Taxation as affecting the Agricultural Interest. 411 = 145 
right to relief which he can legally enforce, a more or less 
aalified obligation on certain authorities to relieve the destitute 
IS so long existed, as to lead, in practice, to the usual assumption 
lat the pauper has to be maintained at the public cost. 
Very early in our history, stringent laws against vagrancy and its origin, 
egging were passed, and attempts were made to regulate the 
larity of individuals. Social changes, and the dissolution of 
le monasteries in the sixteenth century, led to more systematic 
ut unsuccessful efforts to stimulate and organise voluntary aid 
) the poor by means of alms collected more or less directly under 
xlesiastical sanction. Finally, in statutes of the reigns of 
lenry VIII., Edward VI., and Queen Elizabeth, we find the 
erm of our modern Poor Law system ; while an Act passed in 
601, in the 43rd year of the latter reign, finally established the 
arochial tax, now familiar as the Poor-rate. This rate was 
nposed by law on every inhabitant, parson, and other and every 
ccupier of lands, houses, and certain named sorts of fixed pro- 
erty. Although intended to sweep up what it termed the whole 
ability of the parish," the taxation of stock-in-trade and personal 
roperty which the Act required, but which must always have 
een attended with great difficulty, and which was in early times 
f very secondary importance, was gradually dropped in practice, 
nd is now annually suspended by a special exemption Act. The 
'oor-rate thus became — in spite of the apparent belief of its 
amers that they could tax the occupiers of lands or houses with- 
ut affecting these properties themselves — a direct and heavy 
mpost on the several hereditaments which were incidentally 
amed in the statute, and which seem to have been specifically 
iidicated more as measures of ability than as the objects of a tax. 
The dimensions of this rate were not, however, great until the its fluctua- 
lose of the eighteenth century, when a lavish distribution of out- tions. 
oor relief arose, and an extensive employment of the tax in 
upplementing the scale of wages (necessitated by a period of war 
nd high prices throughout the country), quadrupled the tax in 
he lifetime of a single generation, and involved the levy of a 
^oor-rate of more than 9,000,000/. in the year 1818. Although 
ower totals subsequently prevailed, the pernicious consequences 
if mal-administration entailed a very oppressive burden on the 
atepayers, both agricultural and urban ; and the Report of the 
'oor Law Commissioners of 1833 revealed a state of matters in 
/hich this tax, which in the previous century had showed an 
verage of but 2s. per head on the population, was then in some 
istricts 30s. and even 40s. a head, and threatened to swallow 
^ ip the whole rental of property. 
"Ilfl This Report secured the great Poor Law Reform of 1834, 
'"■irhich in three years reduced the rate by 36 per cent., and 
