The poor manufacturer, as heavily taxed as the cultivator of the earth, found himself compelled to obtain advances from his employers, who, in their turn, claimed, as interest, a large proportion of the little profit that was made. The Company's agents, like the native merchants, advanced the funds necessary to produce the goods required for Europe, and the poor workmen are described as having been "in a state of dependence almost amounting to servitude, enabling the resident to obtain his labour at his own price."[75] In addition to the taxes already described, a further one was collected at local custom-houses, on all exchanges between the several parts of the country; and to these were again added others imposed by means of monopolies of tobacco and opium, and of salt, one of the most important necessaries of life. The manufacture of coarse salt from the earth was strictly prohibited.[76] The salt lakes of the upper country furnish a supply so great that it is of little value on the spot;[77] but these lakes being even yet in the possession of native princes, the monopoly could then, and can now, be maintained only by aid of strong bands of revenue officers, whose presence renders that which is almost worthless on one side of an imaginary line so valuable on the other side of it that it requires the produce of the sixth part of the labour of the year to enable the poor Hindoo to purchase salt for his family. Along the seashore salt is abundantly furnished by nature, the solar heat causing a constant deposition of it; but the mere fact of collecting it was constituted an offence punishable by fine and imprisonment, and the quantity collected by the Company's officers was limited to that required for meeting the demand at a monopoly price, all the remainder being regularly destroyed, lest the poor ryot should succeed in obtaining for himself, at cost, such a supply as was needed to render palatable the rice which constituted almost his only food. The system has since been rendered less oppressive, but even now the duty is ten times greater than it was under enlightened Mohammedan sovereigns.[78] Such being the mode of collecting the revenue, we may now look to its distribution. Under the native princes it was, to a great extent, locally-expended, whereas, under the new system, all the collections by government or by individuals tended to Calcutta, to be there disposed of. Thence no inconsiderable portion of it passed to England, and thus was established a perpetual drain that certainly could not be estimated at less than four millions of pounds sterling per annum, and cannot be placed, in the last century, at less than four hundred millions of pounds, or two thousand millions of dollars.