1 68 History of the English Landed Interest. 



very bad consequence to the nation, in having made a distinc- 

 tion where there is no difference, viz. of landed and trading 

 interests. Country gentlemen, finding the land tax a heavy 

 burden on them, thought to ease themselves by loading the 

 trader, whom they looked upon with a jealous eye, thinking 

 his situation easier, whereby that trade which had raised the 

 value of their estates and which only could support the in- 

 creased value, being deprived of their protection, and cramped 

 with duties without mercy on all occasions, has indeed been 

 brought sujfficiently low, and is bringing down with it the 

 rents of their lands, and they may see the fatal error when it 

 is perhaps too late, trade being a coy dame difficult to be 

 brought back when slighted." ^ 



Decker, be it borne in mind, was one of those champions 

 of commerce who watched with a jealous eye any attempt to 

 tax his particular industry. Just such another was the writer 

 of English Liberty in Some Cases Worse than French Slavery. 

 He declared that personal property had been already charged 

 for land tax £150,r)00 per annum, and he imagined that he saw 

 in the procedure of the Commissioners a tendency to fraudu- 

 lently increase this sum. To such he held up as a warning 

 the example of the Dutch, whose landowners, by excess of 

 power, had grown insolent and laid the burden of taxation on 

 the lesser citizens and traders, whereby they had been de- 

 prived of their authority, and had been compelled to pay 

 ruinous taxes amounting to 9s. and 10s. per acre.^ 



The various allusions of these writers are more or less clear 

 to the reader from what has gone before; but thej^ appear 

 both to recognise and to deprecate a new departure in fiscal 

 legislation originating from the assessment of 1692, which has 

 yet to be explained. The advisers of William and Mary had 

 not been disposed to alienate still further the half-hearted 

 loyalty of the country gentry by increasing the taxation of 

 the soil ; so in 1692 they ordered a new assessment of all kinds 

 of property, in which personalty, whether productive or the 



^ Cause of the Decline of Foreign Trade, etc. M. Decker. 

 ' English Liberty in Some Cases Worse than French Slavery, etc., etc. 

 1748. 



