causes in Colombo and by chief courts under the Commandeurs, as well as land courts, in Jaffna and Galle. From these and from minor courts in the provinces appeals lay to the chief court in Colombo. The Dutch have left behind them in Ceylon some fine forts and other buildings, a system of canals in the Western province, the principles of Roman Dutch law and a Burgher population esteemed for character and education.

The Maritime Provinces of Ceylon, that had thus passed under the rule of the British, were attached to the Madras Presidency and administered by the East India Company through a military governor who had subordinate to him a Resident and a Superintendent of Revenue with European collectors and Madrassi minor officials. The indiscreet use of the latter unsympathetic and rapacious foreigners in the collection of revenue, and the attempt to substitute direct taxation of produce for the service tenure of lands, caused a violent revolt in 1797 which lasted over half a year. Various changes in the judicial and executive administration followed and on January 1, 1802, British possession of Ceylon having been confirmed by the Peace of Amiens, the settlements in the Island became a Crown Colony with a Council consisting of the Chief Justice, the Commander-in-Chief and the Chief Secretary, and with a new Civil Service. Collectors represented the Government in the different districts. In the same year service tenure, which had been re-established, was abolished, a tax in the form of a share of the produce being substituted for it. Personal service was, however, still enforced but paid for. The revenue at this time was otherwise mainly derived from the pearl fishery, the monopoly of cinnamon and arrack, duties on areca nuts, salt and tobacco, and a tax in lieu of the personal labour of Moors. While the civil administration was being developed, a faulty and discreditable policy adopted towards Sri Vikrama Rajasinha, the new Malabar King of Kandy, led to military operations in that country and in 1803 to disaster to a British force, to the invasion of the Maritime Provinces and to a threat to Colombo itself. The position was relieved towards the end of the year, and after some further reverses and successes, hostilities were suspended early in 1805, mainly owing to the exhaustion of the Kandyans. In the following years the Kandyan King was occupied by internal troubles in his kingdom and in the excesses which destroyed all sympathy between him and his chiefs. These were led to desert his cause when, in 1815, a British expedition advanced to the capital on account of some barbarity committed on British subjects and in order to put an end to the unsettled and precarious state of affairs due to the King's animosity. On March 2, 1815, a convention between the British Governor and the Kandyan chiefs deposed the King, excluded his dynasty from the throne, vested the dominion of the Kandyan Territory in the British Sovereign, while guaranteeing the continuance of the rights, privileges and powers of the chiefs" and to all classes of people the safety of their persons

and property, with their civil rights and immunities, according to the laws, institutions and customs established and in force among them."* The rites, ministers and places of worship of the Buddhist religion were to be maintained and protected. In spite of the terms of the treaty the chiefs found their influence diminished and there was dissatisfaction with the new Government. A spirit of insubordination first showed itself in September, 1817, a pretender to the throne was found, and before six months had elapsed only a few inconsiderable districts still maintained their allegiance."+ It was nearly two years before the rebellion was suppressed, and this was only accomplished after severe British losses had been incurred and the Kandyans had been treated with a severity difficult to justify. The suppression was followed by the creation of a President and a Board of Commissioners at Kandy and by measures limiting the application of compulsory labour to the construction of works of public utility, imposing a tithe on cultivated land in lieu of personal services, transferring the administration of justice from the native headmen to European civilians, reserving to the Governor the appointment of the headmen employed in collect ing revenue, and substituting official salaries for local assessment for the remuneration of the chiefs. The chiefs were naturally not satisfied with these changes, and some minor disturbances occurred in the years that followed. The danger to the Government of these in the future was, however, greatly reduced by the policy then adopted of traversing the country with a system of well-constructed roads. In the meantime the occupation of the Kandyan country and the development that had occurred in the Maritime Provinces were considered to require a revision of the Constitution of 1802, and after several years' investigation by a Commission of Enquiry, this was effected by an Order in Council proclaimed on September 28, 1833. Executive and Legislative Councils, the former of five senior officials and the latter of ten other official members, took the places of the old Council of Government in the Maritime and of the Board of Commissioners in the Kandyan areas, the Government of the two being amalgamated. The Island was divided into five provinces-Western, Northern, Eastern, Southern and Central, each province being put under a Government Agent. This amalgamation and the breaking up into chief headmen's divisions of the territories formerly under Kandyan Disawas or provincial governors were unacceptable to the Kandyan chiefs, and it was thought necessary by the Government to take measures against an anticipated insurrection arising from their dissatisfaction. Apart from this the decade that followed 1824 had been looked upon as an era of prosperity and happiness to the people. In 1833, in addition to the new constitution, there had been issued a charter of justice by which a Supreme Court

* Appendix V.

"The History of Ceylon," by William Knighton, p. 329.

with original criminal jurisdiction and with appellate jurisdiction both in civil and criminal cases was created, as well as District Courts for the trial of criminal and civil cases in the several districts of the Island. In 1844 Police Courts and in 1845 Courts of Requests were established to give relief to the District Courts by dealing respectively with minor criminal and civil cases. In 1834 the population was 1,167,000, or about 45 to the square mile; the revenue was £377,952, already in part collected from Customs, and expenditure about £334,000. Exports amounted in value to £145,000, and imports to £372,000. 153,510 tons of shipping entered and cleared. There were 1,105 schools with 13,891 scholars.

