416= 150 Taxation as affecting the Agricultural Interest. 
however, with similar but much larger town imposts for the 
specific advantage of rateable property, and being, at all events, 
statutable applications of individual contributions for a public 
purpose by public bodies, they cannot be wholly excluded from 
a general survey. The extent of these taxes is relatively small : 
while the new Sanitary-rates, the administration of which is 
entrusted in each union to the rural portion of the Boards oJ 
Guardians, have as yet only begun to be felt in country 
districts. 
Education- The Education-rates are also modern imposts. Dating onl^ 
rates. from 1870, they are levied where School Boards are voluntaril} 
formed, or where they are enforced by the Central Government ii 
consequence of the failure otherwise to provide the local facilitie: 
now required for elementary education. At the date of the las 
Report from the Privy Council, 2346 of the 14,000 non 
municipal parishes of England were placed under these nev 
Boards and subjected to this new rate. Several of these area 
possess so much of an urban character that I have credited thei 
rates to town districts. The School Board-rate is thus neces 
sarily varied in its pressure, and confined to particular district; 
since the funds which in one locality are thus raised by a tax o 
all ratepayers, are in others provided by voluntary" subscription; 
The average incidence of this rate in those rural areas where 
is levied exceeds the present amount of the imperial income-tax 
and being charged on their full rentals, it represents to farme 
a wholly new tax of twice this magnitude. In upwards of sixl 
cases, indeed, a tax of Is. in the pound, or 5 per cent, and U] 
wards, on rental, has thus occurred, and considerable irritation 
consequently felt in agricultural districts at the large addition 
taxation involved in the Education-rate. 
Variations in j^Qj- only do the local taxes generally exercise a very heai 
locaFi^ati'n'' pressure on British agriculture, but the mode also of the 
imposition practically tends, especially in England, to discouraj 
the application of fresh capital to the cultivation of the soil, 1 
exposing to immediate assessment funds which, till they we 
thus applied, bore only the much lighter fetters of imperial tax( 
The English valuation for local taxes does not, as is the ca' 
in Scotland and Ireland, recognise any claim on the part of n( 
agricultural improvements to a postponement of the spec, 
liabilities of older landed property. The provisional cxempti, 
of agricultural enterprise, by which a Scotch farmer is securl 
from higher assessment during the currency of his usual 21 yea 
lease, and by which Irish agricultural improvements are a • 
viewed with fiscal favour, does not hold good south of 1' 
Tweed. 
Scotch and Nor is this point the only one in which material differemJ 
Irish rates. 
