FINANCE
mands shall include a margin sufficient to cover probable defalcations.
The chief source of revenue is a tax upon land. There is reason to think that this tax produces a smaller income now than it did in former days, but nothing can be confidently asserted on that point. Various official publications furnish information which would be more credible were it less contradictory; but no two of them agree, and the most explicit knowledge deducible from their figures is that during the first half of the nineteenth century the land tax yielded from twenty-nine to thirty-three million taels yearly, whereas now it yields only twenty-five millions. The diminution appears to be attributable to the Taeping and Mohammedan rebellions which, in the middle of the century, laid waste large tracts of land and thus reduced the tax-paying area. Probably these ravages no longer constitute a genuine excuse for exemption, so far as the actual tax-payers are concerned; but they do furnish a plausible pretext for the tax-collectors' failure to satisfy the demands of the central treasury. Peking has no means of accurately checking the provincial returns, and the local officials, whatever be the amount really coming in their. hands, take care to preserve in the mind of the Central Government unfavourable notions as to the people's taxable capacity. It may sound incredible, but it is nevertheless true, that even the rate at which the land is assessed for the purposes of this tax is
