or
ground about ten or fifteen feet by twenty or thirty is frequently sufficient for the purposes of a Chinese trader (Chinese Mandarins, in estimating the tax to be paid by shops, proportion it to the number of rows of tiles on the roof). The present lots are, it is believed, too large in many cases for the requirements of the purchasers.
It may
As
regard Chinese holders of land, it may be deemed a disadvantage of the present mode of collecting the ground rent (though not one inseparable from the system of tenure), and not so trifling a disadvantage as it may appear to those unacquainted with Chinese habits, that the lesser is obliged to take his rent to the Colonial Treasury as it falls due, instead of having it at his option to pay to a collector sent round to receive it. To give a Chinaman as little trouble as possible is a good way of making him contented. He would probably have rather paid to a collector than to the Treasury.
Many have but a vague idea where the Treasury is; and when they find it, they find at the same time what is required of them. In China, if the taxes be taken to the treasury of the district, the expenses of collection are saved to the contributor. Lastly, it would be well if the mode of transfer of property by Chinese were somewhat more assimilated to Chinese form.
The advantage derived from the present system seems to be the facility of collections of the revenue, inasmuch as the contributors are few, and comparatively known, and the tax gatherer need pay them no visit. The coils of the present mode of that collection have been just complained of, and if the mode just now complained of were altered, the superior facility of this system would be lost.