ring, that in 1817 we
were obliged to exterminate the foul horde (a cross between the Decoit
and the Thug) root and branch. Now between these two poles lie two
different forms of mitigated spoliation. One was the Mahratta _chout_,
the other the _black mail_ of the Scottish cateran. Neither of these
gave any strict or absolute equivalent; but with a rude sense of
justice, both, on different principles, endeavoured to indemnify the
sufferer. The Mahratta generally, by a treaty with the local government,
induced them to allow for the _chout_ as twenty-five per cent advanced
out of their own claim for taxes. And the cateran, if he did not go upon
a convention with the government, gave the compounder a protection from
other caterans, a discharge from irregular demands, and a means of
recovering what might be stolen by knaves. The European case of taxation
may be viewed as the fairest case of buying and selling; the Pindarree,
as the vilest of robberies; and the two last as cases of compromise, (or
what in Roman law was called _transactio_,)--as a toll or fine in fact,
though too arbitrarily assessed.

Such are the categories of taxation; and, at the very best, all Affghans
viewed it in the light of _chout_ or _black mail_, a tribute to be
thrown into the one scale if a gleaming sabre lay in the other. King
Soojah levying taxes was to him a Mahratta at the least, if he was not
even a Pindarree or a Thug. Indeed it is clear that, where the
government does nothing for the people, nor pretends to do any thing,
where no courts of justice exist, no ambassadors, no police, no
defensive militia, (except for internal feuds,) title there can be none
to any but a nominal tribute, as a mere peppercorn acknowledgment of
superiority: going beyond _that_, taxation is borne only as robbery is
borne.

Under these circumstances, and having a motive so strong for reconciling
the Affghans to the new government, of all the incidents belonging to
sovereignty on our European notions, least and last should we have
suffered the Shah to exercise that of taxation. But to exercise it
ourselves, that was midsummer madness! If _he_ would have seemed a
robber in such a function, what must we have seemed? Besides, it is held
by some who have more narrowly watched the Affghan modes of thinking,
that, even where they _do_ submit to pay a tax, it is paid as a loan,
and on the understanding that the chief receiving it is bound to refund
it indirectly, by lea