310 
CEYLON. 
works, presented a petition to him, stating that he had been three 
years and a half in that situation for a very sHght offence. On 
consulting the register of the court, it was found that he had been 
condemned by the judges only for one year, but that the clerk 
had, by mistake, changed the period to ten. The clerk was 
dead. 
The Dutch records have furnished but very little information 
that could be relied on : they appear to have falsified all the 
accounts to deceive their masters at home ; a measure necessary to 
cover their peculations, without which they would have been un- 
able to subsist on their salaries. 
In consequence of their real or pretended ignorance of the laws 
and customs of their Cingalese subjects, they confounded, in the 
terms of their language, and in the application of their laws, 
persons who were obliged by their cast to perform humiliating and 
gratuitous services to others, with domestic slaves ; whereas, the 
very definition of the services, which they were bound to perform, 
clearly distinguished them from that unhappy race. By the capi- 
tulation, the slaves were left to their masters ; but Mr. North 
liberated many who were wrongfully enslaved ^ and none can now 
be imported or exported. A half-cast by a black slave is free; 
but actions lie for loss of the women's service, and several have 
been brought. 
The Dutch had imbibed a notion that an undivided share of an 
estate prevented emigration ; they therefore would not permit an 
estate to be divided among the children at the death of a parent, 
but compelled them to be tenants in common. The confusion this 
rule occasioned in the third, and even the second generation, may 
