CHAPTER 60
Transit Duties in India--Mode of Collecting them.
At Horal[1] resides a Collector of Customs with two or three
uncovenanted European assistants as patrol officers.[2] The rule now
is to tax only the staple articles of produce from the west on their
transit down into the valley of the Jumna and Ganges, and to have
only one line on which these articles shall be liable to duties.[3]
They are free to pass everywhere else without search or molestation.
This has, no doubt, relieved the people of these provinces from an
infinite deal of loss and annoyance inflicted upon them by the former
System of levying the Customs duties, and that without much
diminishing the net receipts of Government from this branch of its
revenues. But the time may come when Government will be constrained
to raise a greater proportion of its collective revenues than it has
hitherto done from indirect taxation, and when this time comes, the
rule which confines the impost to a single line must of course be
abandoned.[4] Under the former system, one great man, with a very
high salary, was put in to preside over a host of native agents with
very small salaries, and without any responsible intermediate agent
whatever to aid him, and to watch over them.
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