747
The incoming family has nothing to gain by resistance and is usually quite willing to attorn to the self-styled lords of the soil and to covenant to pay an annual sum which is taken as ensuring the newcomers against the unwelcome attentions of the Tax Collector.
It is perhaps unnecessary to remark that such land as a rule did not really belong to the old residents, nor do they appear in many cases to have reported its occupation to the officials.
2.
The tax-lord status may be due to the detection by an influential family of frauds on the public revenue. The result is a species of blackmail levied by it on the offenders.
Thus, for instance, a band of Ha Ka fishermen coming by sea from another district and squatting on the coast, gradually find their numbers sufficient to begin the reclamation of the foreshore. They then plant padi and set up as a permanent agricultural community; they do not, however, report to the authorities or obtain any sort of title, and eventually a powerful clan like the Tangs discovers the reclamation, reports it as their own, and gets it entered on the register as Tang Land. It then approaches the newcomers and asks for rent.
The latter know they have no status and, being quite without influence, are glad to compound with the Tangs to be left in possession on payment of an annual share of the crops.
Several deputations of tenants have assured me that this is how