to suit the customs and intellectual standard of the subject
race with which he has to deal.

The question of the amount of taxation levied stands apart from the
method of its imposition. It may be laid down as a principle of
universal application that high taxation is incompatible with assured
stability of Imperial rule.[21]

The financier and the hydraulic engineer, who is a powerful ally of the
financier, have probably a greater potentiality of creating an
artificial and self-interested loyalty than even the judge. The reasons
are obvious. In the first place, the number of criminals, or even of
civil litigants, in any society is limited; whereas practically the
whole population consists of taxpayers. In the second place, the
arbitrary methods of administering justice practised by Oriental rulers
do not shock their subjects nearly so much as Europeans are often
disposed to think. Custom has made it in them a property of easiness.
They often, indeed, fail to appreciate the intentions, and are disposed
to resent the methods, of those whose object it is to establish justice
in the law-courts. On the other hand, the most ignorant Egyptian fellah
or Indian ryot can understand the difference between a Government which
takes nine-tenths of his crop in the shape of land-tax, and one which
only takes one-third or one-fourth. He can realise that he is better off
if the water is allowed to flow periodically on to his fields, than he
was when the influential landowner, who possessed a property up-stream
on the canal, made a dam and prevented him from getting any water at
all.

These principles would probably meet with general acceptance from all
who have considered the question of Imperial rule. They are, indeed,
almost commonplace. Unfortunately, in practice the necessity of
conforming to them is often forgotten. India is the great instance in
point. Englishmen are often so convinced that the natives of India ought
to be loyal, they hear so much said of their loyalty, they appreciate so
little the causes which are at work to produce disloyalty, and, in spite
of occasional mistakes due to errors of judgment, they are in reality so
earnestly desirous of doing what they consider, sometimes perhaps
erroneously, their duty towards the native population, that they are apt
to lose sight of the fact that the self-interest of the subject race is
the principal basis of the whole Imperial fabric. They forget, whilst
they are adding to