are really deducted from their rent. It follows that, though they may as yet be under a fortunate delusion on this point, the wage-receiving majority of the local electorate have no interest whatever in local taxation, while they have a very considerable interest as a body, and still closer and more direct interest in particular instances-as, for example, the building and similar trades employed in local works in municipal expenditure. Of this the shrewder among them are already aware, and, with the spread of education and consequent quickening of intelligence, the fact will soon be apparent to all that the rates come in the end exclusively out of the pockets of the propertied classes, landowners or capitalists; those who impose and expend them are elected, potentially at least, and for the most part actually, by the votes of the wage-receivers. Were these the sufferers, the vast addition made to local burdens within the last ten years would have excited much keener, louder, and more general murmurs.

We are not sure that in some cases, and from some points of view, high rates are not injurious to the interests of the artizan. They must tend in some degree to enhance the cost, or reduce the return, of those great blocks of buildings which have lately been constructed by charitable funds or semi-charitable companies for the accommodation of working-class families. In the former case the effect is only to compel the builders to reduce very slightly the number of rooms they can provide. In the case of the semi-charitable companies the effect may be a little more serious. The rates on the great blocks erected, for example, by Sir Sidney Waterlow's Company, constitute a serious deduction from the gross rental; and, unless they are wholly recouped out of the reduced ground-rent, such a deduction must operate in the long run to reduce the number of such buildings. In the present state of business, when it is exceedingly difficult to get 4 per cent. on perfectly good security, many people may be willing from other than charitable motives to invest money in a charitable enterprise that promises a return of 5 per cent. If the rates are heavy enough to reduce that return even by one-tenth, they may make a considerable difference in the amount of capital available for the purpose. Many capitalists, who would prefer 5 per cent. on such security to 4 per cent. on mortgages or debentures, may prefer the latter to 42 per cent. in building societies, however large and apparently safe. But this, a somewhat dubious and at present purely theoretical possibility, is about the only manner in which rates can seriously affect the interest of wage-receiving tenantsat-will.

As a rule it may, we think, be said that the permanent burden of local taxation falls upon the land, that varying and temporary additions or reductions fall upon the holders of longer or shorter leases. There are three classes concerned-the ground landlord, the long lease-holder, and the ordinary tenant for three, seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years. The varying amount of the rates from year to year affects chiefly the latter class, and the recent steady and rapid increase of local taxation has probably fallen, at least to the extent of one moiety, upon their shoulders. But as the new system is understood, as the probably constant increase of the rates is taken for granted, the short lease-holder will protect himself and throw the burden upon his immediate landlord; will, like the tenant-at-will, practically deduct by anticipation the rates from the rent. The long lease-holder, representing the builder who has purchased the ground lease for sixty or ninety-nine years, has hitherto suffered, has borne the greater part of that permanent increase of local burdens, from which his tenants have been gradually liberating themselves. But that part of the burden which is thrown upon future years, as well as the whole weight of the original taxation, tends to fall upon the ground landlord. He obviously bears the whole burden of the rates existing at the time when the agreement is signed, since the builder, careful to secure the average profits of his trade, and perfectly familiar with the details of his business, takes care to deduct the rates from the ground-rent. Debt contracted for a limited, but still very long period, falls of course in great part upon the ground landlord, whose reversion will fall in before the debt is paid off; and in this case a very serious hardship and injustice seems to be perpetrated. Unless the debt is incurred for permanent improvements, of which the reversioner will have the benefit, it is simply subtracted from the value of that reversion, to the whole of which he has a clear unquestionable right. The same may be said of the whole permanent burden. of the increased rates. The ground landlord has had no voice in imposing them, but they constitute a future deduction from his reversion to their full amount. Considerations of this kind, the extreme uncertainty, the complicated questions, attending the distribution of the burden, the fact that no part of it falls upon those for whose immediate benefit the expenditure is incurred and by whose votes it is mainly controlled, should have made Parliament and those who guide its legislative action very much more cautious in throwing new, and above all new permanent burdens upon local taxation. It is unfair in any case that

a single kind of property should bear any new and special tax levied for the common benefit; it is, if possible, yet more unfair that the power of imposing taxation and incurring debt should be given to those who bear no part whatever of the ultimate or even of the immediate burden. Both these errors, both these unfairnesses, have characterized the recent action of the Legislature in regard to local taxation, and above all to the very large powers of incurring debt for long periods bestowed upon the local authorities.

