The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1840-07-24 00:00:00

RATING STOCK IN TRADE

A report from the poor-law commissioners to the Marquis
of Normanby, on the expediency of an alteration of the law
in respect to the rating of stock in trade, dated May 14,
1840, has been published. After describing the extept of
operation, under the statute of Elizabeth, and progress of the
tax on stock in trade, with its great inequality and easy eva-
sion in many instances, they proceed thus :
" The rate on stock in trade, dependent on the amount of
profit, cannot be made without minute investigations into the
concerns of individuals—investigations so difficult, and the
results of which are so fallacious, that a right conclusion can
scarcely be obtained, while to the rate-payers every inequality,
the result of a wrong estimate, is a subject of dissatisfaction,
necessarily begetting disputes and litigation.
" From there difficulties, and from a desire to avoid ap-
peals, another kind of injustice has ensued in places where
stock in trade has been rated. Those who could most suc-
cessfully conceal their profits, or could most easily reside
elsewhere, or keep their stock away from the parish, have
been able to make the best terms with the overseers, to
which terms, rather than lose all, the overseers and other in-
habitants are compelled to submit; and, as an inducement to
avoid appeals by such as might be supposed to be capable of
appealing successfully, it has been the practice of overseers
to set the rates at sums which, being much below the true
amount of the liability, were likely to be undisputed by the
rate-payers, and which the overseers were certain of being
able to prove.
" There is good reason to believe that there is no parish in
the kingdom in which the overseers have ever been able fully
to carry out the law. The instances which have come to our
knowledge of attempts to carry it out have been instances of
compromise, and fully justify Lord Mansfield's enlightened
views as to the impossibility of carrying the rating of stock
in trade into effect. His lordship's views appear to be still
entertained in the manufacturing districts, and in other parts
of the country, since the recent communications on the rating
of stock in trade, which we have received, generally express
a stronger sense of the impracticability of the law than of its
injustice orimpolicy.

-"
It would appear to be unnecessary foe us to make any
remarks upon the general policy of a tax operating so un-
equally, affecting some trades and some classes of traders
with inevitable burdens, from which others are exempt, with-
out any other reason for the difference than the merely acci-
dental variety in the ease with which the tax can be imposed
in one class of cases, as compared with the other. But it is
proper to callyour lordship's attention to the fact, that the tax,
as yet, has never been imposed on the parishes in the greater
part of England and Wales, and is practically unknown in
the districts which have become the great modern seats of
manufactures. Thus, its extension to these would operate
with all the disturbing effects of a new tax, and with an effect
which we are not prepared to estimate, but which may be
considerable in changing the relations of our trade and manu-
factures, both as regards other parts of her Majesty's do-
minions, (as Scotland and Ireland,) where no such tax can
be laid, and as regards the competition of our countrymen
with the trade and manufactures of other countries.

" On the other hand, as the tax has not yet been practi-
cally laid on these districts, the repeal of the law would not
deprive the landed interest of any benefits now enjoyed by it
in the taxation of the commercial and manufacturing classes.
The repeal of the liability would leave the whole class of rate-
payers in these districts in their existing relative positions.
In the districts in which'the practiCe of rating stock in trade
formerly prevailed, and has been recently resumed, the alter-
ation, by the totatrepeal of the liability, would be compara-
tively small, on account of the limited extent to which the
liability has hitherto, from the causes before adverted to,
been capable of being enforced.
" It is likewise important to remark, that rates are made
by the parish overseers, who are unpaid officers, acting only
for a single year, and therefore not likely to possess or obtain
the skill, or to bestow the labour, which would be requisite
for so difficult a task as that of making a fair and legal rate
upon stock in trade.
" It has been sometimes suggested as desirable, that the
practice of rating inhabitants for stock in trade should be
confined by legislative enactment to the places in which it
has already been carried into effect.
" If this suggestion should be adopted, it would be right to
couple it with another—namely, that the rate should be made
only in the same proportions to the actual profits as hitherto.
For, as we have before stated, the practice has been such as
at o
rateallow
should
oo u
if ad large
b em
made in
of profits from the rate ; and if ever
in any place on the whole amount of
profits legally liable to the rate, such a rate would, to the ex-
tent of this difference, be a new rate on the trade of the place;
this provision, however, from the difficulty of discovering the
proportion between the amount of profits which have been
rated, and the amount of the true rateable profits, would be
difficnit of application.
" We think that it would be most beneficial to repeal alto-
gether the effect of the word ' inhabitant' in the statute of
Elizabeth. Hitherto no inhabitants,
simply as inhabitants,
have been rated other than the possessors of stock in trade ;
but, inasmuch as stock in trade was affected with its liability
above a century and a half after the passing of the statute of
Elizabeth, and as the words of the statute would undoubtedly
admit of n much wider signification than has been attributed
to them, there is still danger that it may at some time or other
have a wider practical effect given to it. It appears to be bet-
ter to prevent such an extension than to postpone the remedy
until the evil has arisen ; especially as this can now be done
without any derangement beyond the repeal of the liability to
be rated in respect of stock in trade.
" It would, however, he sufficient for the immediate pur-
pose, to repeal specifically the liability of inhabitants to be
rated in respect of stock in trade."

lti
y-
DETERMINED SUICIDE OF A. YOUNG LADY. Between
seven and eight o'clock on Friday morning, an elegantly_
dressed lady, apparently about 20 years of age, committeda
a most determined act of suicide, by throwing herself ito
the Surrey Canal near the arch of the London and Greenwich
Railway. Two labouring men, who saw her jump in, In.
stantly ran to the spot, hut the body never rose to the sur-
face. It is a most melancholy fact that, since the formation
of the above canal, upwards of 2,000 bodies have been taken
Put yf it.