304 History of the English Landed Interest. 



rated for his farms, wliicli is precisely the same thing as if he 

 was to pay all instead of them, for his rental is lessened in exact, 

 proportion to their rates, but yet he has an income of five 

 hundred pounds a year, for instance, and lives at a distance 

 from his estate. What injustice v/ould it be to rate him for 

 this income ? He would evidently pay twice ; nevertheless, he 

 is open to this injustice, for if a man has the income^ no matter 

 from whence it comes, it is rateable." " If a farmer," says the 

 same author a little further on, " occupies a farm of £100 a year, 

 he is rated according to the real rent of his farm to the poor^ 

 and he pays the tithes of the produce of his lands and labour 

 to the parson, and is rated besides to the repairs of the church, 

 etc. ; he is made to bear the heat and the labour of the day, 

 and all the while can get but a bare subsistence for himself 

 and family, whilst a shopkeeper, in a house of £10 a- year, shall, 

 on the profits he makes in a parish, get more money, and main- 

 tain as large a family, and be liable to pay no more than one- 

 tenth of what the farmer pays. At 4s. in the pound the farmer, 

 on his £100 a year, at the rack rent pays £20 a year to the 

 poor's rates ; the shopkeeper, on his house of £10 a year, should 

 by that rule, exclusive of stock, pay £2. But the shopkeeper's 

 house of £10 a year shall be rated at but a quarter of its rent, 

 viz., at no more than £2 10s. ; where the shopkeeper, therefore, 

 pays one shilling, the farmer pays forty." 



Unfortunately for the Landed Interest, Young made his plaint 

 at a time when the public ear was captivated by far more 

 selfish doctrines. Let us recall to the reader that Locke had 

 denied the use of tiying to make any one else pay taxes except 

 the landlord ; that the physiocrats had said, " Out of the land 

 comes all a nation's wealth, so out of its owners' pockets should 

 naturally come all a nation's expenses ; " and that the free- 

 traders had said, " If the rest of the community be prosperous, 

 the landlord also must, and therefore let us withdraw the 

 bounties on exported wheat." It was certainly not for the 

 merchant and manufacturer to gainsay theories so delightfully 

 sparing of their own purses. 



But the abuses practised by the parish officer in the collec- 

 tion and distribution of the rates had frequently attracted 