A general review of our financial position, taking into account local as well as national debts, local as well as national taxation and expenditure, is, then, much less satisfactory, much less promising, much more fraught with grave and ominous symptoms, than might at first sight appear. It has been far too much the habit of politicians in general, and even of scientific financiers, to look only at the obligations for which the State, as State, is responsible; at the taxation levied by the direct authority of Parliament, and included in the annual budget. But a view thus limited is arbitrary, partial, and unsound; there is no assignable reason for thus confining ourselves to one part of the question, to one portion of the national burdens. It is obvious that, while Parliamentary taxation may be growing lighter, while Parliamentary expenditure may be strictly controlled, and either reduced or at least prevented from increasing in proportion to the wealth of the country, that wealth may, through extravagance, mismanagement, or merely through increased necessary expenditure in local administration, be loaded with a constantly increasing total weight of debt as well as of annual taxation. And this is the fact. While our Parliamentary burdens are on the whole lighter, while for every increase they have undergone a just reason can be given, while the National Debt has been diminished, and the proportion of the nation's income paid into the Exchequer is, we believe, annually reduced, the total taxation of the country and its total indebtedness is rapidly on the increase; and, without a thorough reform in our whole system of local government, without the establishment of a few distinct, responsible authorities, each in sole charge of a defined district of its own, there is no chance of a sounder financial administration, of a reduction, or even a practical check to the rapid enhancement, of debt and taxation. While we have been enduring an added income-tax of id. or 2d. in the pound to reduce our National Debt, our total indebtedness has increased in ten years from about 840 to above 900 millions; our total taxation has increased from about 83 to about 106 mil

lions. This has occurred, moreover, in a period of depressed or slowly reviving trade; so that beyond question both our debt and taxation have risen much more rapidly than our wealth, have become a heavier burden on the national income.

And finally, while the power of the wage-receiving class has become supreme over national and local taxation alike, their total contribution to the burdens they do, or can at pleasure, regulate, has been constantly diminished. Their necessary taxation has been reduced by the abolition of the sugar duties to an almost nominal amount; their optional, voluntary, insensible taxation has been seriously diminished in total amount, still more seriously in proportion to their numbers, most seriously of all in proportion to their wealth, by their improved sobriety; we are threatened with a constant and very rapid falling off in our principal and least oppressive fiscal resources, while we are burdened with a constantly and rapidly increasing expenditure and taxation, a constantly enhanced proportion of which is levied by direct and very heavily felt imposts-levied moreover by the nominees of one class and paid by another. The predictions of the economists to whom we have referred are being verified to the letter, and beyond their utmost anticipation; the sanguine promises of responsible financiers have proved utterly delusive, even in regard to that fraction of our fiscal burdens of which they condescend to take account; while in regard to the total, alike of our resources and of our expenditure, the predictions of optimist statesmen, the common belief that our financial position is steadily improving, are alike shown to be signally and directly contrary to the truth.

ART. IV.-1. A History of Agriculture and Prices.

By

James E. Thorold Rogers, M.P. Vols. 3 and 4 (1400-1582). London, 1882.

2. Surveyinge. By Master Fitzherbert. London, 1539. 3. The Boke of Husbandrie. By the Same. London, 1534. 4. Harrison's Description of England, 1577. Edited for the New Shakspere Society by F. J. Furnivall. London, 1881-2. 5. Crowley's Select Works, 1550. Edited for the Early English Text Society by J. M. Cowper. London, 1872.

[N as patio to

'N England, as elsewhere, the Age of the Renaissance was an The political and religious theories which had held medieval society together had lost their hold on men's minds. Time had eaten the heart out of them; the good was gone, the bad only remained. The sacerdotal order, whose regulars were to be examples, whose seculars were to be teachers to the laity, was now more vicious and more ignorant than those it claimed to hold in awe and tutelage. The body politic was paralyzed and brought into contempt by the reckless lawlessness of those who had been set up to govern. Feudal fidelity was now only shown by the plundering retainer to his plundering lord. Feudal magistracy was dead when the local chieftain, whose many manors had been granted him that he might be judge and captain to the commonalty, grasped at extended power and wealth by the destruction of a rival earl's life, or the violent seizure of a weaker neighbour's lands.

And what was happening in England during the War of the Roses, was happening also abroad. The popes by their scandalous lives and vain pleasures, the kings by their mad struggle for Italian conquests, were reproducing, on a greater scale and more exalted stage, the meaner vices of English bishops, and the narrower self-seekings of English barons.

It was into a world thus wanting in virtuous example and noble purpose that the 'New Intelligence' was born, and it caught the vices amid which it was nurtured. Selfishness and inhumanity were enhanced by the change from ignorance to knowledge, from sloth to activity. True, the noble heart of More, the sturdy honesty of Latimer, were wanting at the Court of the Lancastrian Henries. But the band of Percies and Neviles were replaced by the band of Dudleys and Seymours, with their keener craft and more hurtful oppressions. The ambition of the old baronage was destructive to themselves only. Town and country throve while Lancaster slaughtered York at Wakefield, or York slaughtered Lancaster at Northampton. But the ambi