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For this extensive and important operation, he was to receive 20,000 florins a month from the general exchequer; and in addition he was to be allowed the brandschatz the black-mail, that is to say of the whole country-side, and the taxation upon all vessels going up and down the river before Rheinberg; an ad valorem duty, in short, upon all river-merchandise, assessed and collected in summary fashion.
My curiosity was too much roused to disobey. Had I conceived that Margrave, in the heat of youth, had committed some offence which placed him in danger of the law and in the power of Sir Philip Derval, I possessed enough of the old borderer's black-mail loyalty to have given the man whose hand I had familiarly clasped a hint and a help to escape.
As the practice of contracting for black-mail was an obvious encouragement to rapine, and a great obstacle to the course of justice, it was, by the statute 1567, chap. 21, declared a capital crime both on the part of him who levied and him who paid this sort of tax.
It was not, strictly speaking, as a professed depredator that Rob Roy now conducted his operations, but as a sort of contractor for the police; in Scottish phrase, a lifter of black-mail. The nature of this contract has been described in the Novel of Waverley, and in the notes on that work. Mr. Grahame of Gartmore's description of the character may be here transcribed:
Seeing, however, that his chance of escape was hopeless, he at length consented to pay the levier of black-mail his iniquitous dues. On this Jack rode back to the top of the rise where he had left the horseman, and told him that the arrangement was agreed to. "Well, then, send your people to look after the beasts, and I will come down and settle with worthy Master Brinsmead.
"This is a very singular contract of assurance," said Mr. Owen. "It's clean again our statute law, that must be owned," said Jarvie, "clean again law; the levying and the paying black-mail are baith punishable: but if the law canna protect my barn and byre, whatfor suld I no engage wi' a Hieland gentleman that can? answer me that." "But," said I, "Mr.
This forced many of the inhabitants into contracts of black-mail with Fergus Mac-Ivor, which not only established him their protector, and gave him great weight in all their consultations, but, moreover, supplied funds for the waste of his feudal hospitality, which the discontinuance of his pay might have otherwise essentially diminished.
It is purely a black-mail system, and the merchant who refuses to pay will be thrown into prison on some frivolous charge. The police master of Igoon has a small salary, but has grown very wealthy in a few years. The Russian and Chinese governors have considered the affair several times, but accomplish nothing.
Particularly I may mention the horde of brigands of Wady-es-Sour, which infest the routes between Touat and Tafilelt. But this horde is more placable, and mostly, after levying black-mail, will allow a caravan to pass uninterruptedly on its way.
For instance, in 1804 Admiral Nelson menaced the town with a large fleet, and not long afterwards the Americans absolutely declined to pay their "black-mail," and sent a squadron to procure, or, if need were, to compel a favourable treaty of peace with the Algerines.
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