which are generally too the most expensive crops, when the Church, which lays out no part of the expense, is to share so very largely in the profit. The cultivation of madder was for a long time confined by the tithe to the United Provinces, which, being Presbyterian countries, and upon that account exempted from this destructive tax, enjoyed a sort of monopoly of that useful dyeing drug against the rest of Europe. The late attempts to introduce the culture of this plant into England have been made only in consequence of the statute which enacted that five shillings an acre should be received in lieu of all manner of tithe upon madder.

As through the greater part of Europe, the Church, so in many different countries of Asia, the State, is principally supported by a land-tax, proportioned, not to the rent, but to the produce of the land. In China, the principal revenue of the sovereign consists in a tenth part of the produce of all the lands of the empire. This tenth part, however, is estimated so very moderately, that, in many provinces, it is said not to exceed a thirtieth part of the ordinary produce. The land-tax or land-rent which used to be paid to the Mahometan Government of Bengal, before that country fell into the hands of the English East India Company, is said to have amounted to about a fifth part of the produce. The land-tax of ancient Egypt is said likewise to have amounted to a fifth part.

In Asia, this sort of land-tax is said to interest the sovereign in the improvement and cultivation of land. The sovereigns of China, those of Bengal while under the Mahometan Government, and those of ancient Egypt, are said accordingly to have been extremely attentive to the making and maintaining of good roads and navigable canals, in order to increase, as much as possible, both the quantity and value of every part of the produce of land, by procuring to every part of it the most extensive market which their dominions could afford. The tithe of the Church is divided into such small portions, that no one of its proprietors can have any interest of this kind. The parson of a parish could never find his account in making a road or canal to a distant part of the country, in order to extend the market for the produce of his own particular parish. Such taxes, when destined for the maintenance of the State, have some advantages which may serve in some measure to balance their inconveniency. When destined for the main

tenance of the Church, they are attended with nothing but inconveniency.

Taxes upon the produce of land may be levied either in kind, or, according to a certain valuation, in money.

The parson of a parish, or a gentleman of small fortune who lives upon his estate, may sometimes, perhaps, find some advantage in receiving, the one his tithe, and the other his rent, in kind. The quantity to be collected, and the district within which it is to be collected, are so small that they both can oversee, with their own eyes, the collection and disposal of every part of what is due to them. A gentleman of great fortune, who lived in the capital, would be in danger of suffering much by the neglect, and more by the fraud of his factors and agents, if the rents of an estate in a distant province were to be paid to him in this manner. The loss of the sovereign, from the abuse and depredation of his tax-gatherers, would necessarily be much greater. The servants of the most careless private person are, perhaps, more under the eye of their master than those of the most careful prince; and a public revenue which was paid in kind would suffer so much from the mismanagement of the collectors, that a very small part of what was levied upon the people would ever arrive at the treasury of the prince. Some part of the public revenue of China, however, is said to be paid in this manner. The mandarins and other tax-gathers will, no doubt, find their advantage in continuing the practice of a payment which is so much more liable to abuse than any payment in money.

A tax upon the produce of land which is levied in money, may be levied either according to a valuation which varies with all the variations of the market price, or according to a fixed valuation, a bushel of wheat, for example, being always valued at one and the same money price, whatever may be the state of the market. The produce of a tax levied in the former way, will vary only according to the variations in the real produce of the land, according to the improvement or neglect of cultivation. The produce of a tax levied in the latter way will vary not only according to the variations in the produce of the land, but according to both those in the value of the precious metals, and those in the quantity of those metals which is at different times contained in coin of the same denomination. The produce of the former will always bear the same proportion to the value of the real produce of the land; the produce of the latter

may, at different times, bear very different proportions to that value.1

When, instead either of a certain portion of the produce of land, or of the price of a certain portion, a certain sum of money is to be paid in full compensation for all tax or tithe, the tax becomes, in this case, exactly of the same nature with the land-tax of England. It neither rises nor falls with the rent of the land. It neither encourages nor discourages improvement. The tithe in the greater part of those parishes which pay what is called a modus in lieu of all other tithe, is a tax of this kind. During the Mahometan Government of Bengal, instead of the payment in kind of a fifth part of the produce, a modus, and it is said a very moderate one, was established in the greater part of the districts or zemindaries of the country. Some of the servants of the East India Company, under pretence of restoring the public revenue to its proper value, have in some provinces exchanged this modus for a payment in kind. Under their management, this change is likely both to discourage cultivation and to give new opportunities for abuse in the collection of the public revenue, which has fallen very much below what it was said to have been when it first fell under the manage

1 As is well known, the tithe levied on behalf of the clergy and the lay impropriator has been commuted for a money payment by 6 & 7 Will. IV, cap. 71, and subsequent amending Acts. The principle on which this commutation is founded is: The average price of wheat, barley, and oats was taken for seven years previous to the passage of the Act, and published in the London Gazette. Thenceforward, on January of every year, a similar advertisement is inserted. Every rent-charge shall be deemed of the value of so many bushels of wheat, barley, and oats in equal quantities, as the same would have been competent to purchase according to the prices inserted in the first advertisement, and after every 1st of January it shall vary, so as always to consist of the price of the same quantities according to the advertisement then next preceding.

