510 
Recommendations of the 
food should be cheap. They contend, however, that the low- 
price of agricultural produce, beneficial as it is to the general 
community, lessens the ability of the land to bear the proportion 
of taxation which has heretofore been imposed upon it. 
Local Taxation.* 
The history of the various imposts that are now levied for 
local purposes is very fully given in the evidence to which we 
have already referred. The first and the most important of these 
is the rate for the relief of the poor. 
This rate, the heaviest local impost to which real property is 
subjected, has been taken as the foundation upon which the 
whole system of local rating has been built up. Although, 
to adopt the words of a resolution of the Committee of the 
House of Lords (1850) upon Parochial Assessments, *' The 
relief of the poor is a national object, to which every description 
of property ought justly to be called upon to contribute, and 
the Act 43 Eliz., c. 2, contemplates such contribution according to 
the ability of every inhabitant ;" and although the decisions of 
courts of law established the liability of personal property to 
rating for the relief of the poor, yet, since the most recent 
decision in that sense, it has continued to be exempted from such 
rating by the periodical Exemption Act. 
The practical effect of this is, that personal property is ex- 
empted not only from rates for the relief of the poor, but from 
others, as the cost of highways, police, and education. 
This exemption is grounded, not upon justice or equity, but 
simply upon public convenience. 
It is, no doubt, most important that expenditure for purposes 
which are exclusively local should be defrayed out of local 
resources. 
Looking, however, to the difficulty of localising a rate upon 
all personal property, it would seem that the equity of the case 
can only be met by assigning certain local taxes to the local 
authorities for local purposes, or by defraying some portion of 
local expenditure out of the Consolidated Fund. 
The justice of this view has been recognised from time to time 
by Parliamentary subventions in aid of local expenditure. 
We are of opinion — 
1st. That the cost of the maintenance of the indoor poor, 
instead of being paid, as at present, by a Union rate upon real 
property alone, should in future be defrayed either out of the 
* In separate Mcmoranla Mr. f-tansfeld, Mr. Cliai)liii, autl Mr. Pateraon 
express divergent views on this subject. 
