The list shows other items of expenditure which cannot be materially economized. The large and growing sum which goes to repay interest, foreign loans, and indemnities, cannot be touched, nor can the $16,000,000 sent to the provinces for their local expenditures. The $8,000,000 for the Peking salaries and palace expenses is a fixture. The modest and well-administered $3,000,000 of the customs expenditures, covering about all the public works that China undertakes,--the lighthouse and coast-patrol allowances, the mails, the interpreters’ school,--this cannot be pared. The needed money must come if at all by increase of the receipts. One is driven irresistibly back to the Government’s taxing capacity. The physical possibility of such taxation undoubtedly exists. The per capita revenue which the Government receives from its four hundred million subjects is but twenty-five cents. The American per capita revenue is eight dollars, the Japanese five dollars, the Russian twelve dollars, the Indian--perhaps in conditions the closest parallel to the Chinese--one dollar and a quarter. An extra twenty-five cents would raise the Chinese Government well above all financial difficulties, and still leave the rate far below that of the other great nations of the world. Looking at the actual mechanism for revenue collection, one is met by difficulties which have rooted themselves deeply into the system. One cannot squeeze any larger proportion of the needed sum than the present $25,000,000 from the Imperial Maritime Customs. Tariff-rates are fixed by treaty, and the collections, under English direction, are as efficient as they can become. The likin duties on freight during inland transit are such a plague to commerce that, far from being increased, they should be swept away altogether as one of the earliest of reform measures. This $14,000,000 is produced at so heavy a price of fettered and thwarted commerce that added tariff would but aggravate the strangulation without materially increasing income. The opium revenue of $5,000,000 is likewise an item which, for the best interests of China, should disappear from a reformed budget, and the “foreign dirt” from the Celestial domain. In any event opium cannot be made much more productive. After these eliminations there are left items which bring in $56,000,000. The sources consist principally of the land-tax, the grain-tribute, native customs, and the salt gabelle. The returns from these factors would require to be nearly trebled, if they were relied upon to make up the bulk of the needed total.