Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/132

tain a share in the business, the only resource is to buy a warrant from some one already in possession. In good times and when the warrants can be used rapidly, the warrant-holder realises a profit of from twenty to twenty-five per cent.

The yield of the salt gabelle, including the transit tax levied on the commodity, is estimated by the most recent authorities at 13½ million taels approximately. But it seems probable that this figure, like the land tax, does not by any means represent the total actually collected. Even from the one item of transit dues (likin) a much greater return than 13½ million taels must be obtained. For since the consumption of salt throughout the Empire is estimated at 25 millions of piculs (1 picul=113½ lbs.) and the transit duty—in some of the chief circuits, at any rate—is 1.13 taels per picul, the revenue from likin alone should be 28 million taels. Mr. Consul-General Jamieson further alleges that the squeezes paid by a warrant holder to the officials are 0.40 taels per picul, which means an aggregate of 10 million taels on 25 million piculs, and thus likin and squeezes give a total of 38¼ million taels, to which the Government's profits on the monopoly have to be added. Thus, as is usual in dealing with Chinese revenue returns, bewilderment results from any attempt to form accurate ideas.

No form of Chinese impost has inspired so much discussion in the Occident as likin. The term literally signifies "millage;" that is to say,