172 History of the English Landed Interest. 



But the period at which the land tax was made a fixed 

 charge was, as we shall see later on, the date of a fresh income 

 tax ; and just as the term " Subsidy " had been converted suc- 

 cessiveh'^ into " Property Tax^"" and then into " Land Tax^'''' 

 to meet the altered exigencies of its imposition, so now it be- 

 came, to all intents and purposes, a " Rent Charge^'''' so as to 

 avoid any accentuation of the fact that its original conditions 

 were about to be reimposed upon the community in the form 

 of an Income Tax. In fact, the only justification for thus 

 burdening landed property a second time over was the sup- 

 position that the first institution of the charge in 1692 was 

 intended to replace the Crown dues both from the abolished 

 militarj^ tenures and Tudor aids. But if the landlords yield 

 this disputed point, they are surely justified in strongly pro- 

 testing against all attempts to re-establish this tax on any 

 amended assessment of rents at the present day, as has been 

 suggested more than once by political economists,^ and of late 

 in the House of Commons. 



A short examination will suffice to complete our narrative 

 of the various taxes to which exception had been taken by the 

 pamphleteers of the eighteenth century. 



The window tax was one sufficiently distasteful to the landed 

 proprietor, but detested by the merchant, who cried out 

 against the practice of treating factories, inns, and lodging- 

 houses on equal terms with the nobleman's seat. The land- 

 lord contented himself with evading the charge by recon- 

 structing his system of architecture. In many of the new 

 country mansions, built in the Italian style, windows had been 

 reduced to a minimum ; but light was too necessary to buildings 

 set apart for industrial purposes for an evasion of the tax by 

 this means. The popular discontent, however, had very little 



' Adam Smith, for example, recommended that it should be made 

 variaVjle with rent and hy necessity with improvements, in such a way 

 that all covenants prescribing any particular modes or circumstances of 

 culture should be considered as rent, and taxed heavier than common 

 rent, because they are impertinences — a proposition which, as ably pointed 

 out by Arthur Young, was tantamount to discouraging the system of 

 leases. Comp. Wealth of Nations, Bk. V. p. 268, Edition of 1809, and 

 Annals of Af/ricnlfMre, vol. xx. p. 495, 



