55
Municipality (after 1927). If the Council took measures which were not taken in the other municipalities it was easy for those affected who did not want to adhere to the new rules, simply to move to one of the other municipalities.
Ideally any measures would have to be taken by all municipalities in cooperation, but this was often objected to by the Chinese authorities who to an ever increasing degree were opposed to the usurpation — as they saw it — of new rights by the Municipal Council of the Settlement.
3. A third important reason was the very restricted financial basis upon which the Settlement government operated. The only taxes that, according to the Land Regulations, could be levied were a land tax, a house tax, wharfage dues and licence fees. And though the rates of these taxes could be, and were, raised3 and though the increase in the value of property and trade saw to it that municipal revenues steadily grew (from about Taels 25,000 in 1860 to about Taels 1,600,000 in 1930) nevertheless this was not enough to pay for any extensive schemes of social welfare. But even with the small amounts available there were Chinese complaints that too much of the money benefited foreigners principally and that too few dollars were spent on the much larger Chinese population.
A wealth or income tax was considered out of the question as for this the Land Regulations would have had to be changed and too many vested interests would have been attacked.
Under the circumstances, the Settlement authorities could not and would not introduce far-reaching changes in the administration of social welfare. In this they did not materially differ from their colleagues in the colonies.
Defects
We may well ask what became of the high-sounding principles which were uttered in the early days of the Settlement when "consensus and consent" were thought to be the foundations of the political establishment in the Far East.
If ever they were true in practice, even in the beginning, later government tended to develop into an oligarchy. Despite
54