The expenditure from revenue of the au thorities, including repayment of debt, amounted in the year 1912-13 to about i170,000,000. About £26,000,000 of this was met by the allocated taxes and other national grants, chiefly for education, spoken of above, about 1.80,000,000 by "rates," and the rest by the special charges levied for commodities and services supplied, and all kinds of miscellaneous revenue.
The "rates" are taxes levied by the local au thorities at a rate of so many shillings or pence in the pound of the annual value of land and all things attached to the land in the concrete form of buildings or works of any kind. The idea of the Elizabethan rate for the relief of the poor undoubtedly was to assess inhabitants ac cording to their ability, and down to 1840 at tempts were frequently made to extend the sys tem which long prevailed in some parts of the country of assessing stock in trade and other visible personal property. But experience showed that such taxation was utterly unsuit able for small localities, and when the law courts at last began to favor these attempts, legislation intervened. The tax is usually levied from the owner in the important case of small house property in England, but in almost all other cases from the occupier of the property. The occupier has no right of deducting rates paid from his rent unless he has so contracted with his landlord, and a contract of this kind is scarcely ever made. There is at present, under the Agricultural Rates Act, a rebate of 50 per cent in favor of agricultural land, and there are some other differentiations in the cities. The "rates" are elastic, certain, cheaply collected, and singularly free from disturbing effects upon production. The fact that they are unpopular is sufficiently accounted for by their enormous yield and their obvious character.
Financial Control,— The finance of the cen tral government, according to the present theory of the British Constitution, is vested in the House of Commons. All financial legisla tion must originate there, and the Commons will not permit any alteration of their measures by 'the Lords. But in the House of Commons itself the power of initiation in matters of finance is now entirely in the hands of the Ministry. Estimates of expenses and receipts made up in the government departments are considered or amended by the Ministry in private. The result
is then laid before the House of Commons by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his °Budget Speech." A ministry will rarely submit to modify its proposals in any important respect, so that the House has to choose .between ac ceptance of the budget and a change of govern ment. No ordinary member of the House can directly propose an increase in taxes or ex penses, the theory being that it is the King who asks his faithful subjects for money, but anyone may propose reductions. The estimates are put before the House in immense detail, but this very detail defeats its own end, as there is not and cannot be, time to consider the whole to any good purpose. The estimates arc conse quently passed without material alteration. This absence of real control by the House of Commons is probably favorable rather than un favorable' to economy. The necessity of finding new taxes or increasing old ones is much more immediately before the eyes of the Ministry than of the House of Commons, and the Min istry has also more reason to fear popular re sentment against any increase of taxation. It is, moreover, in immediate and constant associa tion with permanent Treasury officers whose in fluence is generally cast against temporary expedients for staving off the day of reckoning.
In the councils which conduct the local gov ernment of the country there is nothing like the Ministry in Parliament, and the system of con trol consequently has a nearer resemblance, as has sometimes been observed, to that prevailing in the United States Congress. The committees charged with the various departments of the council's work, with the assistance of their executive officers, each prepare their own esti mate of expenses for the coming year. These are then all added up and put before the finance committee, which usually hands them on with little or no alteration to the council, merely adding its own estimate of receipts other than rates and a recommendation to the council to make a rate of as many pence in the pound as is calculated to 'make up the balance required. The council discusses the estimate of receipts and expenses thus put before it, and any mem ber may move alterations in any item. Such motions are frequently made and sometimes, especially, of course, in the smaller councils, carried.