"There is not," says Mr. Knops, another of the Dutch Commissioners, "a single Javan, who supposes that the soil is the property of the Regent, but they all seem to be sensible that it belongs to government, usually called the sovereign among them; considering the Regent as a subject like themselves, who holds his district and authority from the sovereign. His idea of property is modified by the three kinds of subjects to which it is applied: rice fields, gâgas, and fruit trees. A Javan has no rice fields he can call his own; those of which he had the use last year will be exchanged next year for others. They circulate (as in the regency of Semárang) from one person to another, and if any one were excluded, he would infallibly emigrate. It is different with the gágas, or lands where dry rice is cultivated: the cultivator who clears such lands from trees or brushwood, and reclaims them from a wilderness, considers himself as proprietor of the same, and expects to reap its fruits without diminution or deduction. With regard to fruit trees, the Javan cultivator claims those he has planted as his legal property, without any imposts: if a chief were to trespass against this right, the village would soon be deserted. The Javan, however, has not, in my opinion, any real idea of property even in his fruit trees, but usage passes with him for a law. All dispositions made by the chief, not contrary to custom or the ádat, are considered as legal, and likewise all that would contribute to ease the people, by lessening or reducing the capitation tax, the contingent, the feudal services, in short all the charges imposed upon them. A different system would be contrary to custom. Whatever favours the people is legal, whatever oppresses them is an infraction of the custom."
The tenure of land in the native provinces is the same generally as in the eastern districts. Thus stands the question with regard to the proprietary right to the soil in Java; but it is of more consequence in an agricultural point of view, and consequently more to my present purpose, to inquire how that right is generally exercised, than in whom it resides. Though the cultivator had no legal title to his lands, there might still be such a prevalent usage in favour of his perpetual occupancy, as would secure him in the enjoyment of his possession, and enable him to reap the fruits of his industry equally with the protection of his positive law.
But unfortunately for the prosperity of the people, this was far from being generally the case. The cultivator had little security for continued occupancy, but the power, on his part, of enduring unlimited oppression without removing from under it, or the interest of his immediate superior in retaining a useful slave; and as he could not expect to reap in safety the fruits of his industry, beyond the bare supply of his necessities, he carried that industry no farther than his necessities demanded. The sovereign knew little about the state of his tenantry or the conduct of his agents, and viewed the former only as instruments to create the resources, which the latter were employed to collect or administer. All his care was to procure as much from the produce of the soil and industry of his subjects as possible, and the complaints of the people, who suffered under the exactions of these chiefs, were intercepted on their way to the throne, and perhaps would have been disregarded had they reached it. The sovereign delegates his authority over a province of greater or less extent, to a high officer called Adipáti, Tumúng'gung, or Ang'ebái, who is himself paid by the rent of certain portions of land, and is responsible for the revenues of the districts over which he is appointed. He, in his turn, elects an officer, called Demáng or Mántridésa, to administer the subdivisions or districts of the province, to appoint the chiefs, and to collect the rents of several villages. The village chief, Búkul, Lúrah, or whatever designation he bears in the different parts of the island, thus appointed by his immediate superior, is placed in the administration of the village, required to collect the government share of the crop from the cultivator, and to account for it to the Demáng. In some provinces, the village elects its own chief, called Petíng'gi, who exercises similar functions with the Búkul appointed by government, as will be afterwards more particularly observed in the account of the native administration. As all the officers of government, of whatever rank, are paid their salaries in the produce of the land, the Búkuls and the Demángs become responsible for the share of the appropriations of villages to this account, as much as if it went into the government treasury. They are themselves paid by the reservation of a certain share of what they collect, and of course are always ready to please their employers, and to increase their own emoluments, by enforcing every practicable exaction. Every officer has unlimited power over those below him, and is himself subject to the capricious will of the sovereign or his minister. When the Regent makes any new or exorbitant demand upon those whom he immediately superintends, they must exact it with an increased degree of rigor over the chiefs of villages, who are thus, in their turn, forced to press upon the cultivator, with the accumulated weight of various gradations of despotism.
The Búkul, or the Petíng'gi is the immediate head of the village, and however much his authority is modified in particular districts, has always extensive powers. To the cultivators, he appears in the character of the real landholder, as they have no occasion to look beyond him to the superior, by whom he is controlled. He distributes the lands to the different cultivators on such shares, and in such conditions, as he pleases, or as custom warrants, assesses the rents they have to pay, allots them their village duties, measures the produce of their fields, and receives the government proportion. He sometimes himself cultivates a small portion of land, and in so far is regarded only as a tenant, like the rest of the villagers. He is accountable for all the collections he realizes, with the reservation of a fifth part for his trouble, which share must be viewed merely as the emoluments of office, and not as the rent of the landlord, or the profits of a farmer. He sometimes holds his situation immediately of the sovereign, or by the election of the cultivators; but more generally from the intermediate agent of government, whom I have mentioned above, to whom he is accountable for his receipts. By his superior he may be removed at pleasure; although the local knowledge and accumulated means, which are the consequence of the possession of office, generally insure its duration to his person for a considerable period, or as long as his superior himself retains his power.
