The Government battens on the vices of the people by granting monopolies for gambling, opium, and spirits. Government places the people under unscrupulous and tyrannical Government masters—merciless, heartless, and exorbitant leeches—who, unless heavily bribed, force the peasantry to do their three months’ _corvée_ labour at times and seasons that necessarily break up all habits of industry, and ruin all plans to engage in successful business.[11] Government imposes taxes upon everything grown for human requirements in the country; fishing-nets, stakes, boats, spears, and lines are all taxed. The Government net is so small that even charcoal and bamboos are taxed to the extent of one in ten, and firewood one in five, in kind. Fancy the feelings of an old woman, after trudging for miles to market with a hundred sticks of firewood, when twenty of the sticks are seized by the tax-gatherer as his perquisite! There is a land-tax for each crop of annuals sown, and paddy and rice are both subject to tax; so that three taxes can thus be reaped from one cereal. The burdensome taxation is levied in the most vexatious manner that can be conceived; for the taxes are let out to unscrupulous Chinamen, who are thus able to squeeze, cheat, and rob the people mercilessly. It is no use appealing from the tax-gatherer to the officials. Money wins its way, and justice is unknown in Siam. Every one who has not a friend at Court is preyed upon by the governors and their rapacious underlings. Such being the present state of Siam, one is not surprised to learn that the majority of its inhabitants, besides being slaves and selling their children, are libertines, gamblers, opium smokers or eaters, and given to intoxicating beverages. No amount of earnings will bear these heavy strains upon their industry and their purse. The effect of over-taxation has been showing itself of late years in the import of betel-nuts, bee’s-wax, cocoa-nuts, molasses, and other articles, which were formerly exported. The effect of sapping the morals of the people by encouraging gambling, opium smoking and eating, and spirit-drinking, is displayed by their present state of degradation.