152 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



its reveime product was £5,116,000 ($25,580,000— the Egyptian 

 pound being about £1 0^. 6d.). In 1891 its product, after the 

 large reductions noted, was £5,098,000 ($25,490,000) ; a result con- 

 stituting a new and striking illustration of a little regarded 

 principle of taxation, that low or moderate taxes are as a rule 

 more prolific of revenue than comparatively high taxes. It is 

 also worthy of note that the land taxes of Egypt under the re- 

 duced rates are collected with greater facility and much less ex- 

 pense than under the old system. 



Viewed, as it should be, rather as a rent than as a tax, the 

 present Egyptian tax on land can hardly be regarded as oppress- 

 ive. The number of land proprietors in Egypt, according to the 

 revenue returns for 1893, was 1,025,000. In only 8,569 cases were 

 the fiscal officers obliged to seize crops in payment of the land 

 tax. In three out of four of such cases the mere seizure acted as 

 a sufficient threat to induce payment, and in only 2,158 cases was 

 it necessary actually to sell the defaulters' crops. As for the 

 seizure and forced sale of the land itself, there were only 1,865 

 cases of seizure and less than one in nine of actual sale — viz., 

 204. The number of expropriations for failure to pay the land 

 tax had therefore been reduced to the infinitesimal proportion of 

 one in five thousand. 



The total revenue receipts of the Egyptian treasury during 

 the year 1886, after the commission had begun to exert an influ- 

 ence on the fiscal affairs of the country, was £7,337,000. In 1890 

 they had increased to £8,040,000, and in 1891 to £8,366,000 ($41,- 

 830,000). To the extent of about one third, this augmentation 

 was due to heavier taxes on tobacco, and a few new taxes, as a 

 tax on house occupancy, from which all foreigners previous to 

 1887 were exempt. In general, the increase in revenue receipts 

 consequent upon new taxes imposed since 1885 has been about 

 £570,000 ; but the reductions of taxation have at the same time 

 been notably in excess of this amount. The public debt of Egypt, 

 which was nearly £99,000,000 in 1880, has been increased in recent 

 years to the extent of between two and three millions ; but this 

 increase has been mainly devoted to the redemption of pensions 

 and to reproductive public works. 



The general results that have been attained in Egypt under 

 the fiscal and administrative policy of the British commission 

 are, therefore, worthy at least of being characterized as extraor- 

 dinary. They can not, moreover, be properly exemplified by any 

 mere exhibit of figures. The benefit that has accrued to the 

 Egyptian people can not be properly measured by a reduction of 

 their taxes, but rather by the increase in their means of bearing 

 the burden that remains. " The greatest vice of all in their old 

 system of government was that, while the demands made upon 



