大全-6第六题

In the eighteenth century, Japan
’s feudal overlords, from the shogun (shogun:n.<日>幕府时代的将军) to the humblest samurai (samurai: n.(封建时代的)日本武士,日本陆军军官), found themselves under financial stress.In part, this stress can be attributed to the overlords’ failure to adjust to arapidly expanding economy, but the stress was also due to factors beyond theoverlords’ control. Concentration of the samurai in castle-towns had acted as astimulus to trade. Commercial efficiency, in turn, had put temptations in theway of buyers. Since most samurai had been reduced to idlenessby years of peace, encouraged to engage in scholarship and martial exercises orto perform administrative tasks that took little time, it is not surprisingthat their tastes and habits grew expensive. Overlords’ income, despite theincrease in rice production among their tenant farmers, failed to keep pacewith their expenses. Although shortfalls in overlords’ income resulted almostas much from laxity among their tax collectors (the nearly inevitable outcomeof hereditary office-holding) as from their higher standards of living, amisfortune like a fire or flood, bringing an increase in expenses or a drop inrevenue, could put a domain in debt to the city rice-brokers who handled itsfinances. Once in debt, neither the individual samurai nor the shogun himselffound it easy to recover.It was difficult for individual samurai overlords toincrease their income because the amount of rice that farmers could be made topay in taxes was not unlimited, and since the income of Japan
’s central governmentconsisted in part of taxes collected by the shogun from his huge domain, thegovernment too was constrained. Therefore, the Tokugawa shoguns began to lookto other sources for revenue. Cash profits from government-owned mines werealready on the decline because the most easily worked deposits of silver andgold had been exhausted, although debasement of the coinage had compensated forthe loss. Opening up new farmland was a possibility, but most of what wassuitable had already been exploited and further reclamation was technicallyunfeasible. Direct taxation of the samurai themselves would be politically dangerous.This left the shoguns only commerce as a potential source ofgovernment income.Most of the country’s wealth, or so it seemed, wasfinding its way into the hands of city merchants. It appeared reasonable thatthey should contribute part of that revenue to ease the shogun’s burden offinancing the state. A means of obtaining such revenue was soon found bylevying forced loans, known as goyo-kin;although these were not taxes in the strict sense, since they were irregular intiming and arbitrary in amount, they were high in yield. Unfortunately, theypushed up prices. Thus, regrettably, the Tokugawa shoguns’ search for solvencyfor the government made it increasingly difficult for individual Japanese wholived on fixed stipends to make ends meet.
6. Thepassage suggests that, in eighteenth-century Japan
, the office of tax collector
(A) was asource of personal profit to the officeholder

(B) was regardedwith derision by many Japanese
(C) remainedwithin families
(D) existedonly in castle-towns（C）
(E) took upmost of the officeholder’s time
文章中没有哪里暗示到他在家啊。。。只是说他会疏忽而已么。。。