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Turgot and Adam Smith formulated in the first of the received canons of taxation. There was an apology for Pitt's income tax, in the desperate straits to which this person was reduced in 1799. In his plan the tax of 10 per cent. was levied on incomes of £200 a year and upwards and varying rates on incomes below £200 up to £60. I cannot but think that he had in his mind Tresham's budget of 1450. Addington, who repealed Pitt's income tax during the short peace of Amiens, re-imposed it within a year, and did away with the graduated character of it. It was abolished impatiently at the end of the war, with ignorant impatience, as the financiers who liked the impost said. In 1842 it was reimposed by Peel, and as a condition to those fiscal reforms, which have in themselves enormously increased the revenue, and has continued ever since. At present, as I pointed out in a motion on direct taxation, which I carried by a substantial majority on March 23, 1886, nearly half the receipts of the income tax are appropriated to relieve landowners from the ancient and traditional liabilities which were chargeable directly or indirectly on their estates, the outlay on which is essential, in order that these estates should have any economical value whatever. The contribution of these taxes in relief of landowners is about as just as it would be to levy a tax from the public in order to manure or drain a landowner's fields.

Peel's plea for reimposing this detestable and intrinsically iniquitous tax, as formulated by Mr. Gladstone, was to the effect that the remission of taxation conceded in 1842 and onwards was a saving to the taxpayer, and should therefore be met with a corresponding sacrifice on the part of those whose spending income was increased by the remissions. But, in the first place, Peel's principal remissions, omitting a host of grotesque customs duties which produced next to nothing, were of excises on domestic manufactures the effect of which was exceedingly injurious to workmen and employers, but the remission of which was an almost unappreciable benefit to consumers. Besides, the customs and excise on articles generally consumed was for a long time hardly reduced, was even heightened on some so-called luxuries, and the rapid increase of revenue, while it made up for all anticipated loss on the remission, is a sufficient answer to the plea on which the tax was imposed. To have permanently justified it, it was necessary

to show that it really was no bar to the increase of income, and there is cumulative and unfortunately increasing evidence that no such proof can be alleged. It is no doubt a particularly easy expedient in the hands of a stupid financier, who is able, without intelligence or even thought, to oppress with ease the most helpless class in the country, those who live on precarious incomes, and have no opportunity whatever, as traders have, of transferring the tax from themselves to others, their customers.

The house of York made application to Parliament for very few grants. The malignant sycophants, who wrote under the Tudor sovereigns, tried to blacken Edward's character, and shallow historians, who repeat commonplaces, have made Edward rapacious, sensual, and cruel. I can only say that the rolls of Parliament, during his reign, are full of petitions from Lancastrian nobles and gentry, praying for the removal of their attainders, and that the prayer is always granted, though not a few of these suppliants deserted and made war on him in 1470-1. It is true that he invented a new impost, and perhaps a disagreeable one, in the extension, I can hardly say the invention, of benevolences. No doubt, though these were nominally loans, they were virtually gifts, which the fashion of the age, and the fashion of two centuries later, did not make it sordid for the king and his ministers to follow. Benevolences were really special income taxes on wealthy persons, and the principle of them was exactly followed in the earliest poor laws, till it was found that free giving was less productive than compulsion. As I have said already, the fifteenth century was familiar with the principle of graduated property taxes. Richard III. abandoned the practice of benevolences. Henry VII. revived the practice, and by 11 Henry VII. cap. 10 made the promise a recoverable liability.

The origin of the custom, now part of settled constitutional usage, under which money grants originate in the House of Commons only, a practice which has been adopted in all civilized communities, even when the Upper House is elective, is exceedingly obscure. It was not finally settled in England till the time of the Pensionary Parliament, and then was the result of a drawn battle between the Lords and Commons, under which the Lords retained their appellate jurisdiction, and gave judgments which

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excited the wonder and contempt of the lawyers, who refused to report, or be bound by these precedents, and the Commons were admitted sub silentio to have the sole right of originating and altering money bills, though the Lords, a very questionable usurpation, claimed the right of rejecting them. I will venture to put before you my interpretation of the custom. It seems to me to be the inevitable outcome of the constitution of the two Houses. It is almost needless to say that the circumstances do not apply to modern legislative assemblies, between which and the two English houses, there is only an external resemblance.

