Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/145

foreign opium, say 60 taels per picul against 110 taels for the foreign drug, - would produce a revenue of over 13 million taels, whereas the sum officially reported is only one million. If to this be added the production in other parts of the Empire and it should be observed that the cultivation of the poppy is steadily spreading - the estimate is that a total revenue of at least from 15 to 18 million taels would be obtained. Yet the official figure is only 24 millions. Here, too, the leakage is evidently very great.

There are minor sources of revenue, which may be classed as miscellaneous, - for example, land-transfer fees (three per cent on the value of the land), pawnbrokers' fees, trade licenses, etc., - and there are items of extraordinary revenue, such as sales of titles and official ranks which operations sometimes produce as much as from three to four million taels annually - and subscriptions or benevolences which wealthy men are occasionally required to pay on occasions of national emergency. This extraordinary income must evidently be excluded from any normal estimate, and having excluded it the proceeds of the various sources enumerated above take the following form:———