Gardeners, park-keepers, foresters and the like, are generally not luxuries in the country, they are a necessary part of an establishment which is to turn the land to a profitable use. You might as well tax operatives in mills, or miners in collieries, or mechanics in manufactories, as such servants. Yet they are all swept into the assessed taxes, upon the rude and unfounded presumption that they are, equally with a large establishment of men-servants in towns, an indication of affluent circumstances. The window tax is incomparably, more oppressive in country houses than in town ones, from their greater size in general, and being for the most part constructed at a period when no attention was paid to the number of windows, and they were generally made very small from being formed before the window tax was laid on. Taking all these circumstances into view, it is not going too far to assert, that on equal fortunes the assessed taxes are twice as heavy in the country as in towns; and that of £3,312,000 which they produce annually, after deducting the land tax, about £2,500,000, is paid by landowners either in town or country. It is inconceivable—no one a priori could credit it—how few householders in town, and not being landowners, pay any assessed taxes at all—or any of such amount as to be really a burden. The total number of houses charged to the window tax, in Great Britain, is 447,000, and the duty levied on them is, £1,613,774, or, at an average, about £3, 10s. a-house, while the number of inhabited houses was, in 1841, 3,164,000, or above seven times the number. The total number charged with one man-servant, is only 49,320, and, persons keeping men-servants at all, 110,849,[23] facts indicating how extremely partial is the operation of these taxes, and how severely they fall on the class most heavily burdened in other respects, and therefore least able to bear them.

The Highway Rates are another burden exclusively affecting land, although the whole community derive benefit from their use. This burden, exclusive of the sum levied at turnpike gates, in England amounted to £1,169,891, a-year.[24] This charge, heavy as it is, is felt as the more vexatious, that the rate-payers are not at liberty either to limit the use of the road, for which they pay, to themselves, or to allow it to fall into disrepair. An indictment of the road lies at common law, if it becomes unfit for traffic, even at the instance of any party using the road, though he does not pay any part of the rate. In other words, the neighbouring landholders are compelled to keep up the roads for the benefit of the public generally, who contribute nothing towards their maintenance. This matter becomes the more serious that in consequence of the general adoption and immense spread of railways, the traffic on the principal lines of road in England, has either almost entirely disappeared, or become inadequate to contributing any thing material to the support even of the turnpikes hitherto entirely maintained by them. It is not difficult to foresee, that the time is not far distant when nearly the whole roads of England will fall as a burden on the rate payers; for these roads cannot be abandoned, or the country off the railway lines would have no communication at all. And the sums paid by railway companies, how large soever, to landholders, afford no general compensation; for they benefit a few in the close vicinity of the railways only, while the highway rate affects all.

The Church Rate is another burden exclusively affecting land, though all classes obtain the benefit of it in the comfort and convenience of churches. It amounted, in 1839, the last year for which a return was made, to £506,512.[25] Nothing can be clearer than that this is a burden truly affecting real estates. It is entirely different from tithes, which are not, correctly speaking, a burden on land, but a separate estate apart from that of the landlord, which never was his, for which he has given no valuable consideration. But on what principle of justice is the burden of upholding churches exclusively laid on the land, when all classes sit in churches, and enjoy the benefit of their accommodation. The thing is evidently and palpably unjust, and won't bear an argument.

The Police, Lunatic Asylum, and Bridge Rates, constitute another burden on real property to which no other property is subject, which, though not universally introduced, are very oppressive in those counties where their establishment has been found necessary. Mr. Blamire, a very competent witness, estimates these incidental and partial charges at 2s. 1d. an acre.[26] The land is still liable also to a heavy disbursement on account of the Militia, if that national force should be again called out. There has been no return yet laid before parliament of these partial burdens on land, but they cannot be estimated at less than the church rate, or £500,000 a-year.

The Stamp Duties, from deeds and instruments which produce annually £1,646,000 a-year, fall for the most part as a burden on real property. This must be evident to every person who considers that real estates in land or houses are the great security on which money is advanced in every part of the country, and the extremely heavy burdens, in the shape of a direct payment in the requisite stamps for deeds to government, is imposed on the transmission and burdening of such property. It is particularly severe, in proportion to the value of the subjects burdened, in the mortgaging or alienating of small freeholds or heritable subjects. It is stated in the Lords' Report, on the burdens affecting real property, "The stamp on a conveyance of a certain length, on a sale of real subjects of the value of £50, would cost 12-1/2 per cent, or £6, 10s.; on a £100 sale, to 5 per cent; on a £200 sale, to 2-1/2 per cent; on a £500 sale, to £1, 14s. 3d. per £100; and above that sum, to one per cent." The weight on the establishment of mortgages, especially on small sums, is not less remarkable. The same report adds, "A mortgage for £50 costs, in stamps, and law expenses, thirty per cent.; a mortgage for £100, twenty per cent.; one for £450 seven per cent.; for £1500 three per cent.; for £12,500 one per cent.; for £25,000 fifteen shillings per cent, and for £100,000 twelve shillings per cent."[27] These burdens on the sale or mortgaging of real property are felt as the more oppressive, when it is recollected that movable property to the greatest amount, as in the public funds, or the like, may be alienated, or burdened in the most valid and effectual manner for the cost of a power of attorney, which is a guinea and half-a-crown per cent. to the broker who executes the transaction. Materials do not exist for separating exactly the deed-stamps falling as a burden on land transmissions and mortgages, from those affecting personal estates; but it is certainly within the mark to say, that they are three-fourths of the whole stamp-duties on deeds and instruments, or £1,200,000 a-year.

Thus, it appears that, setting aside the tithe, as not the land-owner's property, and, therefore, a separate estate, and not, properly speaking, a burden on land; and saying nothing of the malt-tax, which produces annually £4,500,000 a-year, on the supposition that, at present at least, that falls as a burden on the consumer; and saying nothing of the income-tax, which, as will immediately appear, falls as a much severer burden on land-rents than commercial incomes,—these distinct, clear, and indisputable burdens laid on land, from which property of other sorts in England are exempt, stand thus:—

I.Poor's Rate in 1845, a very prosperous year,£6,847,205
II.Land-tax,1,164,042
III.Highway Rates,1,169,891
IV.Church Rates,506,812
V.Police, Lunatic, and Bridge-rates, estimated,500,000
VI.Excess of assessed taxes falling on land above personal estates, estimated,1,500,000
VII.Stamp-duties peculiar to land,1,200,000
£12,887,950

The rental of real property in England, rated to the Poor's Rates, is £62,540,030;[28] but the real rental, as ascertained by the more rigid and accurate returns for the Income-tax, is £85,802,735. On the first of these sums, the taxes exclusively falling on land amount to a tax of twenty-five, on the last of EIGHTEEN per cent. annually. This is in addition to the Income-tax, and all the indirect taxes which the owners of land and houses pay in common with all the rest of the community, and which by it are complained of as so oppressive.

Enough, it is thought, has now been said to prove the extreme inequality and injustice with which direct public burdens are levied in this country, and the necessity for a thorough and searching revision of our system of taxation, in this respect, especially since, from the way in which the tide sets, it has become so evident that direct will progressively be more extensively substituted for indirect taxation. But, in addition to these, there are several other circumstances which aggravate fourfold the burdens thus exclusively laid on real property.