The old House of Lords, I speak of that which sat before the Reformation, and even for nearly a century after that event, was a very shifting and uncertain body. In theory, it was the king's council, his advisers, whose presence he could claim at his pleasure as their duty, whose absence or neglect he could and did construe as disaffection, or even rebellion. So intrinsic was this doctrine to the constitution of the Lords, that Henry VIII., who had his own reasons for compelling the attendances of all whom he wished to keep in hand, invented the system of proxies, which was originally a guarantee of each by some of his own order, temporal peers by temporal, spiritual by spiritual peers. Then the summons to sit was issued irregularly and capriciously. In the Plantagenet period, the composition of no two sessions is alike, and glad enough was a peer who escaped a writ of summons. The spiritual peers too far exceeded the possible temporal peers, and they were taxed in a different house, and on different principles. It was only till the time of Charles I. that the peers claimed a writ of summons as of right, or rather, in the cases of Arundel and Bristol, the liberation of two of their number from prison. Charles, who had no mind to quarrel with both houses at once, tacitly conceded their claim to a writ. Now in this assembly the king was always supposed to be present, and very often actually was. Could so incongruous, shifting, incompetent an assembly, where two-thirds of the sitting members could have no judgment in the taxing of laymen, and all would find the discussion of the king's necessities intolerable in his presence, undertake money bills? And if they did, with what colour could the consent of the taxpayer be alleged for their schemes?

The Commons, on the other hand, were from the first summoned to make grants. They were the delegates of the towns and counties who sent them, were instructed by their constituents before they went, were instructed by their constituents while they sat. As they were representative of their constituents, so their elected Speaker was representative of them. He it was who drew up the budgets, to use a modern phrase, and announced the grants. His address to the Crown on his election, in which he deprecates offence, and as the mouthpiece of the Commons, begs for the most favourable construction of his words and acts, is a ceremonial survival, now grotesque and out of place, of a period when those words meant a good deal. Besides they alone, who were commissioned to give or withhold, could make a binding promise. Of course, if the Lords resolved, of their own motion, to levy a tax on their own Order, as they did in 1404, who could say them nay? I imagine that even now, if the Lords resolved on paying a triple income tax, which is very unlikely, and paid it, which is still more improbable, the House of Commons would hardly interpose its constitutional veto. Grants originated in the House of Commons because it is inconceivable that they could have originated anywhere else. The confirmation of Parliament of grants by Convocation, and the admitted illegality of the grant without assent of Parliament, is, I am sure, a disguised usurpation, for which a very plausible but not very agreeable reason was found, though not always expressed.

There are two taxes of curious significance, exceedingly interesting for a reason which I shall give in my next lecture, but presenting features on which I may make a brief comment here, for I am dealing, as you will remember, with early taxation only. These are the special grant in 1453, never indeed paid for reasons which will be seen, and demanded under similar conditions which were never satisfied in 1472; and the special grant of 1503, which Henry was not likely to forego, and indeed was calculated with scrupulous anxiety, for he got, no doubt, to his great delight, a few pounds more than was given him.

In 1450, Guienne was lost, Cade's rebellion broke out, and the Parliament which was sitting at Coventry was dispersed in disorder. In 1452, it seemed that Guienne could be recovered, for the Gascons,

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irritated at arbitrary taxation, had revolted, and old Shrewsbury was dispatched with a force to aid them. The Commons caught at the chance, and gave by vote a force of 20,000 archers (the king's advisers accepting 18,000 only) to be paid by a levy on each county, the contingent of each county being settled by Parliament, with wages of sixpence a day, the full day's pay of an artisan. The grant was made in vain, for, before it could be raised, Shrewsbury and his son were defeated and slain before Châtillon, and the war was suddenly at an end. This tax was to be levied on the supposed capacity of all the counties and some of the towns, all the counties except Chester being rated. In 1472, Edward had resolved to invade France, the protection and assistance given to Margaret being the plea, and Parliament renewed the grant of nineteen years before. Now this tax for the levy and support of an army was undoubtedly inforced on all the lay population.

The tax of 1503 was a still more marked departure from ancient usage. In this year Henry, who neglected no means of raising money, determined on reviving two ancient aids, those payable by feudal custom by all tenants in knight service on the occasion of the knighting of the king's eldest son, and the marriage of the king's eldest daughter. Margaret, to be sure, had been married to James IV., of Scotland, some time before, and Arthur was recently dead. No king's eldest son had been knighted during his father's lifetime since the time of the Black Prince, more than a century and a half ago, and Henry IV., whose eldest daughter married the Duke of Bavaria, made no claim on that occasion. But the bereaved father determined to console himself by taxing his subjects. Now the only persons liable to this aid were the military tenants. With the consent of Parliament it was imposed on all, tenants in chivalry, socagers, and copyholders alike, and the king who asked for £30,000, got £1,006 4s. 7d., more than was promised him.

With the growth of English trade the customs began to increase. They were treated, though an ancient source of royal revenue, as a parliamentary grant, and were always given for the sovereign's life in his first Parliament. Elizabeth put out a new book of rates, in which the percentages were levied on the new values or prices which characterized the greater part of her reign. The new book of rates which James put out at Cecil's instigation, or with his con