Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/67

 PUBLIC REVENUE. 55 the people themselves, who, frotn the simplicity of their manners, to give it no higher name, are, when placed in authority, fortunately incapable of practising those refined arts of extortion, chicane, and knavery, with which we are so familiar in the people of Hindustan. The fiscal agents either want the skill or have not the inclination to med- dle in the details of the revenue. The village associations are, therefore, left to manage it them- selves ; and the share of the government is paid by them with good faith, while all classes observe towards each other a great share of forbearance. The high price of labour, and the extraordinary demand for cultivators, is strikingly exemplified in the wages paid to shearers, which, in every part of Java, is no less than one-sixth of the gross produce, a rate continued even in the most populous pro- vinces of the island, where the competition for la- bour is necessarily smaller, such among these peo- ple is the influence of the empire of custom. The whole of this subject will be better under- stood by presenting at once a short sketch of the di- vision of the crop and of the internal organization of the vilhige in regard to it, selecting for an example the institutions of the Javanese, as not only those with which I am myself most familiar, but those, too, which arc acknowledged in matters of this na- ture to be most systematically defined. In Java, the lands arc separately tilled by each cultivator, and not in connnon, as is frequently the case in the