July 28th.—Some six years ago the Viceroy Chihli, a Memorial to the 'Throne, referred to the heavy taxation on what is known as the eight kinds of Banner Land in the province, and pointed out the inability of the to pay such' an excessive levy. rhs Boar proposal, however, that some" reduction should be made, the Board offered streng nous opposition, and insisted that the full amount should continue to be collected by the district officers. His experience during the years which have since elapsed has confirmed the Viceroy in his conviction that full payment is impossible, and that some compromise ought to be adopted. The land referred to is everywhere scatter red among ordinary tenures held direct from the state. On eighty or ninety per cent of the latter the land tax does not exceed Ts, 0.4.8 per mu, while frequently it does not amount to more than a few li per mu, The rent levied on the banner land varies for Tls. 0.8 to Tls. 0.2.1 per mu, or almost five times as much as the tax levied on the common tenure, The common tenures, it is true, are subject to the imposition vorrée, but from this also the banner land is not, in all cases, exempt. The fact is that the tax originally imposed on the latter is so heavy that the whole produce of the land is not sufficient to meet it. Another consideration is that in measuring the common tenure, the instruments used are larger, and that a mu often represents as much asa inv and a half or even several mu. During the reign of Chia Ching the penalties attaching to the failure on the part of the district officers to collect the entire tax were considerably increased. Since then the holders of banner land have constantly thrown up their land and made their escape elsewhere to evade the severity of the law, and in some cases have even been willing to pay others to take over their land—their sole object being to escape from the unbearable position of tenants. In other cases the land is falsely represented to be "black land," liable tone tax, while sume even go so far to report the land as their own property, and have it zegistored as held by the ordinary tenure. These abuses have long existed all through the province, but they are more severely felt in Luan Chou, An-ssu, Li Hsien, Kao-yang, Chiao-no, and Ku-an. This evil at Srst_arose from bag ened on the part of the local authorities, but in course of time "detection became extremely difficult and the authorities had no resource but to make good themselves the arrears due by the tenants, Finally, on account of poverty of the the country and their own embarrassments, they could continue to do so no longer, and were obliged to disclose the real state of the case. The rent unpaid amounts in every instance to about 30 or 40 per cent, of the total. and as there is neither land nor owners from which to collect it the work of clearance will be extremely difficult as unfortunately there are no "fish scale"
isters to which to refer. This must, however, be attempted, as, if the abuse is allowed to continue, the amount of land under rent will become less and less and in the end disappear altogether. Acting therefore upon the advice of the Financial Commissioner of the province, the Viceroy recommends that the yearly arrears of 20 or 30 per cent. should for the present be 3 entirely remitted, and that the officers of the above-mentioned districts should be given a term of five years within which to ascertain the quantity of land held under tale titles, have it reported for purposes of taxation, and generally clear up the whole question. "In his previous Memorial. the corey asked that reductions should be in T'ungchow and seventy other istriets and departments in the province, but in view in the objections raised by the Board he confines himself in the present Memorial to obtaining an alleviation for the most, pressing cases without prejudice to the others Referred to the consideration of the Board of Revenue.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.