382 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



classes whicli a wise statesmanship would protect, and leaving the 

 minimum burden on those who are most capable of bearing its 

 maximum. 



A new feature of the British fiscal system, which in a certain 

 sense may be regarded as an increase of the exemption under the 

 existing income tax, has recently been sanctioned by Parliament 

 under the name of the " Farm Rating Act," which proposes to 

 mitigate existing agricultural depression by relieving farm lands of 

 a large part of their share of local taxation — i. e., as pointed out in 

 debate in the House of Commons, by Sir William Harcourt, " by tak- 

 ing £2,000,000 ($10,000,000) out of the general taxation of the 

 country," inasmuch as, if certain existing sources of revenue supply 

 less, other taxes must supply more. " This will bring up the total 

 governmental contribution for like purposes to £6,000,000 in 1868, 

 and £11,000,000 in 1892." In a debate on this subject before the 

 Royal Statistical Society, it was maintained that an assessment of the 

 English poor rate, to which nearly all other English rates were now 

 mere additions, was originally founded on the principle of ability 

 to pay, and that principle had never been expressly repudiated. But 

 the making of this expenditure a local charge was in itself a negation 

 of the princijDle of taxation according to ability, and the only ques- 

 tion now was whether an attempt to establish in each locality a prin- 

 ciple which had been established as regards the nation as a whole. 

 The answer was in the negative. 



" Speaking very broadly," wrote Mr. Goschen a quarter of a cen- 

 tury ago, " in England fifty years ago land bore two thirds of the 

 taxation on real property, and houses and other property one third; 

 the latter now bears two thirds, w^hile lands bear one third. In 

 Erance lands bore over two thirds more than fifty years ago, and bear 

 more than two thirds still. Land, in short, is not as a rule highly 

 rated in England, and where it is highly rated what is wanted is a 

 revised assessment." 



What is Exemption feom Taxation? — An exemption is free- 

 dom from a burden or service to which others are liable; but an 

 exemption for a public purpose, or a valid consideration, is not an 

 exemption except in name, for the valid and full consideration, or the 

 public purpose promoted, is received in lieu of the tax. Xor is an 

 exemption from taxation a discriminating burden on those who pay 

 an income tax, provided the person or institution benefited by the 

 exemption is a pauper, or a public charitable institution; for then 

 there is consideration for the exemption, and it is justified as a 

 matter of economy, and to prevent an expensive circuity of action in 

 levying the tax with the sole purpose of giving it back to the intended 

 beneficiary of the Government. The avoidance of this unnecessary 



