Miscellancous Statutory Rates to 1640 31 
towns power and authority to call before them the 
constables, or else “two of the most honest inhabi- 
tants,” of every town or parish within the area charge- 
able, and with their assent “to tax and set every 
inhabitant in any such city, town, or parish within 
the limits of their commissions and authorities to 
such reasonable aid and sum of money as they shall 
think by their discretions convenient and sufficient 
for the repairing, rectifying, and amendment of such 
bridges.” -After this taxation has been settled, the 
justices are to “cause the names and sums of every 
particular person so by them taxed to be written in a 
roll indented.” The act is extremely minute on many 
points of detail which seem unimportant to us, but it 
does not tell us who the “inhabitants” were, nor on 
what principle the justices were to proceed in appor- 
tioning the tax among them. Coke, in his Institutes, 
says that the word “inhabitant” does not include 
servants and such-like persons who have nothing upon 
which distraint could be levied, and that it does in- 
clude a non-resident who has lands or tenements in 
his own possession and manurance within the area of 
liability. Such a non-resident, he adds, “is an in- 
habitant both where his person dwelleth and where 
he hath lands or tenements in his own possession 
within the statute.” His opinion as to the ratability 
of non-resident occupiers is founded on Jeffrey’s case, 
not on anything in the act itself, nor on any legal 
decision under it. He also remarks that the taxation 
cannot be set on the hundreds, parishes, and towns in 
lump sums, but must be assessed on individual in- 
habitants. This is doubtless the true meaning of the 
1 Institutes, ii. p. 702.