"By the Hia statutes," says Dr. "every husbandman—hend of a family—received 50 mou, and paid the produce of five of them to the government. "This pay-then was the kung. By the Yin statutes, 630 mou were divided into nine equal allot fients of 70 mon each, the central one being Yeserved for the government, and eight families on the other allotments uniting in its cultivation, By those of Chow, to one family 100 mow were assigned, and ten illes cultivated 1,000 mov in common, dividing the produce, and paying a tenth to the governmen In all these cases the result was, practically, the tithing system; but, accordingly as the land was in country or town, rent-service, or a part of the average year's produce, was the form which the tithe took. Officers, in addition to their salary, payable out of the central square, were to have 50 mon extra for sacrificial purposes, (but it does not appear where these 50 mou were situated.) Unmarried males received at the age of 16, twenty-five mou, (in addition to the 100 mou allotted to the father); increased to the usual allotment on marriage.
Wei Yang abolished the division into me,' or the tsing system, in the dominions but this was before the Ts'in conquest of China, He also introduced a new aystem of land taxation, After the Ts'in conquest the Empire was divided into provinces, and it is to be presumed that wholesale changes were likewise made in the land laws. About B. C. 200, after the overthrow of the Ts'in Empire by the Han power, the first care of the Han premier Sino Ho was to rescue from the flames of the capital the nnd registers and archives. The first Han Emperor established a system of scutage, or stean-fu, under which all males between the ages of 15 and 56 paid 120 cash a head. The population of China was reduced by one half during the reign of Ww-Ti, who was obliged to introduce customs taxes to replenish his exchequer 'A new agricultural aystem was introduced by the T'ang dynasty in A.D, 614. Persons between the ages of 16 and 20 received 100 mou of arable land. Persons suffering from bodily disabilities received 40; an: widows 30, Every man paid a fee-farm rent of two hundredweight of grain, and a percentage on personal Property in silk or est ton fabrics, A labour tax of 20 days in the year was added with an alternative of paying for vicarious labour at the rate of three feet of fabric a day. Rent was remitted proportionately if extra labour was called for; and in cases of flood, drought, or pestilence, rent, tax, and labour were, one or more, wholly or in part, remitted according to circumstances, One hundred hw or holders formed a li; five li one luang. Four families formed a lin, of which four went to the pao (called in cities fang, and in the country fs'). The census. was taken every three years. In A. D, 740 the population was 48,143,600.
When the Kitan and Kin Tartars were ruling in North China, the Southern dynasty of Sung introduced ' modifications in the labour system. A pao consisted of twenty-five families, and sixteen pao went to a th. Every fu or able-bodied man had fifty mon of land; sixteen fu formed a tsing, and each tsing furnished two soldiers and a horse. The women had to produce three feet of pongee and an ounce of cotton; or six feet of cloth and two ounces of hemp.
The founder-of the Ming dynasty perfected an organisation for taxing and labour Povlecs, and the ten who paid most were oses. ach li consisted of 110 hu, or
headmen for a year alternately: the other hundred formed ten kiah. ies the term fang was used instead of li, and in registered was termed a ts'eli, and the whole register was called a vit-lin ts'ch, or "fish-scale register," because the land was arranged inone column, and the owners' names entered transversely. The term t'u seems to have been used interchangeably with li, and the proletariats attached to each tu were known
power, the land-tax and politan were both When the Manchu di ty, succeeded to ki or "fractional parts."
in vogue. The land-tax was declared fixed for ever, but the poll-tax varied with the number of males over sixteen years of age. In the year 1711 the amount of the poll-tax was also fixed for ever, on the basis of the number of male adults then living. In 1725 the poll-tax was merged in the land-tax, and ever since then the proletariat or landless class has ceased to pay anything, except in the province of Shan-si, where the merger was never completed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.