thought desirable to be consistent throughout in the management of the public records.

The improvement of the existing calendars and indexes, and the construction of new ones, though works of the greatest importance, are secondary in the order of proceedings, until the records themselves are mechanically well arranged, and a complete inventory, as it were, has been formed of the whole. Indeed in many instances a good local arrangement of some of the records almost supersedes the necessity of a calendar.1 The discussion of the principles to be adopted in the formation of calendars may therefore be more conveniently postponed until further progress has been made in the works which have a prior claim to be executed. The annual reports of the deputy keeper will furnish frequent opportunities to discuss future measures, and inform our readers of the working and progress of the new system.

In concluding these remarks we may express our sincere hope that the present Master of the Rolls may live to see his reformation of the record system, so well begun, completed, or at least carried safely into port; and we are sure we may already express, in the words of the Lords of the Treasury, "the deep obligations which the public owe to Lord Langdale for the attention and labour which his lordship has been pleased to bestow on a subject in which many important interests are involved; but which is not directly connected with the judicial functions of the Master of the Rolls, though zealously and most efficiently performed by Lord Langdale."

1 Court or manor rolls for example.-Let all récords of this class be brought together, and formed into one series; each manor being arranged first alphabetically, and then chronologically. When this arrangement is completed, little else can be done to facilitate searches. The same principle would apply to ministers' accounts, &c.

ART. VIII.-RATEABILITY OF PROPERTY OCCUPIED FOR PUBLIC PURPOSES.

No portion of our law calls more loudly for speedy and complete revision than that which regards the imposition of rates, including under that comprehensive term, not merely the established grievances of poor's rates, county rates, and church rates, but all the other varieties of parochial burdens which property has to bear, for protection or convenience, or for the amusement and employment of the various local bodies which control the affairs of this as yet free and uncentralized community. This is a subject the difficulties of which are daily forcing themselves more and more on general as well as professional attention.

The object of Mr. Poulett Scrope's or the Parochial Assessment Act was good: the practical working of it has fallen far short of expectation; while the studied ambiguity of some of its clauses has opened the way to very extensive litigation. The defective execution of it has arisen entirely from the legislature having overlooked the result of the mode in which the county rates are assessed, namely, in proportion to the amount of poor's rate levied on each parish: which of necessity rendered the parishioners, and those employed on behalf of them, anxious to lower as far as they could the total value of the hereditaments of the parish. The farmers of parish A. were singly interested in having a fair and equal rate as between themselves, and consequently none of them could lose any thing by a rating to the full amount. But they were also jointly interested in cheating, if possible, the farmers of parish B., by lowering the whole amount of their own assessment, with a view to the county rate. Most country parishes felt and acted on this view of their own interests, and the consequence is, that, so far as our experience has gone, the assumed sum has in most places fallen absurdly short of that net value at which the surveyors, by act of parliament, were bound on oath to assess it. When will our legislature learn the folly, as well as iniquity, of imposing oaths in any single case, except where the legal punishment of perjury is not only expressly attached, but the perjurer is in reasonable peril of its execution? The only modes in which the legislature

could have hoped to attain the correct value of premises for purposes of rating, were either to have altered the mode of assessing the county rates, or to have fixed it by one uniform valuation throughout the country by disinterested valuers. And as this can only be done at an enormous expense, and that expense, from the rapid alterations in the relative value of property, must inevitably soon recur, we are inclined to think that the former expedient must eventually be resorted to.

The other difficulties upon the act which have arisen, as we said, from the studied ambiguity of its clauses, are well known, nor is it our purpose at present to do more than advert to them. All mention of the rating of stock in trade, or, we should rather say, of" inhabitants" as such, was carefully avoided. The Poor Law Commissioners took silence for repeal; the Court of King's Bench, in the case of The Queen v. Lumsdaine, considered it to imply confirmation. But a more serious question arose immediately afterwards. The omission to rate profits or capital had been pretty general throughout the country. There had consequently been a constant dispute between the productives and the non-productives -to state the question broadly,-whether it was just to rate the former at a part of their income, and the latter at the whole; or whether an abatement should not be made in the assessment on the latter, proportional to the amount of an hypothetical assessment on the profits of the former. The church, or more properly the tithe-owner, was one of the parties interested in this controversy. It was thought by many that the case of The King v. Joddrell had secured for him the abatement for which he contended. He feared to lose this supposed advantage by some hostile construction which might be put upon the new act. The "friends of the church" therefore framed a clause for his protection. But to speak out on the subject would have provoked the immediate hostility of the hosts of irregular combatants who are always hovering about the church's intrenchments, and ready to take advantage of any unlucky demonstration on the part of the garrison. With considerable caution, therefore, they provided only "that nothing herein contained should alter or affect the principles or different relative liabilities (if any) according to which different hereditaments are now by law liable;" an innocent provision

