FRENGH LAND DECREE IN CAMBODIA. 
Tue different systems adopted in raising a revenue from 
land and providing for alienation, inheritance, &c. in certain 
Asiatic countries brought under European rule were briefly 
reviewed in this Journal in a paper which appeared in No. 13.* 
Descriptions of the native tenure and revenue system as they 
existed in Cambodia up to 1884 were there cited.t With the 
progress of events, it is now in our power to note the latest 
effort of European administrators in Asia to deal with the 
problem of harmonising native customs, as to this department 
of government, with civilised notions of freedom and justice. 
The Convention concluded between France and Cambodia 
last year provides for much more direct interference by the 
French in the administration of the latter country than existed 
under the Protectorate during the previous twenty years. The 
alleged necessity for this is thus stated by a writer in E.vcursions 
et econnaissances, VIII, 206 (November and December, 
1885) :— 
“Tt was necessary that France, the protecting power, 
should at last intervene. Without wishing to interfere un- 
reasonably in the administration of the country, it was necessary 
that the revenue realised by the land-tax, ceasing to be devo- 
ted to the augmentation of the personal wealth of the King 
or privileged mandarins, should be the source of productive 
expenditure ; it was necessary that the peasant should become 
owner of his land, and the slave master of his person; that 
justice should be regularly administered, and that, placed at 
first within the reach of all by the creation of minor courts, it 
should be secured by the existence of superior tribunals. It 
was necessary beyond everything that the execution of these 
reforms should not be evaded, as so many promises have been 
during the last twenty years, by the ill-will of mandarins 
* The Law and Customs of the Malays with reference to the Tenure of 
Land, Journal, Straits Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, No. 13, p. 75. 
+ p.p. 100 and 130. 
