82 FRENCH LAND DECREE IN CAMBODIA. 
interested in maintaining the existing state of affairs.” 
“The perusal of the decrees which follow will shew 
better than any commentary how it has been decided to solve 
all these difficulties. The tax in kind has been abolished and 
the right of private property in land created. ‘The eight pro- 
vinces formed out of the fifty-seven old ones are placed several- 
iy under the superintendence of a French Resident; a civil 
list is assigned to the King, while the headmen of provinces 
and the judges receive salaries which justify the exaction 
from them of integrity and industry. Finally, at the Court 
of the King, France is represented by a Resident-General 
who, instead of being, as in the past, an almost powerless 
spectator of Cambodian decline, will have a firm hand over all 
branches of the administration.”’ 
The decrees here alluded to include one relating to the poli- 
tical and administrative organisation of Cambodia, one provi- 
ding for the judicial organisation, one abolishing slavery, one 
creating private property in laud, and one abolishing tax in 
kind levied on paddy. All of these are of interest to Hnglish- 
men, to whom no experiment in colonisation and in the govern- 
ment of subject races can be a matter of indifference. But 
only the two last, as bearing upon land-tenures and land- 
revenue, and therefore related to the subject of the paper 
already mentioned, are here translated. Whether the political 
condition of the country will admit of their peaceful intro- 
duction remains yet to be seen.* | 
W. BE. MAXWELL. 
* «The last mail from Indo-China brings also some particulars as to 
the situation in Cambodia. This country is far from being pacified; if it is 
true that our soldiers have been victorious in all engagements and that they 
have inflicted enormous losses on the insurgents, it is none the less true that 
the whole country is disorganised, that anarchy reigns there, and that secu- 
rity is wanting. What is most painful to us to notice is that these tidings 
only reach us through the post, that in the seven months during which the 
insurrection has now lasted the Governor of Cochin-China has given no 
details, except when they have been forced from him, and that it is only 
now that we are beginning to learn the names of the killed and wounded, 
Undoubtedly it was necessary not to give the movement more importance 
than it deserved, but it is, to say the least of it, strange that we should not 
have been informed, until a month after the event, that Pnom-Penh, the 
capital of Cambodia, had been attacked,”—Annales de ? Extréme  Orrent, 
July, 1885, p. 27. : 
