nd
Jungaria for more than fifty years. Of course, there was the fiscal side
of these schemes of public utility. Roads could not be opened up and
maintained in order, canals could not be dug, the state could not
administer justice, promote trade, and make itself respected abroad,
without an assured revenue, and this revenue, after the first ten years,
was very productive.

The principal taxes were the tithe on the produce of the land, called
"_ushr_" and the _zakat_ (fortieth), on merchandise and cattle. Then, in
the cities, there was a house tax, which was essentially, like our own
income tax, a war tax, fluctuating in accordance with the military
necessities, caused by foreign or civil war. From the mines, too, the
state derived a large annual sum, which was generally devoted to some
object of public utility. There was also the tribute money from the
Kirghiz nomads, whose flocks and horses were numbered and taxed at a low
rate, in return for which they were taken under the protection of China.
In addition to these great taxes there were several smaller ones, such
as a fee on fuel sold in the market, and another levy on milch-kine kept
in cities. A writer on Kashgar has said that these "proved a ready means
of oppression, and a prolific source of that discontent which left the
rulers without a single helping hand, or sympathising heart, in the hour
of their distress and destruction." But this assumption of cause and
effect is scarcely just.

Of course, all taxes can be made a ready means of oppression by the
tax-gatherer, who, in this case, was a Mussulman and fellow-countryman.
But taxes are absolutely necessary to all good government, and when we
consider what China did with her revenue, with what public spirit her
representatives laid it out in plans for the advantage of the state, can
we pronounce an opinion that she imposed unfair burdens on the
subjected race? Moreover, no one denies the prosperity general
throughout Kashgar in those days, a period looked back to with regret by
the inhabitants during the most favoured years of Yakoob Beg's rule. It
is not in accordance with facts, then, to imply that the Chinese ground
Kashgar under them by severe taxation, and whatever petty tyranny there
was, was carried on not by the Khitay Ambans, but by the Mahomedan
Wangs.

In the hour of distress and destruction the people, indeed, proved
traitorous to their best friends, or, more generally, apathetic; leaving
to the en