284 History of the English Landed Interest. 



that the taxation of the land's produce would have on the 

 land's owner. Lastly, it is more than possible, it is even pro- 

 bable, that the national legislators never presupposed such 

 an injustice as that of charging real property a second time 

 over with the entire support of a pauper population, two-thirds 

 of which had been born and bred in the strongholds of trade. 



An examination of the methods adopted in rating strongly 

 favours this last supposition. " They shall tax and assess all 

 and every inhabitant dwelling in every city, borough, town, 

 village, hamlet, and place known, etc., etc.," says the statute 

 14 Eliz. c. 5. For a long time every judge's ruling was based 

 either on this clause or on that in 43 Eliz. c. 2, which defines 

 more clearly still the kinds of property taxable. *' The rate," it 

 enacts, " shall be made by taxation of every inhabitant, parson, 

 vicar and other, and of every occupier of lands, houses, tithes, 

 impropriate, propriations of tithes, coal mines, or saleable under- 

 wood." It is hardly possible to conceive that the intention of 

 the legislators meant anything but the taxation of all kinds of 

 property, personal as well as real. Judge after judge interpreted 

 the Act thus. Market tolls were ruled taxable by Lord Chief 

 Justice Hales. Market profits, goods in a shop, saltpits and 

 sheds were included in the same category. " All things that 

 were real, and a yearly revenue," was the definition of rateable 

 property.^ People were to be rated " according to their estates 

 of goods known, or according to the known yearly value of 

 their lands, farms, and occupyings." But though they might 

 be taxed singly for either goods or lands, they were not doubly 

 liable on both heads. Goods and lands were to be rated equally 

 at 6 per cent., but the latter on their yearly value, not their 

 area; liability for which charge lay on the occupier, and 

 not on the owner. Nor was the land once rated in this way 

 to be charged a second time, by taxing its rental.^ A farmer 

 was held liable to poor rates on his riches and stock if they 

 exceeded that quantity necessary for carrying on the farm^ and 



• Resolv. 19. 



* ViiU Legal Proi-isions for the Poor, by S. C. (1710), who quotes from 

 Lambert, Dalton, and Keble. See also Burn, On the Poor Laws. 



^ See Jacobs, Diet., sub voc. " Poor Law." 



