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MAURICE FREEDMAN
ing, for they are now cut off from the intensive study of a period in which British administration and Chinese law and society were mutually adjusting themselves). Many disputes must have been dealt with in the communities within which they arose, and the remoter villages may in fact have had little to do with the Administration directly; but over a large area of the New Territories it came to be accepted that the administrator was a sure and final arbiter of major differences. In his report on the Northern District for 1913 Ross wrote: 'Some years ago by tacit consent parties did not bring forward cases relating to the "tso" and the settlement of ancestral property. Now a large number of cases heard are applications for a declaration as to the parties entitled to share in the property of a common ancestor...
39. The powerful role of the pre-war administrator in social control has left a legacy which weakens the effectiveness of modern attempts to divert the settlement of disputes to other channels. The Rural Committees are now expected to take over a large share of the burden of mediation. In fact, the tendency still seems to be that differences which cannot be composed within a village (where the Village Representative and the other elders are often incapable of exerting the authority to settle the matter) pass first to the District Officer whence they may be referred to the Rural Committee, sometimes returning to the District Officer when the Rural Committee finds itself unable to produce a settlement. And in some cases a settlement is never reached, because as matters have stood in the last couple of years, the District Officers no longer exercise many of the judicial functions with which they were formerly endowed. Land and small debts cases now fall within the competence of the new District Court.
40. Two questions are raised about the operation of the new court. First, is it so court-like in comparison with the informality of the old system practised by administrators that it attracts to itself the unfavourable attitudes which Chinese traditionally displayed towards the yamen? As well enter the jaws of hell as pass through the gates of the yamen.
Second, are the subtleties of Chinese custom likely to be taken account of in the new court as they were in the days when justice was administered by officers trained to study and respect these niceties? It is of course too soon to say anything definite about the first question; the reactions of people to the court will need to be watched over a period of years; but as
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