404 
THE KANAUGHTS OF GUZ. 
the government and the tax ; who either eat up three-fourths of 
the expected sum, before it reaches” the treasury; or so grind 
each other at every remove from the first delegated hand, that 
when the last and full exaction is made from the industrious 
peasant, or trader, or warder of a caravansary, (it being demand¬ 
ed in sufficient quantity to stick a reasonable profit to the cof¬ 
fers of each successive extortioner, in its way to those of the 
sovereign,) the poor labouring wretch at the bottom of the lad¬ 
der is made to dig the gold out of his very veins; to pour it 
out with his sweat and his blood; and giving his last handful 
of grain this year, with all his means of subsistence, to these hard 
task-masters, leaves the land and the royal dues to shift for 
themselves in the next. The kanaughts of Guz are farmed out, 
to twenty-four of its inhabitants, at a rent of twenty-five tomauns 
per annum each; which tax does not include what the crown 
claims on the produce of the land nourished by this water ; nor do 
those claims cover all the contributions that may be demanded, 
Under several different pleas, of the proprietors. Indeed, it is 
even more difficult to acquire any certain knowledge of the ways 
and means by which the revenue of this country is calculated 
and collected, than to obtain any reasonable estimate of its 
population. Every thing of the sort appears to be done by farm¬ 
ing, and monopoly; a common, and universally impoverishing 
error with arbitrary governments; and which, while its principle 
continues, must dam up the sources of national wealth, by under¬ 
mining the foundations of all industry, whether agricultural, 
commercial, or any thing else. Hence, the plough, and the 
loom, are often abandoned in despair ; and the poor rack-rented 
husbandman, or mechanic, flies to some distant province; to 
seek less oppressive exactors, of some less exorbitant impost. 
