POSSESSIONS IN THE INDIAN ARCHIPELAGO * 135 
tion attaches the greatest, value. If the State interferes it is through 
the judicial power; but it would not wish to act except in cases of 
delict, consequently in a manner in some sort negative. Let us make 
it our wish that the government of the king will be led to avert for a 
long time from these flourishing countries a middling revenual spirit, 
and that the local authorities will never be induced to abandon the 
* wise line of conduct, followed until now in the financial organization, 
and adopted for our possessions in the Indian Archipelago. 
We now demand of the detractors of our colonial institutions, if 
they can advance, with any foundation, that such a system of land tax 
merits the name of vexatious ? Is it just to assert that the Java¬ 
nese is a slave; that he labours under the yoke of the corvee ; finally 
that he is allowed no part in the direction of the public affairs ? 
No, the land tax is not vexatious, but it would run the risk of be¬ 
coming so, if it had been judged proper to maintain the organization 
established during the English occupation, and according to the 
principles adopted by Sir Stamford Raffles, who originated the 
regulation of 11th February 1814; an ordinance, which, while lavish¬ 
ing merited eulogiums on the village organization, positively enjoined 
on the officers the introduction of land registration, and personal as¬ 
sessment. This system called ryot-war settlement in Hindoostan, 
there mercilessly exercises its disastrous effects; in Java it would 
have led infallibly to the subversion of the national institutions, in 
order to replace them by the system of levelling and pressure 
which is a merited reproach to the English in many parts of the con¬ 
tinent of India; in order to be convinced of this truth we have only 
to read the classical work of M. Barchan de Penhoen: Ulnde sous la 
domination anglaise. 
No, the Javanese is not a slave; he does not labour under the yoke 
of the corvee. On the contrary he disposes freely of his person. He 
is in no manner bound to the soil. He changes his residence at plea¬ 
sure ; but, when by being inscribed as a member of a village, whether 
by his birth or as the consequence of choice, he attaches himself to a 
tjatjah , he becomes subject to customs which regulate the village or 
the family. It he is possessed of fields of irrigated rice fsawahj , he 
is under an obligation to conform to the conditions under which these 
fields have been originally cleared or acquired under an onerous title. 
These conditions carry with them the obligation of taking part in the 
labours ordained by the government; lie is not, in conforming to them, 
more subjected to the yoke of the corvee, than is a subject of a con- 
