"The avowed principle on which he acts, and which he acknowledged to
myself, is, that the _whole_ sum fixed for the revenue of the province
_must_ be collected,--and that, for this purpose, the deficiency arising
in places where the crops have failed, or which have been left
uncultivated, must be supplied from the resources of others, where the
soil has been better suited to the season, or the industry of the
cultivators hath been more successfully exerted: a principle which,
however specious and plausible it may at first appear, _certainly tends
to the most pernicious and destructive consequences_. If this
declaration of the Naib had been made only to myself, I might have
doubted my construction of it; but it was repeated by him to Mr.
Anderson, who understood it exactly in the same sense. In the management
of the customs, the conduct of the Naib, or of the officer under him,
was forced also upon my attention. _The exorbitant rates exacted by an
arbitrary valuation of the goods_, the practice of exacting duties
_twice_ on the same goods, (first from the seller, and afterwards from
the buyer,) and the vexations, disputes, and delays drawn on the
merchants by these oppressions, were loudly complained of; and some
instances of this kind were said to exist at the very time I was at
Benares.
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