Are we never to have a good Chancellor of the
Rating Exche- quer? It appears from a return recently presented to Parliament that the total amount of rates levied in England and Wales during 1866 reached the enormous sum of 18,367,7731., or more than half the total expenditure of the United Kingdom, after deducting the interest on the National Debt. The payment, if equally distri- buted, would amount to 18s. a head, or 41. 10s. per household, a most serious deduction from the comforts of the people. The whole of this amount is borne by the occupiers and householders of the kingdom, the amounts being regulated, not by wealth, but by rental. When educational rates have been added, the total of local taxation will be equivalent to an income-tax of at least eighteenpence in the pound, surely a sufficient field for a states- man to employ his intellect on. Income-tax excepted, people now feel rates more than they do taxes.
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