The Assessment of Agricultural Land. 
789 
were considered to be but trifles is of great moment. With wheat 
under one pound a quarter, and with many of the other crops that 
he grows at similarly low prices, the farmer of arable land in England 
has been driven to see how he can reduce his expenditure ; and in 
looking around him with that intent many such a farmer finds that he 
is unfairly assessed for rating purposes, and, as he contends, on an 
altogether wrong principle. Putting aside on the present occasion the 
wider question, whether land, houses, and other real property ought 
to bear the entire burden of rates for what are called local purposes 
to the exoneration of other classes of property, let us endeavour to 
ascertain what is the principle upon which agricultural and other 
land is assessed for rating purposes, and whether such principle is 
fair and right. The principle, I need hardly say, is laid down by 
Parliament. The Parochial Assessment Act of 1836 (6 & 7 Wm. IV. 
c. 96) enacts in its first section that no rate for the relief of the poor shall 
be of any force which shall not be made “ upon an estimate of the 
net annual value of the hereditaments rated thereunto ; that is to say, 
of the rent at which the same might reasonably be expected to let 
from year to year, free of all usual tenant’s rates and taxes, and tithe 
commutation rent charge (if any), and deducting therefrom the 
probable average annual cost of the repairs, insurance, and other 
expenses (if any) necessary to maintain them in a state to command 
such rent.” And the principle is affirmed in the Union Assessment Act 
1862, which constituted Union Assessment Committees, and which, 
after directing that the overseers of each parish in the union should 
make a list of all ratable hereditaments within such parish with 
the annual value thereof in a particular form scheduled to the Act, 
to be called “ The Valuation List,” enacted that the gross estimated 
rental for the purposes of the list should be “the rent at which 
the hereditament might reasonably be expected to let from year 
to year free of all usual tenant’s rates and taxes, and tithe 
commutation rent charge (if any),” and expressly provided that “ the 
provisions of the earlier Act defining the net annual value of the 
hereditaments to be rated should not be repealed or interfered with.” 
Now there would seem to be two modes by which, without 
contravening the principle laid down by Parliament, the annual 
value may be determined. The one, by taking the actual rent paid ; 
for how can land reasonably be expected to be let for more than it 
actually does let ? And the other, by what has been called “ com- 
parative value,” that is to say, taking a certain farm as worth so 
much per acre and estimating other farms at more or less per 
acre according as in the opinion of the committee they are better 
or worse farms than the, so to say, standard farm. It is the latter 
course that is adopted by almost all assessment committees. To quote 
from Mr. Pringle’s recent report on parts of the county of Essex to 
the present Royal Commission on Agriculture : — 
In arriving at their valuation, the members of the assessment committees, 
although they take the actual value of land as determined by rent and tithe 
as a guide, do not by any means accept it as a basis for assessment. 
