790 The Assessment of Agricultural Land. 
They endeavour to obtain, so far as possible, an equality of rating, 
not between individuals, but between the several parishes of which 
the union is made up. This mode is no doubt legal according to 
the principle laid down in the Acts of Parliament I have cited ; 
for the Acts say that the annual value is to be, not the rent at 
which the land is actually let, but at what “ it may reasonably be 
expected to let from year to year ” — in other words, not at the rent 
which the actual tenant pays, but at that which a hypothetical 
tenant from year to year would pay. 
The arguments usually adduced in support of this principle are 
that as land is sometimes let below and sometimes above its proper 
or legitimate annual value, you would, if you took the actual rent 
paid as a basis, ease the burden of the rates from the shoulders of 
him who is lightly rented, and add an additional weight on the 
shoulders of him who is already overweighted with a high rent ; 
and that, as Mr. Pringle reports was adduced in Essex, the fact 
that a farm being held for one shilling an acre does not prevent the 
farmer from keeping horses which are constantly using the roads, 
nor from employing ploughmen and other labourers whose children 
must be educated and poor relieved ; and also that there were certain 
parts of Essex where, if assessments were based upon actual annual 
rent, the rates would be so increased upon occupiers of land still 
in fair condition that the burden would be almost ruinous to them. 
But against these arguments it is contended that this principle 
of “ comparative value ” operates far more unjustly than the 
principle of taking the actual rent as a basis would, as well on the 
individual ratepayer as on the land rated, because the ratepayer has 
to pay on a higher rent than that which he actually pays, and 
because coo large a share of the burden is placed upon agricultural 
land as distinguished from house property, shops, manufactories, 
tithes, and other ratable property in the same parish or union. The 
latter properties, which, as a rule, can more easily bear the burden, are 
exonerated from their fair share of it at the cost of agricultural 
land which is less able to bear it ; and thus a double injustice, so to 
say, is perpetrated. 
This subject has recently been brought very prominently before the 
public in some letters that appeared in The Times last October and 
since in reference to the incidence of rates on many farms in those 
parts of Essex reported on by Mr. Pringle, which have suffered 
from the depression so extremely acutely. And indeed in several 
instances in that county the principle of “ comparative value ” has 
been reduced to almost an absurdity, for when farms have been 
offered to intending tenants at a rent equivalent to the annual 
value at which they are assessed for rating purposes the intending 
tenants have simply laughed at the offers, so very much higher are the 
assessments than the rents which intending tenants could possibly 
give. This appears very clearly from the table on p. 792, which I ex- 
tract from the appendix to Mr. Pringle’s report, and of which 
the following is a summary 
