396= 130 Taxation as affecting the Agricultural Interest. 
Viewing the whole taxes of the country as thus grouped, the 
first division will be found composed of a series of imposts, each 
of special or particular incidence, and charged directly on 
certain forms of capital or income, while the second and larger 
division will embrace all less direct taxes, which usually take 
the form of fiscal additions to the outlay of the people at large. 
So marked, however, is the distinction between the way in I 
which these two branches of taxation affect the upper and middle ' 
classes of the country on the one hand, and the lower classes on 
the other, that no intelligent appreciation of the quotas borne by t. 
the agricultural, or any other section of the community, is pes- I 
sible without a still further attempt to discriminate between the 
incidence of taxation on one or the other of these great social 
grades. There is not a little difficulty in fixing the proper line 
between these classes. I have not, however, attempted to depan 
from the system usually adopted, whereby the earnings o J 
manual labour are left in the lower, and all other incomes rale 
gated to the higher class. No doubt a closer analysis, distin 
guishing, if it were possible, the lower middle class- — in whicl ^ 
direct taxes are added to a relatively heavy share of those oi ' 
consumption — would reveal a great divergence from an averag 
rate of burden distributed over the wide area of each class, a 
above defined. For the finer calculations of financiers, it is als 
true, note has to be taken not only of the nominal amount ( , 
each tax imposed by the Legislature but also of the extra co: j 
to the payer of the impost, frequently inseparable from tl | 
otherwise convenient form of its levy ; but this is too minui i 
and delicate a matter to be set forth in the broad lines of tl 
present inquiry. 
Distribution of In framing the following Table (p. 131) I have combined tl 
taxation. estimates of financial authorities — such as Leone Levi and Dudl< 
Baxter — varying these only so far as good reason dppears for 
doing in recent fiscal changes, or in the known consumption | 
taxable commodities in later years. 
Light and vol- The percentage of taxation borne by the upper and middle, 
racter^of'work P^'op^^'^i*^*^^ classes, thus appears to be half as great again as th 
ing class on the working classes. Bearing in mind the greater n 
taxation. pressure of the same percentages on the lower range of incomtj 
purpose to go a little farther than this. In the case of the Inhabited House Dil 
for instance, I helievo it lulvisablc to follow the usual opinion of ^economislB 
this charge falls practically not upon tlio income of the house-owner but on 
expenditure of the house-oocupier. So too with local rates. These, though | 
by the occupier, arc assumed above to fall upon the property taxed ; while 1 
again there are strong economic reasons for similarly allotting a share to the ( 
lay of the occupier. This share has been taken to be one-fourth in the caaj 
land and one-half in the case of houses. Only the remainder of tlie rateal 
these properties, with the whole of those on minor hereditamouts, ia betea| 
regarded as incident on the owners. 