in seeming, over which the eye of unwary Radical, or simple Dissenter (if such there be), might wander unconscious of the meaning that lurked below. Unfortunately, the contrivance was a little too fine. The Court of King's Bench decided, in The Queen v. Capel,1 that the words did not on the face of them convey anything like the meaning which the unlucky friends of the church intended they should, and that they constituted no prohibition whatever. Seriously, this is a striking instance of a defect, in our legislation of very common occurrence; namely, the employment of general and vague expressions in provisions of importance, lest more special words to the same effect should attract the notice of a hostile party; an artifice which very rarely succeeds, enemies as well as friends being sufficiently on the alert: but which first produces litigation, and then throws on the judges the difficult task of interpreting studied obscurities, and the unpopular duty of frustrating, in many instances, what was known ab extrà to be the spirit of an enactment.

As it is not our present intention to renew the discussion on the subject of the rateability of tithe, we need only remark at present that, in our opinion, as in Mr. Jones's, the case of The Queen v. Capel has by no means settled the real question at issue. That question is, whether a rate, assessed in the proportions there complained of, is equal as between all the rateable inhabitants of the parish. The Court merely decided that it was equal as between the occupiers of hereditaments, considered as such, which was all that it was called upon to decide by the terms of the case.

The bill for the abolition of the rating of stock in trade has now passed as a temporary measure only. A more general and comprehensive enactment has been repeatedly announced; the chief difficulty in its way, in the present state of parties, we really believe to be the hostility between them as to the liability of tithe; but, quite independent of this party struggle, there are so many difficulties in the way of a statesmanlike and real reform, and so many encouragements to proceed by the patching and cobbling method, that we have little hope of the result, until a more auspicious era for legislation com

mences.

1 A full "Report of the Arguments" in this case has been published separately by Mr. Hodges, one of the counsel for the tithe-owners.

But it is our wish on the present occasion to direct our readers' attention to the state of the law on another subject of much importance to the occupiers of rateable property: namely, the non-rateability of the occupiers of such property as, in construction of law, is held to be public. Upon this subject, the course of precedent had already proceeded so far that the judges have found no other alternative than to carry it by their recent decisions to an extent which exempts a formidable show of the property of the country from contributions to the public burdens usually comprehended under the name of rates.

It was early established, and the cases are too familiar to render it necessary even to refer to them on the present occasion, that there could be no rate upon property unless in the beneficial occupation of some one. But, to use the language of the Court of King's Bench, in the Governor of the Bristol Poor v. Wait, 5 A. & E. 7, "the presumptive liability arising from occupation was to be explained away in each case."

This principle was applied :

1. To the case of public property in the general sense of the word. Crown lands, Lord Bute v. Grindall, 1 T. R. 338; barracks and other buildings for military purposes, Lord Amhurst v. Lord Somers, 2 T. R. 372, in which Ashurst, J. says, "It is admitted that neither the possessions of the crown, or, of the public, are liable to be rated to the Poor ;" Rex v. Terrott, 3 East, 506.

2. To the case of property devoted to charitable purposes, which in the contemplation of law are the same thing with public purposes; The Attorney General v. Aspinall, 2 Myl. & C. 613; R. v. Waldo, Cald. 338; see R. v. Governors of St. Luke's Hospital, 2 Burr. 1053; Rex v. St. Giles's, 3 B. & Ad. 573; R. v. St. Bartholomew the Less, 4 Burr. 2435.

In both these classes of cases there is certainly in one sense of the word a beneficial occupation; for the inmates of a barrack or a hospital unquestionably derive a benefit from their occupation. "It cannot be said" (to use again the language of the court in the Bristol Poor case,)" that no benefit is derived." It is therefore rather to be regretted that a confusion of language has been introduced into some of them by the employment of words in a far-fetched sense. In