PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION. 153 



the people were constantly increasing, their capacity to meet those 

 demands were being steadily impaired. The Government took 

 from them twice as much as it was entitled to take, and did not 

 give them in return what it was bound to give ; while the coffers 

 of the state and the pockets of its servants were being filled by 

 the plunderer of the peasantry. The soil was deteriorating from 

 the neglect of those great public works upon which its fertility 

 depended." 



All this abuse has now been entirely abrogated. For the first 

 time since the days of the Roman administration, order and pros- 

 perity reign in the valley of the Nile. 



At no previous period since Egypt began to have a name has 

 the fellah lived under a government so careful to protect his rights. 

 For the first time he is allowed to control the fruits of his labor. 

 To-day, under British domination, every Egyptian peasant knows 

 exactly the amount of taxes he has to pay, and when he has to 

 pay them ; and that when he has once paid the legal amount, no 

 official, big or small, has the power to extort from him one single 

 piaster beyond it.* He knows, too, that he can not at any moment 

 be seized and dragged off as formerly, perhaps to some different 

 part of the country, to work under constant dread of the whip, at 

 any task suggested by the caprice of the Khedive or of some 

 powerful pasha. Under such circumstances Egypt has never, 

 certainly not within a recent period, enjoyed so large a measure 

 of prosperity. Notwithstanding the recent universal decline in 

 price of agricultural staples, the Egyptian products and exports 

 of cotton, sugar, tobacco, wheat, etc., have rapidly increased, and 

 at present are much greater than at any former period. The an- 

 nual increase in the great staple product of Egyptian agriculture 

 — cotton — from the average of 1884-'89 to that of 1893-'94 was 

 nearly a hundred per cent, whereby the cultivator was not only 

 able to pay his taxes more easily, but has more money left for 

 his own needs. 



When England first occupied the country the four-per-cent 

 Egyptian debt securities were quoted at about 50, and not long 

 before had been quoted as low as 27. To-day their quotation is 

 over 100, with a reduction of their originally stipulated interest. 



One of the most recent results of the British occupation of 



* " The poorest peasant in the country is now annually furnished with a tax-paper, wird, 

 as it is called, which shows him exactly what he has to pay to the Government, and at 

 what seasons the installments are due. The dates of these installments, moreover, which 

 vary in different provinces, have been arranged so as to correspond as nearly as possible 

 with the seasons when the cultivator realizes his produce, and is therefore in the best posi- 

 tion to discharge hia debt to the state. The necessity no longer exists of resorting to 

 bribery as a protection against the extortion of sums not due on the part of the tax- 

 gatherer." 



