178 History of Local Rates 
are obviously directly opposed when they make their 
bargain for rent, a rent once settled, even if it can be 
revised every year, or even every quarter, is not 
regarded as a thing to be lightly altered. Every 
occupier expects to have to bear the brunt of 
any small change to the detriment of the property 
he occupies, and to reap for a considerable, if often 
somewhat indefinite, period, the profit of any small 
change which makes his occupation more valuable. 
The consequence is that there is not much differ- 
ence between the feeling of an occupier who is the 
owner of the property he occupies and one who is not. 
Both, so far as enlightened self-interest governs them, 
are of course inclined to favour such expenditure, and 
such expenditure only, from the local exchequer, as 
will bring them in commodities or services which they 
value more highly than what they could buy with the 
money if it had remained at their private disposal 
instead of being contributed as taxes. Now if com- 
modities or services which cost a penny in the pound, 
but which occupiers generally value at sums more 
than equivalent to a penny in the pound, are pro- 
vided from rates in any locality, the value of fixed 
property in that locality will tend to be raised. 
Hence the effort of the occupiers to spend rates profit- 
ably for themselves is favourable at the same time to 
the owner who is not an occupier. What they do in 
the well-founded expectation of immediate benefit for 
themselves, he himself would do for them at his own 
immediate expense for his own ultimate benefit, if there 
were no machinery by means of which they could do 
it. In actual fact it constantly happens that in the 
absence of suitable local government machinery for the