Sessional_Paper_1901 — Page 578

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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 Stauntou's Ta Tsiug 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 manuer:-When the unre- gistered land amounts to one man, 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 laud-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 fuli.

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 bead 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 froin the Crown, and in view again of the extremely explicit provisions for registration and the severe penalties following ou 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 persous who have never paid Crown

Reut on them-who never reported their occupation such as it was-to the authori- ties 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 aumal sums to families who professed to be giving an account of these sums to the District Treasury but who is 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.

Suggested Explanation.

5. I hope to be able to show that these claims have their origin in one or the other of two sets of conditions prevalent in the New Territory.

The first of these was the disorder and unrest prevalent for generations past in the districts bor- dering on the Canton delta. Usually a clan or family had a registered deed for a small area on which they undoubtedly paid Crown Rent but it is quite certain that they collected large sums under the name of Land-tax of which they have never given any account, to the authorities.

The explanation usually offered by the people themselves is that these claus are the representa- tives of the first settlers in the locality.)

6. We know that abont 1665 A.D. the coast districts of S. E. Kuang Tung were laid waste for a distance of three leagues inland in order to deprive the Ming partisan "Koxinga" of any base of operations (Williams' Middle Kingdom, Vol. II, 180). After this leader had been conciliated and peace restored on the coast it would no doubt be some time before any large number of persons had settled in the depopulated districts. It is alleged that the Central Government made small grants of money to encourage immigration from other districts. The early settlers would receive as mucli land as one family could cultivate, on casy terms, One can imagine an immigrant family established in a valley under a deed say for 10 acres of land adopting an attitude of superiority towards later arrivals. No doubt the cultivation was shifting according to the season-swampy and low-lying land being taken up when the year was a dry one to be abandoned in favour of better drained fields when the rains were heavy.

7. In this way the clan would at one time or another have worked the greater part of the valley though the actual amount of land at any one time under cultivation might not exceed the legitimate ten acres. Newcomers wishing to settle would be told that the land belonged to the clan who were responsible for the tax. The strangers would have nothing to gain by objecting to pay. Any refusal would mean bad blood and possibly litigation with the result that the Government would get the tax and that the old settlers would have a lasting fend with the new arrivals.

Other immigrants would similarly find it to their interest to keep in with the clan and in time overy settler in the valley would be paying them a fixed yearly sum under the name of tax although none of it would ever reach the coffers of the Government.

8. This I take to have been the usual manner in which clan rights universally asserted. The country bordering on the Canton de lawless and the great diffenty of communicatious in a mour

X Magistrates willing to condone such frauds on the revenue. tion of their receipts as hash money. When the District absorbed by his underlings, when he was not it would for~

9. I estimate that four-fifths of the land tax in the of an intermediary before reaching the Government. the only cause of this. The second cause was undonl, tion fees charged in the District Land Office.

over land came to be so hways been turbulent and doubt made the ppor- [ld be

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