VOLUNTEER POLICE FOR PROVINCE WELLESLEY. LSS 
gular Police, having, or credited with having, the ear of the Euro- 
pean Authorities, and allowing thein, at the same time, to assume 
the position of chiefs of large districts. In a small village the 
inhabitants are intimately known to each other and often more or 
less connected by marriage. ‘They are usually on nearly the same 
social level, and almost every head of a family is a substantial 
yeoman who ploughs his own acres. A village Pénghtilu will sel- 
dom try, or be allowed, to dominate over a score or two of fellow- 
villagers as a district Pénghilu can over some thousands of the more 
ignorant Malays, whose faith in his pretensions is in inverse pro- 
portion to their personal familiarity with him. Of course there 1s 
a counterbalancing risk of the village Pénghtilu being sometimes 
found not sufficiently independent of the influence of his relatives 
and associates, if any of them should happen to be guilty of a crime, - 
but this is a minor risk to that of the wide reaching oppressions 
and denials of justice which attend the rule of a pleasant manner- 
ed District Pénghilu who happens to be greedy of money. I 
regard the Divisional Pénghtlus: in my own plan with some distrust, 
and would prefer to be able to dispense with them for the present: 
Tt will be seen that I have made some changes since the Rolls were 
sioned by breaking up afew of the original Divisions containing 
two to three hundred adults into smaller ones of abouta hundred. * 
5. In lately returning to me the printed form of appointment 
which I had prepared by your desire, you substituted six months 
from its date for the end of 1868 which I had named as the short- 
est term within which the system and the first nominees could be 
fairly tried, and you added a note to the effect that expected 
changes in the law and in the Police Force would probably render 
the aid of the volunteers unnecessary after that time. Beleving 
- that you acquiesced in the reasons which I then offered against so 
limited a term, the forms both for the certificates as constables and 
the appointments as Pénghilus and Katuas have been printed with 
the original term, but the Commissioner of Police, on returning 
the former signed by him, informed me, at the same time, that you 
still thought a period of six months would -be sufficient. No inti- 
mation of this kind was contained in your memo. of the 30th 
August, and I inferred from it that although you wished to proceed 
* The appointment of asecond or deputy head for each division and village 
primarily intended to meet the case of some of the volunteers of a Division 
being called away under one of the h2ads to act against gang robbers in 
another Division and the remainder being left under the other head in charge 
of thevillage, and also.as a provision against the sickness or absence of a 
Pénghfilu or Katua will further lessen the risk of any of the headmen try- 
ing to domineer. ; 
