XDF-5

It was difficult for individual samurai overlords to increase their income because the amount of rice that farmers could be made to pay in taxes was not unlimited, and since the income of Japan’s central government consisted in part of taxes collected by the shogun from his huge domain, the government too was constrained. Therefore, the Tokugawa shoguns began to look to other sources for revenue. Cash profits from government-owned mines were already on the decline because the most easily worked deposits of silver and gold had been exhausted, although debasement of the coinage had compensated for the loss. Opening up new farmland was a possibility, but most of what was suitable had already been exploited and further reclamation was technically unfeasible. Direct taxation of the samurai themselves would be politically dangerous. This left the shoguns only commerce as a potential source of government income.

7.     Which of the following could best be substituted for the word “This” in line 47 without changing the meaning of the passage?

(A) The search of Japan’s Tokugawa shoguns for solvency

(B) The importance of commerce in feudal Japan

(C) The unfairness of the tax structure in eighteenth century Japan

(D) The difficulty of increasing government income by other means（D）

(E) The difficulty experienced by both individual samurai and the shogun himself in extricating themselves from debt

请问: A 为什么不对?　作者列举寻求收入的方法．然后得出结论This left the shoguns only commerce as a potential source of government income.

把A中的search和D中的difficulty分别替代到This中，你觉得哪个更直接和清晰地表达了文章的意思呢？

difficulty是shoguns search的结果。这个结果导致了shoguns寻求commerce作为一途径。

Thx!