1 20 History of the English Landed Interest. 



fundamental principle of its leaders was, that all profits being 

 originally drawn from the soil, so too should all taxation be. 

 So strongly rooted was this conception, that not even the pub- 

 lication and subsequent popularity of Adam Smith's Wealth of 

 Nations seems to have dissipated the erroneous doctrine, or 

 at any rate led to practical results. Perhaps there is no more 

 convincing proof that Roman municipal and commercial prin- 

 ciples were by no means obliterated by Saxon ignorance and 

 rusticity than that they eventually grew into such a power in 

 the country as to threaten the existence of any Grovernment, 

 however strong, that ventured to interfere with their interests. 

 Statesmen even now cannot and dare not call upon commercia.1 

 capital to bear its proper share in the national taxation ; and 

 so the statistical columns of our inland revenue sheets con- 

 tinue to be made up principally of items extorted from the 

 landed interest, as though the economical table of Quesnai 

 and the writings of Mirabeau and Turgot were still the text- 

 books of our chancellors of exchequer. 



No wonder then that in these primitive times Danegeld was 

 a land tax, that every five hides of ground had to furnish its 

 armed unit to the national host ; that the soil supplied the 

 requisites for road and bridge repairs, and that its occupiers 

 produced the funds necessary for the national fortresses. 



It is clear that for these purposes, the last three of which 

 are better known under the name of Trinoda Necessitas, some 

 rough estimate of the country's area would be required ; and 

 so even in Heptarchical days the land had been measured and 

 its area computed in hides. Without entering into a discussion 

 of the particular area known as the hide, which is best dealt 

 with when we come to compare it wdth the carucate, it may be 

 mentioned that it comprised as much land as a man and team 

 could plough in a year. 



Camden in his Britannia has given a table containing 

 the separate areas of the counties below the Humber as they 

 were divided in these times, which we subjoin. 



