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deeper inroads into rural society than the undermining of the scholarly elite. The Chinese legal system had assumed (more: it had required and been adapted to ensuring) that people would try to look to the settlement of their own differences and stay away as much as possible from the yamen as a court of law. The system of political control was loose and a large measure of autonomy, by default of efficiency if not by design, was accorded to local communities. The early British Administration was thin on the ground by comparison with what has been seen in very recent years, but by Chinese standards it was intense, and it quickly established for itself a reputation for accessibility and quick justice that attracted to it many of the disputes which had earlier been settled, or had lain unsettled, at the local level. Moreover, by preventing some disputes from being literally fought out in traditional feuds (an institution which the Chinese government often thundered against but hardly ever took steps to suppress), the British increased their burden of dispensing justice. (The feud-fights which in recent times have been witnessed in the Yuen Long District—interestingly enough in the area of the fullest development of deep clan organisation—are but shadows of their former selves). It cannot be said that the new Administration succeeded at once in imposing law and order. There was banditry in the early years; some of the village watchtowers were put up after 1899. But, within the limits of poor communications, the new Administrators made a determined effort to eliminate violence from the countryside. Certainly, they brought to their work a conception of positive government quite alien to the ideas informing the system operated by their Chinese predecessors.
16. I cannot in this report document all my historical statements about China and the early New Territories, but in connexion with the previous paragraphs I should like to quote what seems to me to be an important passage in an administrative report written thirteen years after British rule began:
Reference should also be made to the waning influence of the village elders throughout the Territories. It was the intention of Sir Henry Blake that, 'existing village organisations should be maintained and utilised', and that the village tribunals should continue to decide local cases. But it soon became clear that the authority of the village elders was of no account, with the stronger authority of the Magistrates so easily accessible, and the idea of local tribunals had perforce to be dropped. Under