The period that followed was that of the rapid growth in the coffee planting industry and of the great influx of capital that supported it. It was one, however, in which the social condition of the people was adversely affected by increased consumption of spirits and immoderate indulgence in litigation. The Government monopoly of arrack militated against effective measures being taken to stop the former, while the system of small district courts, with the opportunities it gave to proctors to batten on the people's love of legal process, encouraged the latter. Both were helped by the amount of specie that became available in the interior. Against these evils the authority of the Government and of the chiefs exerted but small influence. That of the Government was adversely affected by less frequent contact of the officials with the people of the country, and that of the chiefs by the idea that had arisen in the official mind that this authority had been too great, and by the consequent policy that had discouraged and undermined it. The evils here referred to had most effect on the Kandyan provinces, where there had been less contact with foreign ways and less education, and where the native population found themselves at a disadvantage in relation to the more sophisticated Moormen and Low Country Sinhalese that were attracted to the highlands. The discontent among the Kandyans rapidly increased. It was not lessened by the formation in 1845 of the North-Western Province, which united the Kandyan Seven Korales with the Low Country districts of Chilaw and Puttalam. On July 6, 1848, a memorial was presented to the Government by a concourse of nearly 4,000 people in Kandy, asking for an amendment of certain laws, and, in the same year, there was an insurrection in the Matale and Kurunegala districts which, however, was suppressed without loss of life. A British parliamentary inquiry followed, the Governor was recalled, and certain changes were made with a view to improving the conditions of the Kandyans. A change, but indifferently appreciated by them, occurred in 1853, when the Government dis associated itself from the administration of Buddhist ecclesiastical affairs. The proclamation issued in 1818, after the suppression of the rebellion, had already reduced the obligation

contained in the 1815 Convention, an obligation difficult to justify to religious people in England. More popular among the Kandyans was an amendment of their marriage law by an Ordinance passed in 1859 in accordance with a memorial they themselves had presented. Alterations intended to be in their interest were made in the division of the Island into provinces. The North-Central was constituted in 1873 for the better administration of the northern part of the Kandyan territory. The province of Uva was created out of the Central Province in 1886, and in 1889 Sabaragamua, consisting partly of the old Kandyan disavany of that name and partly of the districts known as the Three Korales and the Four Korales, was separated from the Western Province to form the ninth province of the Colony. In the Colony generally there was during the period considerable material progress, even apart from the financial situation produced by the planting industry. Education and medical services to the people at large were being extended. There was much public works activity and improvement in communications, and later in irrigation. The success of tea-planting, from the 'nineties onwards, placed large funds at the disposal of the Government for these purposes.

Between 1834 and the end of the first decade of the twentieth

century there had, however, been no important constitutional changes. In 1837 two unofficial members had been added to the Legislative Council of ten officials and by 1845 the number had been increased to six, all nominated. An attempt was made in 1859, in connection with the then acute question of the military contribution of the Colony, by these members, in conjunction with representatives outside the Council of the different communities, to get a change in the constitution and some control by the Council over finance. It did not then succeed. In 1865, however, municipalities, on distinctly British lines and with majorities of elected members, were established at Colombo and Kandy and shortly afterwards at Galle. A few years later what was really a more important step in the direction of self-government, this time on the lines of ancient custom, was taken in the resuscitation by law of the system of village councils, the value of which in matters of cultivation and irrigation had been administratively recognised some time before. Village Committees and Village Tribunals were established by Ordinance No. 26 of 1871. The subsequent progress of local government is dealt with in Chapter VII of this Report. Reverting to the Central Government it should be stated that in 1889 an increase was made in the number of unofficials in the Legislative Council to eight, by the addition of one seat for the Kandyan Sinhalese and one for the Moormen (Arab descendants), the former six having been allotted to (i) the Low Country Sinhalese, (ii) the Tamils, (iii) the Burghers, (iv) the Planters, (v) the Merchants, and (vi) the general European community. The six leading officials, who consti

tuted with the Governor the Executive Council, and three other office-holders, brought the number of Legislative Councillors, who met under the presidency of the Governor, up to seventeen. The former practice of appointing these Councillors for an indefinite time was altered by limiting the normal term to five years.

No further changes were made in the constitution till 1910, though, through the intervening twenty years, there was a growing feeling, by no means confined in the Island to Ceylonese, that there should be some reform more especially in the Legislative Council, with regard to which suggestions were made for the abolition of the system of racial representation and the introduction of the elective principle in place of nomination. In 1909 memorials from a number of the inhabitants, praying for reforms in this direction, were forwarded to the Secretary of State, who decided that the Council might be enlarged and that the members representing the communities educated on European lines should be chosen by election. and not by nomination. By Royal Instructions, dated November 24, 1910, the constitution of the Council was remodelled to consist of eleven official and ten unofficial members. Of the latter, four were elected, representing respectively the European Urban, the European Rural, the Ceylonese and the Burgher communities; the remaining six unofficial members were still nominated by the Governor and included one Kandyan Sinhalese, one Muhammadan, two Low Country Sinhalese, and two Tamil members. Two ex-officio members, namely, the Principal Civil Medical Officer and the Government Agent of the Southern Province, had been added to the official element. The reconstituted Council met for the first time on January 16, 1912. A year later the Governor reported that it was a harmonious and efficient instrument for giving effect to the measures necessary for the good government and progress of Ceylon. At the time of the reconstitution, the population of Ceylon amounted to 4,110,367, or about 162 to the square mile; it included some 440,000 Indian coolies; the revenue was Rs.43,741,738 and expenditure Rs.36,467,708; 14,769,208 tons of shipping tons of shipping entered and cleared; imports amounted in value to Rs.164,405,788 and exports to Rs.182,028,968; there were 325,282 scholars in Government and aided schools, and 34,375 in unaided. These figures may be compared with the corresponding ones already given for 1834 when the first Legislative Council met.

Stress was laid on this development as a reason for further reform of the constitution in a memorial submitted by the Ceylon Reform League and the Ceylon National Association to the Secretary of State at the end of 1917. In this it was asked that the Legislative Council should have an unofficial majority mostly elected territorially. Two years later the