This being so it is evident that ratepayers in general have a genuine grievance. They have clearly tbe right to complain that, under the existing system of local taxation, there is thrown on the rates too much of the cost of certain national services which the state requires to be undertaken, and the burden of which ought consequently to be borne on the broader back of the national taxpayer.
Until the year 1888 this grievance was slightly remedied by annual parlia mentary votes of state grants-in-aid of rates, these grants being appropriated to specific services and generally bearing some relation to the expenditure or some of its items. Thus in 1887-88 a sum of X2,860,384. was granted by parliament in aid of the rates, to be divided in certain specific portions amongst such objects as the police, pauper lunatics, roads, poor law medical officers' expenses, poor law school teachers' salaries, criminal prosecutions, vaccination, inspection of nuisances, and registration of births and deaths.
But the year 1888 witnessed a radical reform in local government, with, incidentally, the cessation of these grants-in-aid, and the introduction in their stead of a system of state subvention by means of Assigned Revenues. This system has since been extended and modified. The Central Government has created a local Taxation Account managed and drawn upon by the Local Government Board. Into this account are paid out of the Consolidated Fund (under the Finance Act, 1907) sums equivalent to the yield of—(1) Certain excise licences, known as the local taxation licence duties, collected in England and Wales, and the penalties recovered in connection therewith ; (2) The Death Duty Grant, consisting of' 80 per cent. of half the proceeds of the Estate Duty derived from personal property ; and (3) The Beer and Spirit Surtaxes, ie. 80 per cent. of half of the amount raised in the United Kingdom by the additional customs and excise duties of 3d. a barrel on beer and 6d. a gallon on spirits imposed by an Act of 1890. Subject to certain constant payments in respect of Diseases of Animals and for Police Superannuation, the Local Government Board apportions this fund between the councils of administrative counties and county boroughs, such authorities appropriating the funds they thus receive to a continuance of most of the grants for which the state ceased, in 1888, to provide, as well as to the aid of the poor law expenditure. In addition to the above three items, the state subvention includes contributions under the Agricultural Rates Act, 1896, and the Tithe Rentcharge (Rates) Act, 1899.
The former of these Acts is by far the more important of the two. It exempts the occupiers of agricultural land from one-half of certain rates ; and to meet the deficiency so caused in the receipts of certain local authorities, the latter receive a fixed grant paid to them through the Local Taxation Account out of the proceeds of Estate Duty derived fn»-n personal property. The principal of the licences which come within the above denomination of Local Taxation Licences are those for the sale by retail of intoxicating liquors, the sale of tobacco and game, refreshment house keepers, appraisers, auctioneers, hawkers, house agents, pawnbrokers and plate dealers, dogs, guns, carriages, killing game, armorial bearings, male servants, and light locomotives. Of these the liquor licences form about half the whole amount. And this whole amount of state subvention, excluding operations under the Agricultural Rates Act (worth £1,326,388 in 1907-8), was X7,136,173 in 1907-8—a notable increase upon the old grants-in-aid. And in addition to this the state continues to relieve local taxation by special payments out of the imperial revenues.
Statistics of local taxation.—The rate of increase in the amount of local taxes has been astonishingly rapid during the last few years. It is now increasing, always xnore rapidly, at the rate of more than X1,500,000 a year. During the fifty years preceding 1868 the direct local taxes of England and Wales doubled in amount, the increase being from about £8,000,000 to X16,000,000. Then, during the next twenty-three years—less than half the former period—they increased from X16,500,000 in 1868 to X27,819,000 in 1890-91, or 69 per cent. Later, during the period 1891 to 1898-99, they reached the sum of £39,935,000. And this increase persists notwithstanding a constant proportionate increase in the relief granted to the ratepayer out of the imperial funds. L52,941,665 is the amount for the year 1903-4 ; and X58,256,000 for the year 1905-6. The following figures, which are still the latest drawn from official sources and dealt with so^ extensively and so much in detail, enable the increase in rates, since 1890-91, to be traced to the particular authorities respectively responsible, and, in some measure, to the particular classes of districts in which it occurred.