_Sharaki_ lands, that is to say, land which, owing to a low Nile, has
not been irrigated. It is not, however, necessary to dwell on the
details of this subject. It will be sufficient to draw attention to the
different points of view from which the Eastern and the Western approach
the subject of fiscal administration. The latter urges with unanswerable
logic that financial equilibrium must be maintained, and that he cannot
frame a trustworthy Budget unless he knows the amount he may count on
receiving from direct taxes, especially from the land-tax. The Eastern
replies that he knows nothing of either financial equilibrium or of
budgets, that it has, indeed, from time immemorial been the custom to
leave him nought but a bare pittance when he had money, but to refrain
from any endeavours to extort money from him when he had none.

Another instance drawn, not from the practices of fiscal administration,
but from legislation on a cognate subject, may be cited.

Directly Western civilisation comes in contact with a backward Oriental
Society, the relations between debtor and creditor are entirely changed.
A social revolution is effected. The Western applies his code with stern
and ruthless logic. The child-like Eastern, on the other hand, cannot be
made to understand that his house should be sold over his head because
he affixed his seal to a document, which, very probably, he had never
read, or, at all events, had never fully understood, and which was
presented to him by a man at one time apparently animated with
benevolent intentions, inasmuch as he wished to lend him money, but who
subsequently showed his malevolence by asking to be repaid his loan with
interest at an exorbitant rate.

Here, again, many palliatives have been suggested and some have been
applied, but many of them sin against the economic law, which provides