The lands which he superintends and apportions range from six or seven to double that number of jungs, or from forty or fifty to an hundred acres English, and these are divided among the inhabitants of his village, generally varying from about two acres to half an acre each. That this minute division of land takes place, may be shewn from the surveys made under the British government in the eastern provinces, which nearly resemble those under the dominion of the native princes, and consequently may be taken as indicating the general state of the island. The inhabitants in the agricultural districts of the residency of Surabáya amount in all to 129,938: these compose 33,141 families, of which 32,618 belong to the class of cultivators, and 523 belonging to other professions pay only a ground rent for their houses. The area of the province contains about twelve hundred square miles, or 34,955 jungs, about 20,000 only of which are cultivated, so as to become of any consequence in the division of lands among the villages, the number of which amount to 2,770. By a calculation founded on these data, it would appear, that each village averages about twelve families, that a family falls considerably short of the average of four, and that a little more than seven jungs are allotted to a village. In Kedú the population amounts to 197,310, the number of villages to 3879, and the quantity of cultivated land to 19,052 jungs; so that in this province there are about five jungs attached to a village; and a village is inhabited by fifty-one souls, or about twelve or thirteen families. In Grésik, the number of villages amount to 1396, the quantity of cultivated land to 17,018 jungs, and the population to 115,442 souls. In Probalíng'o and Besúki, the numbers are—of inhabitants, 104,359; of villages, 827; of cultivated land, 13,432 jungs. In these two last the proportions vary, the number of jungs to a village in the former being more than twelve, and of inhabitants more than eighty, or about twenty families; and in the latter, the proportion is more than one hundred and twenty souls to a village possessed of more than sixteen jungs of land. It would be superfluous to state any more examples. In different parts of the island, there are variations within certain limits; but the quantity of land occupied by one cultivator seldom exceeds a báhu, (or the quarter of a jung), although the quantity occupied by a village, as will be seen by the above instances, varies from five to sixteen, according to the extent of the population.
The land allotted to each separate cultivator is managed by himself exclusively; and the practice of labouring in common, which is usual among the inhabitants of the same village on continental India, is here unknown. Every one, generally speaking, has his own field, his own plough, his own buffaloes or oxen; prepares his farm with his own hand, or the assistance of his family at seed-time, and reaps it by the same means at harvest. By the recent surveys, when every thing concerning the wealth and the resources of the country became the subject of inquiry, and means were employed to obtain the most accurate information, it was ascertained, that the number of buffaloes on that part of the island to which these surveys extended, was nearly in the proportion of one to a family, or a pair to two families; and that, including the yokes of oxen, which are to those of buffaloes as one to three, this proportion would be very much exceeded. In some provinces, more exclusively devoted to grain cultivation, the number of ploughs, and of course oxen or buffaloes, nearly amounts to one to a family. In other cases, where they fall much short of this proportion, a considerable part of the inhabitants must be engaged in labours unconnected with agriculture, or the cultivators must be engaged in rearing produce, where the assistance of those animals is not required. Thus in Japára and Jawána, where the number of inhabitants is 103,290, or about twenty-six thousand families, the number of ploughs amount to 20,730, and of buffaloes to 43,511; while in the Batavian Regencies, where the coffee culture employs a considerable part of the inhabitants, the number of families is about sixty thousand, and of ploughs only 17,366. The lands on Java are so minutely divided among the inhabitants of the villages, that each receives just as much as can maintain his family and employ his individual industry.
"A time there was, ere England's griefs began,
When ev'ry rood of ground maintain'd its man;
For him light labour spread her wholesome store,
Just gave what life requir'd, and gave no more:
His best companions, innocence and health;
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth."
But situated as the Javan peasantry are, there is but little inducement to invest capital in agriculture, and much labour must be unprofitably wasted: as property is insecure, there can be no desire of accumulation; as food is easily procured, there can be no necessity for vigorous labour. There exists, as a consequence of this state of nature and of the laws, few examples of great affluence or abject distress among the peasantry; no rich men, and no common beggars. Under the native governments and the Regents of the Dutch Company, there were no written leases or engagements binding for a term of years; nor could such contracts well be expected to be formed with an officer, who held his own place by so unstable a tenure as the will of a despot. The cultivator bargained with the Búkul or Petíng'gi for a season or for two crops, had his land measured off by the latter, and paid a stipulated portion of the produce either in money or in kind. When the crop had arrived at maturity, the cultivator, if his engagement was for so much of the produce in kind, cut down his own share, and left that of the landlord on the ground.
The proportion of the crop paid as rent varied with the kind of land, or produce, and the labour employed by the cultivator. In the sáwah lands, the share demanded by the landlord rarely exceeded one-half, and might fall as low as one-fourth, according as the quality of the soil was good or bad, or the labour employed in irrigating or otherwise preparing it was greater or less. In tégal lands, the rent paid varied from one-third to one-fifth of the produce; a diminution to be attributed to the uncertainty of the crop, and the necessity of employing more labour to realize an equal produce than on the other species of cultivation. In cases where there was a second crop of less value than the principal rice or maize crop, no additional demand was made upon the additional grain reaped by the farmer.