The Land Taxation and the Economists. 167 



the excise dues in exchange for his lost feudal perquisites by a 

 narrow majority in 1660, may have, later on, so far cooled as to 

 have brought about the reimposition of the subsidy as the 

 more proper substitute of these abolished revenues. At any 

 rate we find that the landed gentry were obliged to contribute 

 their quota to what was virtually a property tax, though 

 they received some compensation, for what they thus dis- 

 bursed from their rents, by means of the bounty on exported 

 corn.^ 



The next phase in the history of this tax coincides with 

 the French War and Irish Rebellion, events immediately 

 following on the Revolution ; and it was during this period 

 (1689-1691) that the land suffered most from the impost. It 

 was then that experts began to animadvert on its unequal 

 incidence. From the statistics of the poll tax, hearth and 

 poor rates, etc., Davenant sought to demonstrate, that the 

 hitherto wealthier eastern and southern counties had been 

 so crippled by the tax, as to have yielded the lead in pros- 

 perity to the less heavily mulcted northern and western 

 districts. Decker took up the same plaint in his Essay on the 

 Causes of the Decline of the Foreign Trade, and asserted that 

 though the rate of the land tax was then 4s. in the pound, 

 many did not pay above 2s., " and that without any reason, 

 but because the estates happen to be in different counties, 

 which were variously affected to a new king when the present 

 assessment was made, whereby some members of the com- 

 munity being ever since put undeservedly in a worse condition 

 than others, are a dead weight against even our most 

 necessary enlarged expenses ; wrong policy, that increases 

 dissension always in times of difficulty. The tediousness of 

 the coming of this tax, which is generally two years, is a 

 great disadvantage ; in times of safety, creates annual expen- 

 sive loans, but in times of the greatest danger, leaves us 

 quite in distress. 'Tis the highest impropriety to call that 

 the aid of the present year which is to be paid in the two 

 next ensuing. This tax has besides been attended with a 



'■ See Dowell's History of Taxation, xi. 16, and Cuuningliam's Com- 

 merce, Pt. II. p. 404. 



