PROTECTION TAXES ON FEEE TRADE PRICES 205 



dens readjusted ? Are they lightened ? On the contrary, 

 they are enormously increased. Agricultural land is 

 assessed at 82 per cent, of the gross income, while rail- 

 ways, mines, and houses, which alone enjoy the so-called 

 unearned increment, escape respectively at 31, 42, and 77 

 per cent. Once this was just, now it is flagrantly unjust. 

 New charges have been thrown upon agricultural land : as 

 local burdens, education rates are glaring anomalies ; rate- 

 payers have lost their tolls and the whole maintenance of 

 highways falls upon the landed interests, though it is the 

 brewer or the coal merchant who makes the profitable use 

 of roads. If landlords and tenants invest capital in im- 

 provements, or borrow money and similarly apply it, they 

 are assessed upon the improvements. If they invest in the 

 funds they escape, as does the mortgagee who holds a 

 charge upon the land. Is it then surprising that farm- 

 ing improvements, in these hard times, are not effected ? 

 Traders, fundholders, manufacturers enjoy a regulated 

 system of poor law, security of life and property, and well- 

 kept roads for nothing ; owners and occupiers of land at the 

 cost of millions. Not only are new charges thrown upon 

 agricultural land, and old means of assistance withdrawn, 

 but, item by item, with the exception of church rate, every 

 one of the old charges ' is increased, and this upon what is 

 possibly a lower income than that of 1815, when Protec- 

 tion prevailed, and when the Poor Law acted as a wages 

 fund. Mr. Goscheu, in the conclusion of his report on 

 Local Taxation,^ says of 1868, 'An historical retrospect 

 seems to prove that, as regards the burdens on land, they 

 are not heavier than they have been at various periods of 

 this century.' But, with all deference to his eminent 



* See Appendix XIII., Local Taxation. 



* Parliamentary Accounts and Papers, 1870, vol. Iv. 



