160 THE HISTORY OF KASHMIR

and his family, because he knew by experience that any surplus would be absorbed by rapacious underling officials. In matters of trade there were, too, still the impediments of former days. Upon every branch of commerce there was a multiplicity and weight of exactions. No product was too insignificant, and no person too poor to contribute to the State. The manufacture or production of silk, saffron, paper, tobacco, wine, and salt were al] State monopolies. The sale of grain was a State monopoly, and though the State sold grain at an extraordinarily cheap rate, the officials in charge did not always sell it to the people who most required it, or in the quantity they required. Favourite and influential persons would get as much as they wanted, but often to the public the stores would be closed for weeks together, and at other times the grain was sold to each family at a rate which was supposed to be proportionate to the number of persons in the family ; but the judges of the said quantity were not the persons most concerned, viz. the purchasers, but the local authorities. Private grain trade could not be openly conducted, and when the stocks in the country fell short of requirements they could not be replenished by private enterprise.