rges with unanswerable
logic that financial equilibrium must be maintained, and that he cannot
frame a trustworthy Budget unless he knows the amount he may count on
receiving from direct taxes, especially from the land-tax. The Eastern
replies that he knows nothing of either financial equilibrium or of
budgets, that it has, indeed, from time immemorial been the custom to
leave him nought but a bare pittance when he had money, but to refrain
from any endeavours to extort money from him when he had none.

Another instance drawn, not from the practices of fiscal administration,
but from legislation on a cognate subject, may be cited.

Directly Western civilisation comes in contact with a backward Oriental
Society, the relations between debtor and creditor are entirely changed.
A social revolution is effected. The Western applies his code with stern
and ruthless logic. The child-like Eastern, on the other hand, cannot be
made to understand that his house should be sold over his head because
he affixed his seal to a document, which, very probably, he had never
read, or, at all events, had never fully understood, and which was
presented to him by a man at one time apparently animated with
benevolent intentions, inasmuch as he wished to lend him money, but who
subsequently showed his malevolence by asking to be repaid his loan with
interest at an exorbitant rate.

Here, again, many palliatives have been suggested and some have been
applied, but many of them sin against the economic law, which provides
that legislation intended to protect a man against the consequences of
his own folly or improvidence is generally unproductive of result.

In truth, no thoroughly effective remedy can be applied in cases such as
those mentioned above, without abandoning all real attempt at progress.
Civilisation must, unfortunately, have its victims, amongst whom are to
some extent inevitably numbered those who do not recognise the paramount
necessities of the Budget system, and those who contract debts with an
inadequate appreciation of the _caveat emptor_ principle. Nevertheless,
the Western financier will act wisely if, casting aside some portion of
his Western habit of thought, he recognises the facts with which he has
to deal, and if, fully appreciating the intimate connection between
finance and politics in an Eastern country, he endeavours, so far as is
possible, to temper the clean-cut science of his fiscal measures in such
a manner as