168 
JOURNAL OF AN EMBASSY 
required, I was told, was too ludicrous to bear 
repetition to an Englishman. The amount for 
the other townships may be inferred from the 
above, and was probably about 1 £7,000 ticals. On 
extraordinary occasions there was no limit to ex¬ 
actions of both men and money. It does not ap¬ 
pear that assessments could have been properly 
ordered for other than public purposes, or under 
instructions from Court; and although the amount 
might not always find its way into the treasury of 
the state, it ought to have been expended in the 
service of the state. The principle of this tax ap¬ 
pears to be that of a property-tax. A town or 
village having to pay a certain sum, the heads of 
wards, or principal people of the village, were 
called together by the Myo-thu-gyi or Thu-gyi, 
and informed of their quota, in men or money, to 
be furnished ; and they assessed the householders 
agreeably to their means or supposed means,— 
some having to pay, say fifty ticals, others one, or 
even less. I have been informed that there are 
tolerably correct accounts of the means of each 
householder; but on such occasions poverty is 
often pleaded, and it too frequently happens that 
confinement and torture are resorted to before the 
collection is completed. The system is obviously 
open to the greatest abuses, and although it is not 
against these abuses that the people generally ex¬ 
claim, it is evident this is the most vexatious of 
all parts of Burmese administration; and its abo- 
