of an Oriental State has been the ability of the taxpayers to satisfy
them.[20] The only defence of the taxpayers has lain in the concealment
of their incomes at the risk of being tortured till they divulged their
amount.

Nevertheless, even under such a system as this, the wind is tempered to
the shorn lamb by the fact that Oriental rulers recognise that they
cannot get money from a man who possesses none. If, from drought or
other causes, the cultivator raises no crop, he is not required to pay
any land-tax. The idea of expropriation for the non-payment of taxes is
purely Western and modern. Under Roman law, it was the rule in contracts
for rent that a tenant was not bound to pay if any _vis major_ prevented
him from reaping.

The European system is very different. A far less heavy demand is made
on the cultivator, but he is, at all events in principle and sometimes
in practice, called upon to meet it in good and bad years alike. He is
expected to save in years of plenty in order to make good the deficit in
lean years. If he is unable to pay, he is liable to be expropriated, and
he often is expropriated. This plan is just, logical, and very Western.
It may be questioned whether Oriental cultivators do not sometimes
rather prefer the oppression and elasticity of the Eastern to the
justice and rigidity of the Western system.

Various palliatives have been adopted in India with a view to giving
some elasticity to the working of the Land Revenue system. In Egypt,
where the administration is much less Anglicised than in India, and
where, for various reasons, the treatment of this subject presents
relatively fewer difficulties, it is the practice now, as was the case
under purely native rule, to remit the taxes on what is known as