In the native mind the distinction is very clearly marked. There are, in fact, two distinct kinds of lala. The first, which I will call "personal lala" was the payment of rent in the form of tribute or service to certain powerful chiefs by the tenants settled upon their land. The second, which is best described as "communal lala" was taxation in the form of tribute or service on behalf of the commune.
LEVY BY LALA
It is necessary to draw a clear line of distinction between communal and personal lala, because while the former was universal throughout Fiji, the latter was limited to those confederations in which the chief had private rights in the land, and also because the two forms of lala originated in totally different institutions, which are by no means confounded in the native mind. By Europeans, both official and "anti-official," they seem always to have been confounded. To the critics of the Colonial Government the word lala is synonymous with "authorized oppression," or, as a recent writer chooses to call it, "legalized robbery"; to the framers of the Native Regulation No. 4. of 1877, the two were so confused that they are enumerated haphazard without any attempt at classification. In that regulation lala is limited to house-building, planting gardens, road-making, feeding strangers, cutting and building canoes, and turtle fishing.
By Regulation No. 7 of 1892, the communal aspect of lala was extended by giving any resolution of the Provincial or District Council that had received the written assent of the Governor the force of law. The exercise of lala was limited to the Roko Tui of the province, or the Mbuli of a district, and the penalty for disobedience to their lawful commands was a fine not exceeding 2s., or fourteen days' imprisonment in default, with a slightly increased penalty for a subsequent offence.
Now, of the limitation set forth in the Native Regulations, house-building, canoe-building, planting gardens and fishing turtle belong to personal lala, though they may occasionally be applied for communal purposes; while road-making, feeding strangers and complying with resolutions of the Native Council are certainly exercised for the good of the commune. And yet the Regulation, put into the hands of a number of official chiefs, by no means entitled them to personal privileges that were only due from tenants to their landlord.
Communal Lala
In its communal aspect lala is the axis of the primitive commonwealth. A native cannot by himself build his house, or dig his plantation, and he has no money with which to pay others for doing so. Accordingly, he applies to the chief, who, acting as the mouthpiece of the commune, summons all the able-bodied men to come to his assistance. In return he must provide food for them, and he must take his turn in helping each of them whenever his services are required. Both in the larger confederations and the miniature republics of the inland tribes, this kind of lala is applied by the chief of sept or chief of village with the consent of the council of elders.
Communal lala is also indispensable for the performance of all public works, such as road-making, bridge-building; the erection of public meeting-houses, such as the church or Mbure-ni-sa, and it was also legitimately applied to such quasi-communal services as the repair of the chief's canoe or
house, the planting of food and catching fish, for the entertainment of strangers coming to trade with the tribe. In this respect the lala corresponds closely with our system of local rates. When exercised by the supreme chief to levy contributions for the equipment of an army or an embassy, it may fitly be compared with public taxation. Without it, the condition of the natives' houses, already bad, would become worse; their crops, already diminished, would become insufficient for their support; their villages, often now neglected, would become unfit for habitation, and the purchase and maintenance of boats and vessels become impossible. Where it has been abolished, as in Tonga and the Tongan community settled in Fiji, the necessity for combination is so keenly felt that the people have evolved a substitute of their own. Men and women voluntarily form themselves into clubs called Kabani (company) under various fanciful names, which are called together under the direction of an elected president to build houses, plant gardens, and do other combined work for one another. Disobedience to the order of the president is visited by a money fine, or by expulsion. A person who belongs to no club can obtain no assistance from his fellows.
I am not sufficiently acquainted with the history of the corvée in Egypt or the rajakarya of Ceylon to say whether they, like the lala, were instituted to meet the necessity of combination among a primitive people. The rajakarya, we know, was abolished because the high chiefs much abused it, but they did not begin to do so until the law of custom had begun to decay, owing to intercourse with Europeans. We had the lala ourselves up to the thirteenth century, or the magnificent churches of the Norman and Gothic periods would never have been built by people who were content to live in thatched hovels: in Scotland it survived until much later.