The Land Taxation and the Economists. 171 



The remaining history of the tax is soon told : the impost 

 continued to be levied for over a century by means of a bill 

 introduced annually for the purpose. The country gentry 

 always grumbled, but always passed it. In times of war it 

 was as high as 4s., and in times of peace it was never lower 

 than 3s., except in the reign of George III., when Walpole was 

 enabled, by judicious finance, to reduce it for a time to one 

 shilling. Then came the dispute with the American Colonies, 

 during which the rate rose again and remained steady at 

 4s., — so steady, in fact, that in 1798 Parliament dispensed with 

 the task of re-enacting annually the legislation dealing with 

 the rate, and made it permanent at 4s., though subject to re- 

 demption at the option of the landowner. At first the latter 

 eagerly availed himself of the powers to redeem. Purchases 

 of the tax amounted in the first year to £13,059,586, and in 

 the second to £3,034,216. Thenceforward such transactions 

 became rare and insignificant, so that some £1,100,000 still 

 represents the annual receipts from the impost. 



By having this tax, so to speak, stereotyped at an immutable 

 percentage in the pound, the Landed Interest gained what 

 must not be called an undue advantage, but rather an unex- 

 pected limitation of a disadvantage. Since 1798 the incomes 

 of landlords have been probably doubled, and therefore what 

 was originally intended as an outgoing of 4s. in the pound 

 dwindled down to 2s. This, to the superficial view of other 

 interests, seems the more unfair, because of the depreciation 

 of funded property in comparison to that of land during the 

 last hundred years. In the words of the late Professor Rogers : 

 " If one capitalist in the reign of Queen Anne invested his 

 savings in the public funds to the amount of £100,000, and 

 another laid out £100,000 in the purchase of land, each would 

 probably have received some £6,000 a year from the invest- 

 ment. But if the same property is held at the present day, 

 each by the descendant of those ancestors, the former would be 

 receiving about £2,500 a year, and the latter about £6,000." ^ 



* See also a similar argument used by the Manchester school in 1842: 

 The, Constitutional Right to a Revision of the Land Tax — Anti-Corn 

 Law League. 



