22 
History of Local Rates 
whole of the property benefited. But if we look at 
the other rates through modern spectacles, the prin: 
ciple on which they are based is not very evident. 
The cloud which obstructs our vision will disappear, 
however, if we once abandon the pernicious modern 
habit of asking what was ratable. It is never things, 
but always persons, that pay rates and taxes, and in 
the fourteenth or even the sixteenth century the 
inetaphor which attributes payment to the thing in 
respect of which the person is taxed had not taken 
possession of the ordinary mind as it has now. In 
the simplest form of rating there is nothing in the 
nature of an assessment or valuation list made up by 
a modern assessment committee. The total sum to 
be raised is apportioned directly upon the contributors 
as the assessors think fit or the common agreement 
decides. It seems quite clear that in the fourteenth 
and fifteenth century the accepted view was that each 
inhabitant should pay according to his ability or 
substance! for in those days ability and substance 
meant much the same thing: the man who has a 
large income without having a large capital is a pro- 
duct of modern civilisation. Something in the nature 
of a valuation list soon sprang up, not because there 
was as yet any idea that the things of which a man’s 
substance consists ought to be rated, but because the 
assessors wanted some kind of guide as to the relative 
ability or substance of the ratepayers. In a purely 
t In Latin, “juxta facultates.” See the letter to Chichester, 
juoted above, p. 17, and another in Rymer, Fadera, BR. vol. iii. Part i. 
p. 57, A.D. 1345, giving directions for the reassessment of Tamworth 
to the fifteenth after a fire :—“Vobis mandamus quod omnes et 
singulos homines dicta ville juxta facultates suas quas modo 
habent de novo taxari.”