MALAY LAND TENURE. 163 



maps so obtained were never published and the Indian sys- 

 tem of declaring particular land to be liable for so much 

 revenue annually, leviable quite irrespective of any title-deed 

 delivered to the occupant, was not enforced by the Land Office, 

 though this is distinctly what the Act aimed at. The officials 

 of the day seem to have been still unable to get rid of the 

 idea that the only way to make an occupant liable for land 

 revenue was to make him sign a lease first of all. 



In the words of the late Attorney-General of this Colony 

 (Mr. T. Braddell, c.m.g.), whose paper on the Malacca Land 

 History * has been of the greatest value to me in compiling 

 these notes, — " the cultivators, finding themselves better off 

 under the Penghulas, with whom ( when they had no written 

 titles registered in the office, and followed by regular demands 

 for the rent expressed in the title-deed) they were able to 

 evade payment of the tenths, still refused to take titles, and 

 continued to occupy old lands and to open up other lands with 

 impunity, owing to the weakness of the Land Department, 

 which was provided with so few, and such inefficient officers, 

 that there was no regular supervision, and when any person 

 was found encroaching on the Crown lands he was all ready 

 with the excuse that the land was prescriptive tenant land/'f 



Systematic work in Malacca under Act XXVI of 1861 

 ceased with the departure of Surveyor-General Quinton from 

 that Settlement, about 1867. 



A passing reference may here be made to Ordinance XI of 

 1876, intended to facilitate land-administration in Malacca, 

 which has remained more or less a dead-letter for want of an 

 efficient establishment. J 



Neither Act XXVI of 1861, nor the Ordinance last quoted, 

 touch on a subject which has attracted the attention of several 

 persons who have written upon Malacca Lands. It has been 

 stated above (p. 153 ) that owing to absence from the Settle- 

 ment, or incapacity to contract, on the part of the persons 

 entitled, the right of collecting the tenth was not redeemed 



* Jburn. Ind. Arch., N.S., I, 43. 



f Proceedings of the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements, 1882, 

 p. 68. 



