Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 2.djvu/152

 class, and required all grades to pay at the same rate. Another abuse corrected by him was the habit of the tax-collectors to add an arbitrary quantity as their own perquisite, calling it an allowance for loss in transit. Hideyoshi limited this to two per cent of the legal tax. The extent to which this form of extortion had been carried previously is not easy to conjecture, but it is not surprising to find that the farmers often sought to conceal or falsify the amount of the yield, and that bribery was extensively employed to influence the tax-collector's returns. Farmers often preferred to abandon their holdings and remove to some other fief where the officials were less exacting, but the law dealt with them severely if they attempted to escape in that manner, and dealt severely also with any one harbouring or concealing them. In such cases the method of "comprehensive punishment" was resorted to; that is to say, not only the offender but his relatives, friends, and neighbours were all included in the circle of responsibility.

Under the Tokugawa administration, the rate of tax fixed by law was four-tenths of the gross yield, and that figure may be taken as representing an approximation to the impost actually levied throughout the period commencing with the establishment of the Yedo Government at the close of the sixteenth century and ending with the abolition of feudalism at the beginning of the Meiji era (1867). It is only an approximation, however,