AGRARIAN TAXES IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA 77 



the feeding of the armies in the field. When the acute period of hostihties 

 against the populations of the occupied territories ceased, the Mussulman 

 government thought it well to change this system of lev-^-ing the tithe. 

 They had recourse to the method of granting to private persons, in return 

 for a fixed sum of mone3^ the right of collecting this tax from those liable 

 to it. Thus collectors for the Treasury- were instituted who assured to 

 the State the payment of the tax ; and the collectorships were let out at 

 public auction, a sum proportionate to the tax's value being paid as a 

 guarantee. 



Ordinarily the value of the tithe incident on everv^ single village w^as 

 first established, being calculated on the basis of the harvests obtained in 

 preceding years and the harvest anticipated in the current \ ear. When 

 the value of the tithe had thus been fixed the price of a lease thereof was 

 established, that is the price which the grantee of the right to collect the 

 tithe in the name of the State ought to pay to the Treasury-, and then the 

 public auction was held. 



The cautionary sum which the grantee had to pay in guarantee of his 

 engagements coiild be in the form either of cash or of State bonds. The 

 actual pa3'ment had to be made in three, four or six instalments. 



As regards the mode of levying the tax, the individuals liable to it 

 might have recourse* to one ot the following methods : 



(?) That of the so-called " proof by single sheaves ". By this system 

 the cultivator of a given area of land subject to the tax cut down ears of 

 grain to form a certain number of sheaves. From these a few were chosen 

 and were threshed, and thus the average quantity of grain produced was 

 ascertained. This datum and the number of the sheaves of grain gave a 

 basis for the assessment of the tithe payable by each person liable to it. 



b) The second system consisted in taking into account on the one hand 

 the value of the various tithes levied in the preceding year on a given area, 

 and on the other the anticipated value of the harv^est in the current year. 



c) When the third S3^stem was adopted a person liable to the tax 

 v/as obliged to declare, as soon as his corn was threshed, the quantit}' of 

 grain he had obtained from the land he had cultivated. After this decla- 

 ration had been made -the collector of the tax investigated its accuracy on 

 the spot and then fixed the amount of the tax. 



This last system was certainly the most jvist ; for it came nearest to ren- 

 dering possible the exact determination of the quantity of the products of 

 a holding subjectto the tithe-tax, and therefore of the just amount of this 

 tax incident to such holding. It had however a double drawback, that of 

 necessitating a minute and not easy inspection on the part of the collector, 

 and that of depriving the cultivator of all liberty of action during the time 

 of the harvest. The other two systems were both of them more advantageous 

 to the person liable to taxation, in that they left him more liberty of action 

 at harvest-time, but they had from the State's point of view the special 

 drawback of allowing only of an approximate and anticipatory computation 



(I) I franc = 9 3^5 d. at par. 



