Page:A Study of Mexico.djvu/188

178, or charcoal, 6 cents (as a supposed road-tax), and so on; and, on entering another town, all these exactions are repeated. A miller, in Mexico, it is said, is obliged to pay thirty-two separate taxes on his wheat, before he can get it from the field and offer it, in the form of flour, on the market, for consumption. As a matter of necessity, furthermore, every center of population—small and big, city, town, or hamlet—swarms with petty officials, who are paid to see that not an item of agricultural produce, of manufactured goods, or an operation of trade or commerce or even a social event, like a fandango, a christening, a marriage, or a funeral, escapes the payment of tribute.