J3Sf TEMMIXCKS GENERAL VIEW OF THE DfJTCtk 
mg that the principal tendency is to preserve intact the national in¬ 
stitutions of the Javanese. According to this mode the organization 
of the commune rarely requires European intervention. The interi¬ 
or administration of the village - (dew .), the subdivision of the land 
tax (padjeg) and of the personal services required in the public ser¬ 
vice, are exclusively confided to these municipal authorities. The Eu¬ 
ropean authority only takes cognizance in case of complaint or oppo¬ 
sition. The chief of the village is at the same time the receiver of the 
land tax ; lie pays his receipts into the hands of Javanese collectors 
who make their returns to the treasury of the province. The tribu¬ 
nals are, as far as they can be, Composed of Javanese, so that the 
principal interests of the native population are confided to themselves ; 
the European authority only interferes with a moderating and direct¬ 
ing power. 
This organization, as simple as efficacious, is in every point in har¬ 
mony with the manners and the institutions of the Javanese, which 
renders all recourse to foree unnecessary, and which insures the per¬ 
fect action of all the regulations of finance, police and justice. 
In the provinces of Batavia, Buitenzorg, and Krawang, where the 
public lands have been sold to private persons, the hierarchy above 
described has been obliged to be modified. The Javanese aristocracy 
and the municipal institutions have there disappeared under the irri- 
^sistible influence erf the interest of the great proprietors, the fiscal 
tendency of whom is not, like that of government, modified by politi¬ 
cal considerations of a high aim. The great proprietor, and there is 
found amongst them those who possess the lands of forty thousand 
.Javanese inhabitants, consider the municipal organization, such as the 
'government respects, an obstacle to the full use of the resources of his 
territorial possessions and of the profit which he can draw from an un¬ 
limited management. He admits no one intermediately between him 
and his cultivators.. Under such an administration, the villages have 
become simple collections of cultivators no longer enjoying the privi¬ 
leges of Javanese villages ; the village heads have become the hired 
servants of the landlord j the regents or chiefs of the district, where 
they have been retained, have descended to the rank of salaried over¬ 
seers stripped of all prestige. In fine the hierar chical chain which links 
the two extremities of the primitive Javanese society has disappear¬ 
ed, and a new state of things has succeeded to it, of which the good 
result is very problematical: in as much as the application on a very 
large scale of the system of selling the lands of the state tp Europeans 
