56 RATES AND TAXES 



degenerated into what came to be known 

 as the annual land tax. The simple truth 

 was that owing to the practical difficulties 

 of assessment, personal property slipped out 

 of the reckoning, and real property being 

 immovable and visible, came to bear the 

 whole, and not the mere residue of the 

 amount exacted from any locality. 1 



There are one or two other points about 

 this annual land tax that deserve considera- 

 tion. Although the amount was nominally 

 so much in the of the rental, it was 

 in fact not a tax but a rate. One shilling 

 in the simply meant that, in round 

 numbers, half a million was to be raised 

 from the country as a whole, the amounts 

 assigned to the particular localities being 

 based on the yield of a certain year ; then 

 to raise this sum the localities must impose 

 the rate that was necessary, which would 

 1 See Dowell, vol. iii., p. 50. 



