755
Government should help him to turn out the people whom he would replace by new settlers from elsewhere. In this particular case to grant his request would have meant the expulsion from their homes of some 2000 persons and the re-population of all the villages in the Tung Chung valley.
A
10.
The instances given above sufficiently prove the hopelessness of attempting to make anything of a class so absolutely out of touch with things as they are as the tax lords of to-day. Their position was not very secure before the Convention, they have lost ground steadily ever since and any attempt to re-instate them would be bitterly resented and would, I think, be bound to fail. We cannot expropriate them and it remains to select the speediest and most painless method of extinction. We do not want to discover, as the Indian Government did in Bengal where they had finally settled the Zamindars on the land as owners, that we have gone on a wrong principle altogether and committed ourselves to an inconvenient system very difficult to get rid of.
I had for some time hoped that the tax lord realising the difficulty of his position under the new Régime would be able to compound with his tenants for a lump sum and so drop out by a natural process. This would have saved Government much trouble and would probably have been much better for the tax lord. Cases of composition have however been comparatively rare; either the tax lord has been too greedy or the tenants realising the weakness of his position have refused to offer him