CHAPTER V 
ASSIMILATION OF OTHER RATES TO THE POOR-RATE 
Having traced the development of the poor-rate 
down to the present time, we must now go back to 
the seventeenth century, and endeavour to follow the 
steps by which the practice of local authorities, the 
decisions of courts of law, and the enactments of 
Parliament have caused the whole of local rates, 
with trifling exceptions, to be little. but additions to 
the poor-rate. 
The old rates levied by cowmon assent of the rate- 
payers, or by the authority of the governing body of 
a corporation without statutory sanction, gradually 
died out or were replaced by modern statutory 
creations. The relics of them which still existed in 
the towns just before the Municipal Corporations 
Reform Act of 1835 will be found. described in the 
Appendix to the report of the Municipal Corpora- 
tions Commission, There was, for example, at Folke- 
stone a “chamberlain’s rate” on property and an 
“ability tax” of 1s. 6d. per head on persons, which 
certainly suggests that the Folkestone measurement 
of ability was decidedly rough! At Pevensey, we 
are told, “ a rate called the town scot is almost every 
year imposed by the magistrates upon the property 
within the liberty occupied by persons residing within 
I House of Commons Papers, 1835, No. 116 (in vol. xxiv.), p. 933.