The DissohUion of the Monasteries. 285 



paying the rent ; and tlie personal estate of the tradesman was 

 also ruled as coming under the meaning of the Elizabethan, 

 legislation. 



The reader has now only to refer to the modern system of 

 rating to decide for himself how far the original intentions of 

 Tudor legislators have been adhered to. The property now 

 rateable is perhaps best defined by 6 & 7 Will. IV., intituled "An 

 Act to Regulate Parochial Assessment," which, after reciting 

 the desirability of establishing one uniform mode of rating and 

 lessening the cost of appeal against an unfair assessment, enacts 

 that no rate shall be allowed by any justices or be in force 

 which shall not be made upon an estimate of the net annual 

 value of the several hereditaments rated thereunto, that is to 

 say, at the rent at which the same might reasonably be expected 

 to let from year to year free of all usual tenant's rates and 

 taxes and tithe commutation rentcharge if any, but deduct- 

 ing therefrom the probable average annual cost of the repairs, 

 insurance and other expenses necessary to maintain them in a 

 state to command such rent, provided that nothing in the Act 

 contained should be construed to alter or affect the principles 

 or different relative liabilities, if any, according to which differ- 

 ent kinds of hereditaments were then by law rateable. ^ 



It is quite clear then that the bulk of the nation's personal 

 estate had evaded the charge. The merchant's wares, the trades- 

 man's goods, the banker's bullion, and the manufacturer's 

 profits had proved as variable as the shifting sand, and de- 

 fied the best efforts of the assessor. 



It would hardly be within the province of a land history to 

 trace how the rate has come to be levied on real property only. 

 It may however be concluded that since an Elizabethan law 

 enacted that individuals might be taxed either on their goods 

 or land, the merchant would prefer to pay the few shillings 



^ The term hereditament signifies any immovable thing, corporeal or 

 incorporeal, which a man may have to him and his heirs by way of in- 

 heritance. It comprehends in its meaning both real and personal pro- 

 perty, but it excludes that form of the latter known as chattels, which 

 descends to the executors and not to the heirs. See Jacobs, Law Diet., 

 sub voc. "Hereditament." 



