Writing in 1895, Sir Henry Bulwer, formerly High Commissioner, said: ‘There has never been a deficit, properly so called, in Cyprus. Revenue has always been largely in excess of expenditure in the island. What deficits there have been since the British Occupation have been entirely due to the obligation to make this annual payment (the socalled Tribute), nominally to Turkey, but actually to the British Treasury for the bondholders of the Turkish Guaranteed Loan of 1855.’ An earlier High Commissioner, Sir Robert Biddulph, had also written: ‘It is obvious that it is unreasonable to suppose that the revenue will at present admit of such an enormous subsidy as we are paying to Turkey, and that it is hard on a country which has a revenue that is double the expenditure to be compelled to postpone public works and to continue a number of taxes which press heavily on the people.’

In the following pages no attempt will be made to set forth the financial history of the island; but some account will be given of the development of taxation and of the Tribute question.

The reform of the amorphous mass of taxation (there were at least twenty-four different kinds of tax), which was the source of the revenue from which the Tribute was derived, was necessarily slow and difficult. The Turks had left hardly anything untaxed. The fond expectation entertained by the population, that with the coming of the British they would be relieved of all taxation, was quickly dispelled.