again subject to the inconveniences of purveyance and pre-emption, the oppression of forest laws, and the slavery of feodal tenures; and was to resign into the king's hands all his royal franchises of waifs, wrecks, estrays, treasure-trove, mines, deodands, forfeitures, and the like; he would find himself a greater loser than by paying his quota to such taxes as are necessary to the support of government. The thing therefore to be wished and aimed at in a land of liberty is by no means the total abolition of taxes, which would draw after it very pernicious consequences, and the very supposition of which is the height of political absurdity. For as the true idea of government and magistracy will be found to consist in this, that some few men are deputed by many others to preside over public affairs, so that individuals may the better be enabled to attend their private concerns; it is necessary that those individuals should be bound to contribute a portion of their private gains, in order to support that government, and reward that magistracy, which protects them in the enjoyment of their respective properties. But the things to be aimed at are wisdom and moderation, not only in granting, but also in the method of raising the necessary supplies; by contriving to do both in such a manner as may be most conducive to the national welfare, and at the same time most consistent with economy and the liberty of the subject; who, when properly taxed, contributes only, as was before observed (y), some part of his property, in order to enjoy the rest.

These extraordinary grants are usually called by the synonimous names of aids, subsidies, and supplies; and are granted, we have formerly seen (2), by the commons of Great Britain in parliament assembled: who, when they have voted a supply to his majesty, and settled the quantum of that supply, usually resolve themselves into what is called a committee of ways and means, to consider the ways and means of raising the supply so voted. And in this committee every *member, (though it is [*308] looked upon as the peculiar province of the chancellor of the exchequer,) may propose such scheme of taxation as he thinks will be least detrimental to the public. The resolutions of this committee, when approved by a vote of the house, are in general esteemed to be, as it were, final and conclusive. For, though the supply cannot be actually raised upon the subject till directed by an act of the whole parliament, yet no monied man will scruple to advance to the government any quantity of ready cash, on the credit of a bare vote of the house of commons, though no law be yet passed to establish it.

The taxes, which are raised upon the subject, are either annual or perpetual. The usual annual taxes are those upon land and malt.

1. The land-tax, in its modern shape, has superseded all the former methods of rating either property, or persons in respect of their property, whether by tenths or fifteenths, subsidies on land, hydages, scutages, or talliages; a short explication of which will, however, greatly assist us in understanding our ancient laws and history.

Tenths, and fifteenths (a), were temporary aids issuing out of personal property, and granted to the king by parliament. They were formerly the real tenth or fifteenth part of all the moveables belonging to the subject; when such moveables, or personal estates, were a very different and a much less considerable thing than what they usually are at this day

(y) Page 282. (z) Page 169. VOL. I.

34

(a) 2 Inst. 77. 4 Inst. 34.

Tenths are said to have been first granted under Henry the second, who took advantage of the fashionable zeal for croisades, to introduce this new taxation, in order to defray the expense of a pious expedition to Palestine, which he really or seemingly had projected against Saladine emperor of the Saracens; whence it was originlly denominated the Saladine tenth (b).

But afterwards fifteenths were more usually granted than tenths. [*309] Originally the amount of these taxes were uncertain, being levied by assessments new made at every fresh grant of the commons, a commission for which is preserved by Matthew Paris (c): but it was at length reduced to a certainty in the eighth year of Edward III., when, by virtue of the king's commission, new taxations were made of every township, borough, and city in the kingdom, and recorded in the exchequer; which rate was, at the time, the fifteenth part of the value of every township, the whole amounting to about 29,000l. and therefore it still kept up the name of a fifteenth, when, by the alteration of the value of money, and the increase of personal property, things came to be in a very different situation: so that when, of later years, the commons granted the king a fifteenth, every parish in England immediately knew their proportion of it; that is, the same identical sum that was assessed by the same aid in the eighth of Edward III.; and then raised it by a rate among themselves, and returned it into the royal exchequer.

