124 LOCAL TAXATION 



settlement of the whole question, as they ought to have been, 

 by about 1902, its promoters might have been pointed to as 

 real benefactors of a hardly treated industry. But for an 

 Act which has been re-enacted for seventeen or eighteen 

 years the principle was altogether wrong. The relief which 

 it appeared to give to agricultural ratepayers was illusory 

 after it had been in operation some ten years, and it has grown 

 worse each year since, although fe\v farmers have realised 

 this fact yet. The sum voted by Parliament under this Act 

 was a definite amount, fixed by the sum required to make 

 up the deficit of one-half the rateable value of agricultural 

 land for the year previous to the passing of the Act. It 

 amounted to about 1,332,000 that year, and has shrunk to 

 1,324,949, owing to certain areas classed as agricultural 

 land in 1896 having since been classed under other heads. 

 By the Act, although the amount is practically a fixed sum, 

 and although the amount required to be raised in rural 

 districts has vastly increased, agricultural land still receives 

 a rebate of half the rate payable on other properties. The 

 result has been that the general rate of the district has been 

 increased in order to make up the deficit, and farmers have 

 had to pay their share of this increase. 



1898. 



Nothing worth recording took place in 1897, the Committee 

 being mainly occupied in helping to work the Agricultural 

 Rates Act of 1896. The Annual Report of the Committee 

 for 1898 was the last one issued by them as a separate body, 

 as they were re-absorbed into the Central Chamber at the 

 end of the year. They handed over their funds on the under- 

 standing that a Standing Committee of the Chamber should 

 be appointed to deal with local taxation, and the Executive 

 of the old Committee were then appointed to form this 

 Standing Committee. 



