1887-1903
327
17
COLONIAL REPORTS-MISCELLANEOUS.
The sense of these two paragraphs seems quite clear. A person wishing to take up Crown land might do so on the condition of-
(1.) Reporting to the proper authority.
(2.) Getting a deed issued to evidence his possession. This evidently holds good for all land, but in the case of odd patches amounting to less than 10 mau the cultivator need not report until he has already reclaimed the land.
3. No Government professing to derive revenue from the soil can hope to collect that revenue effectively unless the regulations as to registration and enrolment of title are complied with; and that unauthorized occupation was regarded with great disfavour in China is sufficiently shown by the following quotation from Staunton's Ta Tsing Leu Lee, Book II, Section 90:-
"Whoever fraudulently evades the payment of the land-tax, by suppressing or omitting the register of his land in the public books, shall be punishable in proportion to the amount of the chargeable land omitted, in the following manner:-When the unregistered land amounts to one mau, and does not exceed five mau, with 40 blows; and for every additional number of five mau so suppressed, the punishment shall be increased one degree, until it arrives at the limit of 100 blows. The unregistered lands shall be forfeited to the State, and the arrears of the land tax (computed according to the period during which it had been unpaid, the extent of the land, and the rate at which it would have been chargeable), shall be at the same time discharged in full.
When the land is entered in the register, but falsely represented, as unproductive when productive, lightly chargeable when heavily chargeable; or if the land is nominally made over in trust to another person, in order to exempt the real proprietor from personal service, the punishment, whether corporal or arising out of the payment of the arrears of the tax, shall be inflicted in the manner and according to the scale above stated; but instead of a forfeiture of the lands, the register of them shall simply be corrected, and the assessment and personal service of the real proprietor be established agreeably thereto. If the head inhabitant of the district is privy to any breach of the law, but does not take cognizance of it, he shall be equally punishable with the original transgressors."
Anomalies in the New Territory.
4. Having regard to the opinion of Williams that no allodial property was recognized but that all land was held directly from the Crown, and in view again of the extremely explicit provisions for registration and the severe penalties following on disobedience, how are we to explain the curious state of things prevalent in the New Territory? It is impossible not to be convinced after even a most superficial examination of the claims brought in that-
(1.) Many large tracts of land are now claimed by persons who have never paid Crown Rent on them-who never reported their occupation such as it was-to the authorities and whose claims have never been in any way recognized by the Chinese Government.
(2.) Very many persons have been paying under the name of tax annual sums to families who professed to be giving an account of these sums to the District Treasury but who, as a matter of fact, very often did nothing of the kind and who in many cases had no real title to more than a very small fraction of the territory over which they collected this rent.
10057
B
1887-1903
327
17
COLONIAL REPORTS-MISCELLANEOUS.
The sense of these two paragraphs seems quite clear. A person wishing to take up Crown land might do so on the condition of-
(1.) Reporting to the proper authority.
(2.) Getting a deed issued to evidence his possession. This evidently holds good for all land, but in the case of odd patches amount- ing to less than 10 mau the cultivator need not report until he has already reclaimed the land.
3. No Government professing to derive revenue from the soil can hope to collect that revenue effectively unless the regulations as to registration and enrolment of title are complied with; and that unauthorized occupa- tion was regarded with great disfavour in China is sufficiently shown by the following quotation from Staunton's Ta Tsing Leu Lee, Book II, Section 90:-
"Whoever fraudulently evades the payment of the land-tax, by suppressing or omitting the register of his land in the public books, shall be punishable in proportion to the amount of the chargeable land omitted, in the following manner:-When the unregistered land amounts to one mau, and does not exceed five mau, with 40 blows; and for every additional number of five mau so suppressed, the punishment shall be increased one degree, until it arrives at the limit of 100 blows. The un- registered lands shall be forfeited to the State, and the arrears of the land tax (computed according to the period during which it had been unpaid, the extent of the land, and the rate at which it would have been chargeable), shall be at the same time dis- charged in full.
When the land is entered in the register, but falsely represented, as unproductive when productive, lightly chargeable when heavily chargeable; or if the land is nominally made over in trust to another person, in order to exempt the real proprietor' from personal service, the punishment, whether corporal or arising out of the payment of the arrears of the tax, shall be inflicted in the manner and according to the scale above stated; but instead of a forfeiture of the lands, the register of them shall simply be corrected, and the assessment and personal service of the real proprietor be established agreeably thereto. If the head inhabitant of the district is privy to any breach of the law, but does not take cognizance of it, he shall be equally punishable with the original transgressors."
Anomalies in the New Territory.
4. Having regard to the opinion of Williams that no allodial property was recognized but that all land was held directly from the Crown, and in view again of the extremely explicit provisions for registration and the severe penalties following on disobedience, how are we to explain the curious state of things prevalent in the New Territory? It is impossible not to be convinced after eren a most superficial examination of the claims brought in that--
(1.) Many large tracts of land are now claimed by persons who have never paid Crown Rent on them-who never reported their occupation such as it was-to the authorities and whose claims have never been in any way recognized by the Chinese Government.
(2.) Very many persons have been paying under the name of tax annual sums to families who professed to be giving an account of these sums to the District Treasury but who, as a matter of fact, very often did nothing of the kind and who in many cases had no real title to more than a very small fraction of the territory over which they collected this rent.
10057
B
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