The report confirmed their exemption from military duty.
If the householder has a wife he can mortgage or convey his estate of homestead only with her consent, and if he dies leaving a widow or minor children the homestead exemption survives until the youngest child is twenty-one years of age, or until the death or marriage of the widow, provided the widow or a child continues to occupy it.
These included hereditary succession to tenements, exemption from sullage, the right to elect a reeve (praepositus) if the grantor thought one necessary and the right to marry without the lord's interference.
Exemption was obtained from these incidences of feudalism by large payments to the Crown in return for charters covenanting that Malta should for ever be administered under the royal exchequer without the intervention of intermediary feudal lords.
Exemption from the scope of these provisions may be granted by the governor-general and under such exemption a few Kaffirs are on the roll of electors.
