Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/123

 selves more than the lawful amount of tax-collecting commission (three per cent), and to periodically inspect the rivers and the crops. Peasants that neglected their farms were liable to have them confiscated and to be themselves driven from the district, whereas, if a farmer cultivated his land industriously for twenty years, paying all his taxes without fail, he acquired the right of permanent tenancy, though not the right of disposing of the land; while if, though obviously diligent, he could not earn a livelihood, the deputy was required to assist him. It may be noted here that under no circumstances might a farmer sell his land. In any transaction of land sale, the seller became liable to imprisonment and banishment, the buyer to imprisonment, and if either died before the execution of his sentence, his children were punished in his stead, the land also being confiscated. The pledging of land on terms involving its possible alienation was equally penalised, and in view of these strict vetoes, the privilege of permanent tenancy became so valuable that hope of acquiring it by industry and regularity in discharging fiscal claims proved a powerful incentive to the exercise of those virtues.

But if the Tokugawa system showed unprecedented consideration for the peasant and offered him substantial encouragement, it also exacted from him absolute and almost abject submission to lawfully constituted authority. He was autho-