The above rates are all payable out of the poor rate, but some of these, such as the county, borough, watch, and highway rates, are also in certain circum stances capable of being levied as separate rates. But the rates now to be enumerated are distinctly separate from and independent of the poor rate.
General district rate. — This rate, generally speaking, is levied by a town council or an urban district council in order to supply its borough or district fund, out of which are payable those of its expenses under the Public Health Act, 1875, and any effective local acts, not defrayed out of the fund or out of a rate levied under an improvement Act. The rate is made and levied on all kinds of property assessable to the poor rate. The expenses it provides for are those connected with such matters as sewers, waterworks, hospitals, highways, scavenging, nuisances, lighting, gasworks, allotments, museums, tramways, and burial grounds. Water rates are levied in respect of premises to which an urban or district council supplies water, upon the persons who receive the supply, that is to say, the occupiers. But it is upon the owner that the levy is made in the case of dwelling-houses or parts of dwelling-houses, occupied as separate tenements, where the annual value does not exceed £10. It is assessable on the net annual value of the premises ascertained in the manner prescribed with respect to general district rates. Private improvement rates, in respect of such purposes as drains, water-closets, sewering, paving, and water supply, may be levied by an urban or rural district council in addition to all other rates. The amount of the rate must be sufficient to discharge the expenses incurred by the authority for the purpose for which the rate is levied, together with interest thereon at not more than 5 per cent, per annum, in such period not exceeding thirty years as the authority in each case may determine. A rate of this class is levied only upon premises affected by the improvement. It is payable by the occupier, but he can deduct three-fourths of the rate from his rent, if a rack rent, or a proportionate part of the three-fourths in case the rent is less than a rack rent. Landlords, who are certain lessees, may, in their turn, make a deduction from their rent (page 47). Lighting rates are raised where the Lighting and Watching Act,
1833, is in force in a parish, by the overseers by means of separate rates, the orders therefor being given to the overseers by the local authority. The amount so raised provides lamps for lighting and even fire-engines. Such rates are only met with in rural parishes and in parishes having a parish council. The names of the sewers and lighting rates of the metropolis are sufficient to afford an indication of their respective purposes.
The following list sums up very briefly the principal spending authorities outside the metropolis, the rates to which they have recourse, and the more important purposes upon which the rates are spent :— State subvention.—Though the limits of space have prevented in this article more than an illustrative indication of the objects for which local taxation is levied, it is nevertheless clearly apparent, from even so s,light an indication, that those objects include many that are rather national than local in their nature and actual importance. It is, however, impossible to draw a hard and fast line, placing on one side all the national, and on the other side all the local. Yet some public undertakings can be readily so placed. Drainage works, for example, are clearly a local benefit. But education, on the other hand, is highly national. Drainage confers a special benefit to a special place, particularly and primarily to the property upon which the local rates are charged. But education confers its benefits upon persons who freely move from place to place ; it certainly does not, considered generally, increase the value of rateable property in any particular place. Poor relief may also fairly be claimed as a national service, especially when regard is had to the many services incidental thereto now administered by boards of guardians and over seers—the maintenance of pauper lunatics, the provision of asylums, registration, valuation, and vaccination. Police and criminal prosecutions are also pre eminently national ; and so also is the maintenance of main roads, particularly in view of their ever increasing use by a population whose means for travelling about the country are now so much developed.