The Colas c27.36

c27.36

To estimate the incidence of so complex a system of taxes and dues, central and local, compulsory and optional, modified by partial and total remissions of various types would always be a difficult task; and in the actual state of our evidence, utterly impossible. The pressure of taxation in different localities must have varied with the number and rates of the local cesses added by local authorities to the tax system imposed by the central government which may be presumed to have been more or less uniform as between different provinces. Then, the wide-spread practice of assigning revenues to members of the official nobility, to feudatory chieftains, to temples and so on, introduced a new factor; not all of these agencies could have adopted equally rigorous methods of exacting their dues. An appeal to the centre against local excesses, and in the last resort, migration from the locality when it was possible were the only remedies open; and it is hard to believe that the utmost vigilance even of an efficient bureau-