74 LOCAL TAXATION 



and the Leicester and Norwich Ratepayers' Associations.* 

 The minutes of October, 1870, also refer to the National 

 Association for the Equalisation of the Poor Rate. The 

 Social Science Congress discussed the subject at Plymouth 

 in 1872 when Major Craigie opened the discussion, and again 

 at Norwich in 1873 ; but there is no further reference to any 

 of these agencies after 1873, and the Chambers were left to 

 carry on the fight single-handed from that time until about 

 1900, when the County Councils' Association took the question 

 up, and a number of ratepayers' associations came into 

 existence. 



The Act of 1836 mentioned above, marked an epoch in the 

 history of Local Taxation, and it is not necessary in this 

 connection to go further back than that year, except to remark 

 in passing that previous to 1834 no grants-in-aid of local 

 burdens had been made from the National Exchequer ; in 

 that year, however, a Select Committee recommended that 

 the expenses of prosecutions at assizes, of the conveyance of 

 prisoners, of maintaining militia establishments, and of 

 preparing certain Parliamentary Returns should be met out 

 of public revenue, and in 1836 110,000 was provided for 

 defraying half the cost of prosecutions and of removing 

 prisoners. 



Between that year and the institution of the Chambers 

 the subject was raised in Parliament on several occasions. 

 In 1845 Mr. Miles urged that the State should bear the whole 

 cost of assize prosecutions, maintenance of prisoners, half 

 cost of county prisons, and coroners' inquests, and the whole 

 cost of registration of voters. The estimated cost of these 

 services was 350,000. In 1846 Sir Robert Peel promised to 

 provide for transferring a part of local burdens from the rates 

 to the Exchequer, as a sort of quid pro quo for the repeal of 

 the Corn Laws. In the same year a Select Committee of the 

 House of Lords recommended the relief of real property from 



* A paper was read by Mr. Dudley Baxter at the Royal Statistical 

 Society's offices in 1868, and the Royal Statistical Society's prize 

 essay by Mr. (afterward? Sir) Inglis Palgrave, in 1871, were also two- 

 important contributions on the question. 



