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The amount charged upon each family is in English money about twenty shillings and tenpence; and a family consisting of six persons, the taxation per head is about three shillings and fivepence. Besides this, however, there is much to be paid, which varies very considerably, and is applied to extraordinary uses.

In some portions of Burmah a tax is levied upon fruit-trees, and a fixed price is set upon each species of tree. The tax, as usual, was exorbitant, though, as the envoy remarks, “it may be stated generally that the unsettled habits of the people, and the ignorance and unskilfulness of the tax-gatherer, contribute in practice to counterbalance, in some degree, the arbitrary and oppressive character of the government in theory.”[63] In Lower Pegu, a mango, a jack,[64] a cocoa-nut, and a mariam tree (a small kind of mango), paid each one-eighth of a tical (threepence three farthings) per annum. An areca and Palmyra palm paid a quarter of a tical, and a betel-vine one sixteenth. A tithe was levied in other places. Mr. Crawfurd was unable to ascertain what the total produce of the tax was. Indeed it is difficult to arrive at any determination in any of these cases, for they are all equally wanting in point of data.