The amount then of £100 tithe rentcharge varies with the price of these three kinds of grain, rising as corn rises, and falling as it falls. Unless, therefore, agriculture were to retrogress in its efficiency, the tithe-owner does not share in

the progressive productiveness of land, or in the skill of the agriculturist, but is in a sense stationary, varying only with the rise and fall of money, expressed in the rise and fall of grain, or with the rise and fall in grain, as representing scarce or abundant years. The objections, therefore, which applied to the old system of tithing have passed away. Those ecclesiastical endowments, however, which consist of glebe, though they are free from the objections alleged against tithe, are, like other rents, progressively increased with the general increase of rent.

The tithe-owner has, by carelessness on the part of the promoters of the change (it could hardly have been by design, since so large a section of both Houses of Parliament were impropriate tithe-owners), been injured in an important particular. Only three kinds of grain were reckoned, and no notice was taken of wool, meat, butter, and cheese. Now these articles, especially in a country which has adopted a free trade in corn, have a perpetual tendency towards a rise, and since the Tithe Commutation Act have greatly risen in price.

ment of the company. The servants of the company may, perhaps, have profited by this change, but at the expense, it is probable, both of their masters and of the country.

Taxes upon the Rent of Houses.

The rent of a house may be distinguished into two parts, of which the one may very properly be called the building rent, the other is commonly called the ground rent.

The building rent is the interest or profit of the capital expended in building the house. In order to put the trade of a builder upon a level with other trades, it is necessary that this rent should be sufficient, first, to pay him the same interest which he would have got for his capital if he had lent it upon good security; and, secondly, to keep the house in constant repair, or, what comes to the same thing, to replace within a certain term of years the capital which had been employed in building it. The building rent, or the ordinary profit of building, is, therefore, everywhere regulated by the ordinary interest of money. Where the market rate of interest is four per cent., the rent of a house which, over and above paying the ground rent, affords six or six and a-half per cent. upon the whole expense of building, may perhaps afford a sufficient profit to the builder. Where the market rate of interest is five per cent., it may perhaps require seven or seven and a-half per cent. If, in proportion to the interest of money, the trade of the builder affords at any time a much greater profit than this, it will soon draw so much capital from other trades as will reduce the profit to its proper level. If it affords at any time much less than this, other trades will soon draw so much capital from it as will again raise that profit.

Whatever part of the whole rent of a house is over and above what is sufficient for affording this reasonable profit, naturally goes to the ground rent; and where the owner of the ground and the owner of the building are two different persons, is, in most cases, completely paid to the former. This surplus rent is the price which the inhabitant of the house pays for some real or supposed advantage of the situation. In country houses, at a distance from any great town, where there is plenty of ground to choose upon, the ground rent is scarce anything, or no more than what the ground

which the house stands upon would pay if employed in agriculture. In country villas in the neighbourhood of some great town it is sometimes a good deal higher, and the peculiar conveniency or beauty of situation is there frequently well paid for. Ground rents are generally highest in the capital, and in those particular parts of it where there happens to be the greatest demand for houses, whatever be the reason of that demand, whether for trade and business, for pleasure and society, or for mere vanity and fashion.1

A tax upon house rent, payable by the tenant and proportioned to the whole rent of each house, could not, for any considerable time at least, affect the building rent. If the builder did not get his reasonable profit, he would be obliged to quit the trade, which, by raising the demand for building, would in a short time bring back his profit to its proper level with that of other trades. Neither would such a tax fall altogether upon the ground rent, but it would divide itself in such a manner as to fall, partly upon the inhabitant of the house, and partly upon the owner of the ground.

Let us suppose, for example, that a particular person judges that he can afford for house rent an expense of sixty pounds a year; and let us suppose too that a tax of four shillings in the pound, or of one-fifth, payable by the inhabitant, is laid upon house rent. A house of sixty pounds rent will in this case cost him seventy-two pounds a year, which is twelve pounds more than he thinks he can afford. He will, therefore, content himself with a worse house, or a house of fifty pounds rent, which, with the additional ten pounds that he must pay for the tax, will make up the sum of sixty pounds year, the expense which he judges he can afford, and in order to pay the tax he will give up a part of the additional conveniency which he might have had from a house of ten pounds a year more rent. He will give up, I say, a part of this additional conveniency, for he will seldom be obliged to give up the whole, but will, in

a

1 Ground rents are enormously enhanced when, owing to the fact that available sites for building are in the hands of one or a few persons, a monopoly of such sites is practically conferred. It is certain too that much of the misery which characterises the habitations of the poor in large towns is owing to the frequent occurrence of such a monopoly, since rent is a far heavier item in the charges necessarily levied on small incomes than it is in the case of those who

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are better off. The worst state of things is however induced when corporations are lessors, for in these instances the corporation was (till lately) disabled from granting leases for more than forty years, could not be, except in very rare instances, an improving landlord, and was therefore the means of making the habitations of the poor worse than they otherwise would be. Evidence of this fact is overwhelming.