than that of the seven islands[243]. Ionian commerce was hampered by the selfish colonial policy then prevalent in Europe, which aimed at concentrating all colonial trade in the metropolis, through which the exports of the islands had to pass. This naturally led to a vast amount of smuggling, even now rampant in the Greek Archipelago, in which the British gained an unenviable pre-eminence and for which they sometimes paid with their lives. The oil trade, the staple industry of Corfù, was, however, greatly fostered by the grant of 360 _drachmai_ for every plantation of 100 olive trees, and we find that, in the last half-century of the Venetian rule, there were nearly two millions of these trees in that island, which exported 60,000 barrels of oil every second year. The taxes consisted of a tithe of the oil, the crops, and the agricultural produce, and a money payment on the wine, a “chimney tax” on each house, and an export duty of 15 per cent. on the oil, 9 per cent. on the salt, and 4 per cent. on other articles. There was also an import duty of 6 per cent. on Venetian and of 8 per cent. on foreign, goods. The revenue of Zante was so greatly benefited by the introduction of the currant industry that it increased more than forty-fold in the space of thirty years during the sixteenth century, and a hundred years later the traveller Spon said it deserved the name of the “island of gold” and called it “a terrestrial paradise.” But the wholesale conversion of corn fields into currant plots caused such alarm that the local authorities applied to Venice for permission to root up the currant bushes by force. The Republic replied by allowing the currants to remain, but at the same time levying a tax upon them, the proceeds of which were devoted to the purchase and storage of bread stuffs. The currant industry of that island was injured by further duties, and was thus placed at a disadvantage as compared with the lightly taxed currants of the Morea. But in the eighteenth century such numbers of English ships came to Zante to load currants that the place had an English consul, two English offices, and an English cemetery, while our countrymen were very popular there[244]. One of the English families, attracted thither by the currant trade, that of Sergeant, still flourishes there. These public granaries were also instituted at Corfù, which continued, however, to suffer severely from famines. At the time when Zante was so prosperous Corfù was less productive, and we accordingly hear that the Venetians obtained permission from the Pope to levy a tithe on the goods of the Catholic clergy, in order to defray the costs of maintenance. The salt pans of Levkimo, at the south of the island, formed a government monopoly, and the importation of foreign salt was punished by banishment[245]. In order, perhaps, to counteract the excessive usury of the Corfiote Jews, the government established an official pawnshop[246], where money was lent at a moderate rate of