The other ancient levies were in the nature of a modern land-tax for we may trace up the original of that charge as high as to the introduction of our military tenures (); when every tenant of a knight's fee was bound, if called upon, to attend the king in his army for forty days in every year. But this personal attendance growing troublesome in many respects, the tenants found means of compounding for it, by first sending others in their stead, and in process of time by making a pecuniary satisfaction to the crown in lieu of it. This pecuniary satisfaction at last came to be levied by assessments, at so much for every knight's fee, under the name of scutages; which appear to have been levied for the first time in the fifth year of Henry the second, on account of his expedition to Toulouse, and were then, I apprehend, mere arbitrary compositions, as the king and the subject could agree. But this precedent being afterwards abused into a means of oppression, (in levying scutages on the landholders by the royal authority [*310] only, whenever our kings went to war, in order to hire mercenary troops and pay their contingent expenses) it became thereupon a matter of national complaint; and King John was obliged to promise in his magna carta (e), that no scutage should be imposed without the consent of the common council of the realm. This clause was indeed omitted in the charters of Henry III. where (f) we only find it stipulated, that scutages should be taken as they were used to be in the time of King Henry the second. Yet afterwards, by a variety of statutes under Edward I. and his grandson (g), it was provided, that the king shall not take any aids or tasks, any talliage or tax, but by the common assent of the great men and commons in parliament.

Of the same nature with scutages upon knights-fees were the assessinents of hydage upon all other lands, and of talliage upon cities and burghs (h). But they all gradually fell into disuse upon the introduction

of subsidies, about the time of King Richard II. and King Henry IV. These were a tax, not immediately imposed upon property, but upon persons in respect of their reputed estates, after the nominal rate of 4s. in the pound for lands, and 2s. 8d. for goods; and for those of aliens in a double proportion. But this assessment was also made according to an ancient valuation; wherein the computation was so very moderate, and the renta' of the kingdom was supposed to be so exceeding low, that one subsidy of this sort did not, according to Sir Edward Coke (i), amount to more than 70,000l. whereas a modern land-tax, at the same rate, produces two millions. It was anciently the rule never to grant more than one subsidy, and two fifteenths at a time; but this rule was broken through for the first time on a very pressing occasion, the Spanish invasion in 1588; when the parliament gave Queen Elizabeth two subsidies and four fifteenths. Afterwards, as money sunk in value, more subsidies were given; and we have an instance in the first parliament of 1640, of the king's desiring twelve subsidies of the commons, to be levied in three [311] years; which was looked upon as a startling proposal though Lord Clarendon says (k), that the speaker, Serjeant Glanville, made it manifest to the house, how very inconsiderable a sum twelve subsidies amounted to, by telling them he had computed what he was to pay for them himself; and when he named the sum, he being known to be possessed of a great estate, it seemed not worth any farther deliberation. And indeed, upon calculation, we shall find that the total amount of these. twelve subsidies, to be raised in three years, is less than what is now raised in one year, by a land-tax of two shillings in the pound.

The grant of scutages, talliages, or subsidies, by the commons, did not extend to spiritual preferments; those being usually taxed at the same time by the clergy themselves in convocation: which grants of the clergy were confirmed in parliament, otherwise they were illegal, and not binding as the same noble writer observes of the subsidies granted by the convocation, which continued sitting after the dissolution of the first parliament in 1640. A subsidy granted by the clergy was after the rate of 4s. in the pound, according to the valuation of their livings in the king's books; and amounted, as Sir Edward Coke tells us (1), to about 20001. While this custom continued, convocations were wont to sit as frequently as parliaments; but the last subsidies thus given by the clergy were those confirmed by statute 15 Car. II. cap. 10, since which another method of taxation has generally prevailed, which takes in the clergy as well as the laity; in recompence for which he beneficed clergy have from that period been allowed to vote at the election of knights of the shire (m); and thenceforward also the practice of giving ecclesiastical subsidies hath fallen into total disuse (28).

The lay subsidy was usually raised by commissioners appointed by he crown, or the great officers of state; and therefore in the beginning of the civil wars between Charles I. and his parliament, [*312] the latter having no other sufficient revenue to support themselves and their measures, introduced the practice of laying weekly and monthly

(i) 4 Inst. 33.

(k) Hist. b. 2.

(28) Sir John Sinclair has given the proportions to be levied upon each county of an assessment of 70,000l. a month in the year

(1) 4 Inst. 33.

(m) Dalt. of Sheriffs, 418. Gilb. Hist. of Exch. c.4

1660, in his History of the Public Pevenue, part, 189.