190 VOLUNTEER POLICE FOR PROVINCE WELLESLEY. 
them and 5 days given them to pay it; a warrant of distressis - 
then to issue, but no sale is to take place for other 5 days. The 
fees payable are all fixed by the Act, and there are none until 
the property has been actually seized as a distress. . Nothing 
would seem better devised to protect the ryots. But, in reality, 
each fresh shield turns into a weapon of exaction in the hands 
of an unscrupulous bill collector. Fees have been demanded 
and taken for the notice, and on the warrants of distress when 
no distress has been made. It may thus readily come about that 
a stupid Malay pays many times the actual amount of his bill. 
10. The Malays in the Province are exposed to suffer not only 
from the exactions of unscrupulous persons in or hanging about 
the Police, Land, Survey, Assessment, Engineer’s and Magistrates’ 
Departments, and the offices of the Registrar and Agents of the 
Court, but, to a very large extent, from those of the Kalis, who 
claim extensive and undefined powers and exercise a jurisdiction 
to which they have no title. The large and pernicious power of 
the Kalis, which poisons domestic life among the Malays, is 
based on a gross misconception. Originally in all Mahomedan 
countries, and to this day in several, including the native states 
in India, the Kali is the supreme judge—civil, criminal and eccle- 
siastical. He is required to administer justice in a public place. 
in a non-Mahomedan country, the Kalis of Mahomedan com- 
munities must derive their authority from the Government of the 
country. By the law of this Settlement, civil, criminal and eccle- 
siastical jurisdiction is vested exclusively in the Supreme Court, 
the Courts of Requests, the Magistrates of Police and the Justices 
of the Peace. No law gives authority to the local Government to 
appoint Kahs, recognizes the office, or defines its powers. From. 
an early period in the history of the Settlement, the local Govern- 
ment appears to have appointed persons under the title of Kalis, 
but without affecting to confer judicial authority on them or to 
point out their functions. Governor BirunpreLL declined to do 
more than recognize them as persons deriving certain undefined 
powers from the voluntary election and submission of associations 
of Mahomedans, declaring that he had no legal authority to ap- 
point them. It may be doubted whether other Governors intended 
to do more. Itis clear that none of them can have assumed to 
confer on the so-called Kalis any portion of the supreme judicial 
powers which attach to the office in Mahomedan countries. In 
practice the Kalis have usurped compulsory: jurisdiction over all 
the Mahomedans inhabiting the district in which they exercise it. 
Knowing it to be essential to the recognition of their authority, 
