"The chief enjoys his lands as long as he holds his station; the common people for a year only, when it falls to the share of another inhabitant of the _désa_, or village, that all may reap a benefit from it in turn. The ideas of the Javans concerning tenures, thus appear to be of three kinds: in the _Súnda_ division they consist in allotting to the villages of uncultivated, and to individual persons of certain portions in the cultivated or sáwah fields: in _Chéribon_, the sultans and chiefs, as well as the common people, assert pretensions to similar allotments: in the eastern districts, on the contrary, nobody pretends to the possession of land; every one is satisfied with the regulation laid down, but if a man's share is withheld, he is apt to emigrate. No person considers himself bound to servitude. The Javans, however, in the _Príang'en_ regencies, in _Chéribon_, and in the eastern districts, pretend to have an unquestionable right to all the fruit trees and _síri_ plants, at or near their _kámpung_ or _désa_."
"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."