d remit the
tribute. The name of this collector was Shuwakem. He was accustomed,
it seems, like almost all tax-gatherers in those days, to exact more
than was his due. The system generally adopted by governments in that
age of the world for collecting their revenues from tributary or
conquered provinces was to _farm them_, as the phrase was. That is,
they sold the whole revenue of a particular district in the gross to
some rich man, who paid for it a specific sum, considerably less, of
course, than the tax itself would really yield, and then he reimbursed
himself for his outlay and for his trouble by collecting the tax in
detail from the people. Of course, it was for the interest of the
tax-gatherer, in such a case, after having paid the round sum to the
government, to extort as much as possible from the people, since all
that he obtained over and above the sum that he had paid was his
profit on the transaction. Then, if the people complained to the
government of his exactions, they could seldom obtain any redress, for
the government knew that if they rebuked or punished the farmer of the
revenue, or interfered with him in any way, they would not be able to
make so favorable terms with him for the next year.

The plan of farming the revenues thus led to a great deal of extortion
and oppression, which the people were compelled patiently to endure,
as there was generally no remedy. In modern times and among civilized
nations this system has been almost universally abandoned. The taxes
are now always collected for the government directly by officers who
have to pay over not a fixed sum, but simply what they collect. Thus
the tax-gatherers are, in some sense, impartial, since, if they
collect more than the law entitles them to demand, the benefit inures
almost wholly to the government, they themselves gaining little or no
advantage by their extortion. Besides this, there are courts
established which are, in a great measure, independent of the
government, to which the tax-payer can appeal at once in a case where
he thinks he is aggrieved. This, it is true, often puts him to a great
deal of trouble and expense, but, in the end, he is pretty sure to
have justice done him, while under the old system there was ordinarily
no remedy at all. There was nothing to be done but to appeal to the
king or chieftain himself, and these complaints seldom received any
attention. For, besides the natural unwillingness of the sovereign to
trou