report of Indian Land Commissioners, p. 85. 

 % Sup., p. 145. 



