The whole amount of royal revenue, from various sources, owing probably to the cheating system of the officers, is not more than £25,000 per annum, “an income,” as Crawfurd concludes, “far exceeded by that of many native subjects of the British possessions in India.”[65] But the inhabitants of the land are subjected to many other grievances in the way of extortion, and, taking Sangermano for a guide, I shall enumerate some of these. The funds for building the public edifices and palaces, bridges, convents, and pagodas, are raised by extraordinary levies. Even if that were all, it might be sufferable; but when anything of this nature is required, the government officers extort three or four times as much as would suffice for the purpose. And just as the king acts in Ava, so do the governors of the other towns. The whole system of practical government in Ava is one gigantic mass of corruption and iniquity, and nothing but the total overthrow of the present government, and establishment of British supremacy, can rescue the unhappy people of Burmah. In Rangoon, however, as it is at the greatest distance from the government, these exactions are carried to the greatest excess. It is at that place that those enormities are committed, of which I have already mentioned a few instances. However, the dignitaries meet their reward; “for,” says the good Father Sangermano,[66] “sooner or later the news of their conduct reaches the court, they are stripped of their dignity, and sometimes, if their crimes be great, are put to death, and their property is confiscated for the use of the emperor. Generally, however, they save themselves at the expense of their riches, which are entirely consumed in presents to the wives, sons, and chief ministers of the emperor; and then they are frequently sent back to the same governments where they had practised their extortions, to heap up new treasures for new confiscations. Hence it may justly be inferred, that the rapacity of the emperor is not less than that of his mandarins; and that he does not care for the spoliation of his subjects, but rather encourages it, that he may thus always have means in his power to replenish his treasury.” In short we may conclude these “Sketches of Government” with the remark of the reviewer:[67] “The government is a despotism upon the model of that of China; the fiction of paternity in the person of the ruler being in both countries upheld. The emperor is the father of the state; each mandarin is the father of the province which he governs; and each magistrate, of whatever gradation, father of the subordinate department in which he presides.” We have seen how fatherly is the whole behaviour of the Burman rulers, and we may well agree with the reviewer, in pronouncing the fiction invented for the benefit of the _despot_, and not for the benefit of the _people_.