NOTES. 415 



stock. It was, undoubtedly, the intention of the law to 

 charge for the use of the dog of every description, and not 

 for his mere existence ; for a man may keep a Newfoundland 

 or other dog to guard his house free of duty, if he does not 

 use them in the field. " Sharp practice is always the word 

 with the tax-collector or surveyor and the gentleman, while 

 " loose and easy *' is the word between those functionaries 

 and the thief of game and deer. For this reason, that the 

 one will not take a false oath, and has money to pay ; while 

 the other will swear anything, and forces the tax-gatherer to 

 remember the old adage as to " what he is likely to catch in 

 sueing a beggar." The tax on dogs is a good one, properly 

 enforced, and an even one, too, if all were made to pay who 

 are liable : the poor man paying for one, and the gentleman 

 for many ; but I regret to say that the tax-collector is per- 

 haps the worse, the most unjust and uneven of all those 

 employed in the collection of the revenue, and never half 

 looked-up by the district commissioners. If every man was 

 made to pay for a licence to kill game, who notoriously and 

 openly does kill it, and all paid tax for dogs who used them 

 for sporting, the Chancellor of the Exchequer would find 

 an agreeable addition to his ways and means, and might let 

 the collectors wink at their immediate friends in their own 

 sphere of life, who either gave them dinners, or in the case 

 of their superiors, employed them in their several trades. 

 This corrected state of things will never be unless the re- 

 formation comes through the commissioners, and, as in some 

 cases, the commissioners would have to put their own houses 

 in order before they "looked up" the habitations of their un- 

 derlings, why I shall as soon see the alteration which I sin- 

 cerely desire, as Lord John Russell will the end of his Reform 

 Bill, for which he ever and anon pretends so much solicitude. 



THE END. 



