170 History of the English Landed Interest. 



sioner was an estate of £300 per annum (the same, be it re- 

 membered, as was then necessary to enable a member to sit in 

 the House of Commons). One of the writers ^ already quoted 

 points out that this did not constitute a sufficient guarantee 

 for such an official's integrity. As a body these Land-tax Com- 

 missioners were considered to be no less venial and corrupt 

 than was, in the estimation of this would-be reformer, the 

 Lower House of the legislature. He asserted that they pre- 

 ferred, as assessors and collectors, men who were capable of 

 doing " dirty work, and who at their bidding would rate their 

 employers low, and lay the burden of the tax upon their 

 feebler neighbours." He professed to know an instance of a 

 parish where a worthy clergyman of moderate income paid 4.9. 

 in the pound for his glebe, while the squire, being a Commis- 

 sioner, managed so excellently that he paid but 2s. He 

 estimated the total rental of the kingdom at £20,000,000, 

 which if properly assessed should have returned a revenue 

 from this particular impost of £-4,000,000, but which under 

 the assessment of 4 and 5 William & Mary only produced 

 £1,827,713.2 



No wonder that a collision occurred between the two Houses 

 of Parliament in 1692, when the new assessment was decided 

 upon. All the pent-up hatred for the tax bubbled over. The 

 Lords, who had partly evaded their share of the burden, re- 

 fused to allow their estates to be valued by Commoners, at which 

 the Lower House broke into angry rebellion. Mulgrave, in 

 one of the most eloquent speeches ever delivered in West- 

 minster, besought his fellow-peers not to yield their ancient 

 greatness to the mercy of pretentious plebeians. An idea pre- 

 vailed that the Lords desired to assess their own taxation, but 

 what they only claimed was the right to value their own 

 property. Even this they ceded for the sake of the public 

 interest ; and, after all, the new scheme put an end to some of 

 the worst defects of the old arrangement. 



^ English Liberty in Some Sense Worse than French Slavery, etc., 

 etc. 1748. 



^ Compare Macaulay, who saj^s that it amounted to half a millioii at 

 Is. in the povind, vol. vi. ch. xix. p. 326. 



