REVENUE  AND  EXPENDITURE  83
debt,  Tls.50,000  will  be  remitted  to  the  same  officer  for
account  of  legations  abroad,  Tls.200,000  will  be  sent  to
Honan  for  Yellow  River  Flood  Prevention  account,
Tls.50,000  will  be  retained  for  renewal  of  the  provincial
coast  defences,  Tls.50,000  will  be  sent  to  Peking  for  the
Imperial  Household,  and  Tls.50,000  will  be  assigned  for
the  upkeep  of  the  Imperial  Mausolea.  From  some  other
source  of  revenue  grants  may  be  made  to  supplement
the  revenues  of  a  poorer  province  ;  of  the  eighteen  provinces, ­
  thirteen  forward  such  grants  in  aid,  and  nine  receive
them,  five  both  granting  and  receiving.  We  may  even
have  province  A  remitting  to  B,  B  in  turn  to  C,  and  C
remitting  to  A,  but  each  one  of  the  three  will  remit  in  full  ;
no  attempt  is  ever  made  to  strike  a  balance  and  receive
or  remit  the  difference  ;  to  do  this  would  deprive  some
hard-working  official  of  the  fruits  of  his  industry,  in  the
profit  derivable  from  the  mere  act  of  remitting.  To  prepare
a  national  budget  of  revenue  and  expenditure  would,  in
Parker’s  phrase,*  “  puzzle  the  shrewdest  firm  of  chartered
accountants.”
Another  element  of  perplexity,  sufficient  to  prevent  the
ordinary  mind  from  penetrating  the  mysteries  of  taxation
in  China,  is  found  in  the  question  of  exchange.  As  will  be
seen  in  a  later  chapter,  China  has  no  coinage  except  the
copper  “  cash,”  of  which  to-day  it  takes  about  10,000  to
equal  a  pound  sterling  and  2,000  an  American  dollar.  Her
silver  currency  has  no  one  uniform  standard,  and  the  hundreds ­
  of  standards  known  in  the  empire,  or  the  dozen  known
in  one  place,  vary  within  a  range  of  over  10  per  cent.  Even
the  Imperial  Treasury  tael  is  an  actuality  only  at  the
Imperial  Treasury  itself,  and  elsewhere  in  China  is  only
a  money  of  account.  A  typical  case  will  be  referred  to
later,  where,  on  the  tax-note,  Treasury  taels  were  converted
into  cash  at  2,600  and  converted  back  at  1,105,  whereby
a  tax  of  Tls.70-66  was  converted  into  a  payment  of
Tls.166  20.  But  let  us  take  an  ordinary  everyday  incident
of  revenue  collected  in  Kiangsu  and  remitted  as  a  grant
*  “  China,  Past  and  Present,”  by  E.  H.  Parker,  1903.