e revenue, frequently commutes
the pecuniary capitation tax into an obligation to pay the amount in
produce or manufactures. A season comes when, owing to the failure
of the crops, the productions have risen to an excessive price,
and consequently infinitely above the ordinary rates affixed by law,
which are generally the lowest, and the natives, unable to keep their
bargains without considerable injury or endangering the subsistence
of their numerous families, implore the favor of the magistrate,
petitioning him to lay their calamitous situation before the superior
government, in order to have the payment of their tribute in kind
remitted, and offering to pay it in money. This is the precise moment
when, as his own profits depend on the misery of the province under
his command, he endeavors to misuse the accidental power with which he
is invested. Hence it happens that, instead of acting as a beneficent
mediator, and supporting the just solicitations of the natives, he at
first disregards their petition, and then all at once transforming
himself into a zealous collector, issues his notifications, sends
his satellites into the very fields to seize on the produce, and in a
most inexorable manner insists on collecting till necessity compels
him to suspend the measure. The principal object being attained,
that is, having now become master of the gleanings and scanty crops
of his bereft subjects, on a sudden his disposition changes, he is
moved to pity, and in the most pathetic language describes to the
government the ravages done to the plantations by the hurricanes,
and the utter impossibility of collecting in the tributes that year in
kind. On such a remonstrance he easily obtains permission to change the
standing order, and proceeding on to collect in some of the remaining
tributes in money, merely to save appearance, with perfect impunity
he puts the finishing stroke to the wicked act he had commenced, by
applying to himself all the produce his collectors had gathered in,
and places to the credit of the treasury the total amount of the
tributes, corresponding to his jurisdiction, in money.

Supposing, for example, that this has happened in the province of
Antique, where the payment of the capitation-tax generally takes place
in the unhusked rice, rated at two reals per cavan, and, through the
effects of a bad season, this article should rise as high as ten or
twelve reals. It is clear that the magistrate, by accounting