On all who escape this forced labor, the _taxation_ is fearful. The hand of the government is as heavy upon them as in the ancient days. To one who was telling me of this--and no man knows Egypt better--I said, "Why, the government takes half of all that the country yields." "Half?" he answered, "_It takes all._" To the miserable fellahs who till the soil it leaves only their mud hovels, the rags that scarcely hide their nakedness, and the few herbs and fruits that but just keep soul and body together. Every acre of ground in Egypt is taxed, and every palm tree in the valley of the Nile. What would our American farmers say to a tax of twelve dollars an acre on their land, and of from twenty-five to fifty cents on every apple tree in their orchards? Yet this enormous burden falls, not on the rich farmers of New England, or New York, or Ohio, but on the miserable fellahs of Egypt, who are far more destitute than the negroes of the South. Yet in the midst of all this poverty and wretchedness, in these miserable Arab villages the tax gatherer appears regularly, and the tax, though it be the price of blood, is remorselessly exacted. If anybody refuses, or is unable to pay, no words are wasted on him, he is immediately bastinadoed till his cries avail--not with the officers of the law, who know no mercy, but with his neighbors, who yielding up their last penny, compel the executioner to let go his hold.
Such is the Egyptian Government as it presses on the people. While its hand is so heavy in ruinous taxations, the administration of justice is pretty much as it was in the time of the Pharaohs. It has been in the hands of a set of native officials, who sometimes executed a rude kind of justice on the old principle of strict retaliation, "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," but commonly paid no regard to the merits of a case, but decided it entirely by other considerations. In matters where the Government was concerned, no private individual had any chance whatever. The Khedive was the source of all authority and power, a central divinity, of whom every official in the country was an emanation, before whom no law or justice could stand. In other matters judges decided according to their own pleasure--their like or dislike of one or the other of the parties--or more often according to their interest, for they were notoriously open to bribes. Thus in the whole land of Egypt justice there was none. In every Arab village the sheik was a petty tyrant, who could bastinado the miserable fellahs at his will.