all people are thoughtless and improvident, he
himself gathered up and stored all the grain which could be spared, and
in such vast quantities that he ceased to measure it. At last the
predicted famine came, as the Nile had not risen to its usual height;
but the royal granaries were full, since all the surplus wheat--about a
fifth of the annual produce--had been stored away; not purchased by
Joseph, but exacted as a tax. Nor was this exaction unreasonable in
view of the emergency. Under the Bourbon kings of France more than one
half of the produce of the land was taken by the Government and the
feudal proprietors without compensation, and that not in provision for
coming national trouble, but for the fattening of the royal purse.
Joseph exacted only a fifth as a sort of special tax, less than the
present Italian government exacts from all landowners.

Very soon the famine pressed upon the Egyptian people, for they had no
corn in reserve; the reserve was in the hands of the government. But
this reserve Joseph did not deal out gratuitously, as the Roman
government, under the emperors, dealt out food to the citizens. He made
the people pay for their bread, and took their money and deposited it in
the royal treasury. When after two years their money was all spent, it
was necessary to resort to barter, and cattle were given in exchange for
corn, by which means the King became possessed of all the personal
property of his subjects. As famine pressed, the people next surrendered
their land to avoid starvation,--all but the priests. Pharaoh thus
became absolute proprietor of the whole country; of money, cattle, and
land,--an unprecedented surrender, which would have produced a
wide-spread disaffection and revolt, had it not been that Joseph, after
the famine was past and the earth yielded its accustomed harvest,
exacted only one-fifth of the produce of the land for the support of
the government, which could not be regarded as oppressive. As the King
thus became absolute proprietor of Egypt by consent of the people, whom
he had saved from starvation through the wisdom and energy of his prime
minister, it is probable that later a new division of land took place,
it being distributed among the people generally in small farms, for
which they paid as rent a fifth of their produce. The gratitude of the
people was marked: "Thou hast saved our lives: let us find grace in the
eyes of my lord, and we will be Pharaoh's slaves." Since the