160 History of Local Rates 
must be of course to secure the best results on the 
whole and in the long run. The two great guiding 
principles for the attainment of this end are Liquity 
and Economy, the latter term being, of course, under- 
stood not in the vulgar sense of spending little, 
irrespective of the return to the expenditure, but in 
the sense of the best utilisation of available means. 
In the application of existing ideas of equity to our 
systein of taxation, local or other, the first thing to do 
is to recognise that the present distribution of wealth 
is not by the great majority of people regarded either 
as equitable or inequitable in its main features. No 
one seriously claims that the distribution is equitable 
in itself, so that for example it is actively just and 
equitable that one infant should be born owning 
£100,000 a year, and another nothing at all. On the 
other hand, few persons regard the distribution as 
actively inequitable as a whole, though many condemn 
particular features in it with some asperity. The 
usual attitude is to accept the scheme as a whole in 
the shape in which it has come down to us, and 
merely to propose amendments in it here and there, or 
to oppose amendments proposed by others, grounding 
opposition not on any alleged perfection of the scheme 
as it is, but on the undesirability of the particular 
alterations suggested. 
Subject to certain modifications introduced by the 
claims of family and by public and private almsgiving, 
and other gifts and gratuitous allowances, the existing 
system proportions command over economic goods to 
the value of services rendered and property possessed, 
part of this property being obtained by services 
rendered by the present possessors in the past, and