Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/84

 72 PUBLIC REVENUE. necessaries of life, includin^j corn of every kind, and animal food,are alike objectsof this form of taxation. It is upon this principle that opium, the substitute of the Indian islanders for wines and spirits, and salt, the universal subject of heavy taxation in all ages, and almost all countries, are equally objects of extraordinary and distinct taxation. In Java, the great manufacturing country of salt, the commodity was sold on the spot where it was made at about fifteen times its natural value, — in distant places, sometimes as high as seventy times. Opium, in the same country, may be reckoned to be sold at about four times the amount of the monopoly sales in India, and at probably not less than ten times the natu- ral cost. In every part of the irchipelago, opium and salt are, under one form or another, objects of a rigid monopoly on the part of the governments. The system of farming the public revenue, in all its departments, is universal in the Indian islands, wherever European influence has made no innova- tion. The farmers are either natives of the east coast of the peninsula of India, or Chinese, but most fre- quently the latter. We hear them generally deno- minated Bandar, s. corruption in orthograpliy, and a more palpable one in meaning, of the Persian word Bdndury-a. sea-poit, or commercial emporium, which the accommodating geniusof the Polynesian tongues applies not only to the custom-houses on the coast, but to the toll ports of the interior, where the