expeditious than the vultures in devouring their prey. The favourite kind of stake for this purpose was the "stump of hell," the irregular short stem of the undeveloped trees in a mangrove swamp, looking like pinnacles or knobs rising out of the confused net-work of exposed roots.

The

But imprisonment is often worse than death. The prisons have never been cleaned out since they were made, some of them noisome underground cells, some flimsy wooden or bamboo structures open all round. prisoners sit with their feet in the stocks perpetually, and the long bamboo which unites them is occasionally triced up so far that the poor wretches only touch the ground with their shoulders. A favourite time for thus inverting them is at night. But a man who has not had enough money to satisfy the judge may often manage satisfactorily to square the gaoler. If he effects that he is on the whole comfortable; he is allowed to go away in the morning, have his meals at home, and go back and deliver himself into custody at night again. But if he has no money, or no friends to pay it for him, he had better die at once, indeed he certainly will before long, for the only food to be had in prison is that supplied by relatives of the convicts. If no friend brings it, the gaoler certainly will not supply any. It is better to be proclaimed," to suffer moung chaw, than to go to gaol. This is a punishment almost confined to the capital, and greatly resembling the old English naval practice of flogging an offender "round the fleet." The criminal is taken to each gate of the city, to the corners of all the chief streets, and to sundry other frequented places. At each of these points his crime and sentence are read out and he is flogged. None but the strong-constitutioned can stand it, but those who survive are free men.

Notwithstanding the severity of the treatment in the gaols, the laws are really very mildly administered, and there are very few whose relations cannot muster up enough to secure them immunity from torture. Capital sentences are on the whole rare, except when political considerations come in. Then there is no mercy.

CHAPTER XXVII.

REVENUE SYSTEM.

THE first people, when they took counsel together and appointed a ruler to repress crime and manage the affairs of the country, agreed that each man should pay a tenth of his thalay rice, and this tithe system remained in force in Burma till the last reign, not merely for supplying the royal coffers, but also for paying all public servants. King Mindohn abolished the tithe system as far as the payment of local officials was concerned, and arranged to give them fixed salaries; but even in his time this law was somewhat of a dead letter, and under the present régime, if governors and secretaries did not resort to old methods they would get nothing. Unfortunately for the people, the ancient system was by far the most profitable, and the collectors are not at all likely to agitate for their payment at stated times from the treasury. The actual exactions of these worthies far exceed what appears in their black parabeik note-books, and are in fact only limited by the possessions of their victims, and occasionally by a slight fear of consequences, if a desperate man should complain to some powerful minister in Mandalay. Then the delinquent might be turned out to make way for a friend of the woon-gyee's. But, alas for the people,

the change, if not exactly from king Log to king Stork, is only too likely to be from a well-filled stork to a lean and hungry one.

The division of the country for the collection of revenue is identical with that for administrative purposes, and the several duties are carried out by the same persons with the same assistants. The one man is civil administrator, judge, colonel of the local militia, and revenue collector for his locality, whether province, circle, or simple village. The fixed revenue demanded by the myo-sah, be he prince of the blood royal, minister, maid of honour, royal spittoon-bearer, or white elephant, is remitted to Mandalay by the resident lord-lieutenant of the province, together with a certain overplus for the "province-eater's " secretary, clerk, and treasurer. The whole amounts to from sixty to eighty per cent. of the money nominally raised from the people, and the money kept back is supposed to pay for the services of the myo-woon and all his subordinates. But they would be very much less great people if they got no more than this. It is impossible to say how much money is collected in any one district, or even in any single town. The steatite pencil records are easily effaced and altered, even if they were ever accurate, and no one knows anything of the details of taxation. A certain circle of villages is called upon to produce a certain amount of revenue to go to the capital, and as long as this is regularly paid no questions are asked. The governor divides out amongst the circles the quota each is expected to pay, and the taik-thoo-gyee in his turn makes the allotment for the villages under his control; finally, the village headman gives his instructions to the tithing-men, and they extort all they can from the householders under their control. The system is admirably planned, but the working of it is execrable in

its cruelty. Every Burman is the king's slave, and cannot leave the district, far less the country, without the royal permission, granted through the local authorities. The men who come down to reap British Burma paddy-fields in November and December have all of them to leave hostages behind, their wives and families or some near relation, to guarantee that they will return when the season is over, to pay their ngway-daw.

This ngway-daw, or "royal silver," is the main source of the revenue. It is a house-tax, or family-tax, not a capitation-tax, though its incidence is generally so arranged that it practically comes to be a poll assessment, or at any rate a kind of rude property-tax. The amount of land cultivated, which naturally varies according to the number of hands available for the purpose, serves as a guide, though it seems to be a very misleading one, for the amount demanded in successive years and in adjoining districts differs in the most capricious way. But the t'sè-ehng-goungs never fail to scent out where money is, and to get the lion's share of it; for where the tax-collector may also be the judge, there is small room for hesitation and attempts to shirk payment. The myo-sah has a very summary way of deciding the matter. He announces to the governor that there are so many` houses in the province, and that he is to collect three, or five, or seven rupees a head from them. If the estimate of the number of houses is too high, the myo-woon shifts the trouble on to his subordinates; if it is too low-but there is no use considering that case, for I never heard of an instance when the "town-eater" under-estimated what was due to him.

Next in importance are the imposts on produce. These are estimated in a still more arbitrary way. A pè, a land measure not very much different from an English acre, is