CHAPTER VI 
THE LOCAL RATEPAYER AGAINST THE NATIONAL TAXPAYER 
Tre triumph in 1840 of the principle that local rating 
was to be confined to immovable property did not 
leave those who thought that kind ‘of property too 
heavily burdened altogether without resource. While 
local taxation fell entirely upon immovable property, 
general or national taxation fell also, and perhaps for 
the most part, upon other property and on incomes 
derived from labour. Consequently, the more any 
particular expense could be placed upon the general 
taxes rather than on local rates, the less would be the 
burden upon immovable property. Hence the struggle 
between ‘‘ the ratepayer ” and ‘ the taxpayer,” which 
forms a remarkable feature in the history of English 
public finance in the latter parf of the nineteenth 
century and the beginning, at any rate, of the 
twentieth. 
In 1834 a Select Committee of the House of 
Commons was appointed ‘to inquire into the county 
rates and highway rates in England and Wales, and 
to report their opinion whether any and what regula- 
tions may be adopted to diminish their pressure 
upon the owners and occupiers of land.” This 
committee thought that if the system of valuation 
was improved, and “if chattel property could be made 
to contribute its fair “proportion to the expense of 
administering criminal justice, no objection could, 
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