in that they mistook the notions of the Affghans. And, in order to
understand them, it may be well to review the possible aspect and
modifications under which the idea of a tax may fall.

First, there is the lawful and peaceful revenue raised in free Christian
states under their noble civilization, which is paid even thankfully, as
the purchase money for inappreciable social benefits. Next, and in the
very opposite extreme, is the ruffian levy once raised upon central
India by the ferocious Pindarree, who asked for it with the insolence of
a robber, and wrenched it from the recusant with the atrocities of a
devil. Here there was no pretence of equivalent given or promised: and
this was so exquisite an outrage, a curse so withering, that in 1817 we
were obliged to exterminate the foul horde (a cross between the Decoit
and the Thug) root and branch. Now between these two poles lie two
different forms of mitigated spoliation. One was the Mahratta _chout_,
the other the _black mail_ of the Scottish cateran. Neither of these
gave any strict or absolute equivalent; but with a rude sense of
justice, both, on different principles, endeavoured to indemnify the
sufferer. The Mahratta generally, by a treaty with the local government,
induced them to allow for the _chout_ as twenty-five per cent advanced
out of their own claim for taxes. And the cateran, if he did not go upon
a convention with the government, gave the compounder a protection from
other caterans, a discharge from irregular demands, and a means of
recovering what might be stolen by knaves. The European case of taxation
may be viewed as the fairest case of buying and selling; the Pindarree,
as the vilest of robberies; and the two last as cases of compromise, (or
what in Roman law was called _transactio_,)--as a toll or fine in fact,
though too arbitrarily assessed.

Such are the categories of taxation; and, at the very best, all Affghans