tion on the front long recorded the fact to passers-by. It has now been removed into the court-yard. Surely it was not a thing to be ashamed of. The genius of finance, however, has not quite abandoned its favourite quarter. M. Rothschild still lives in the Rue Laffitte;' and now and then illumines the quarter with a splendour of hospitality which reduces the Christendom of Paris to envy and despair.

As for the Rue Chantereine, or de la Victoire, its fates have been even more strangely checkered than those of its neighbours. Its early days formed a fit prelude to its coming history; for it was scarcely built when the two heroes of modern quackery, Cagliostro and Mesmer, did it the honour of making it the scene of their oracles-precursors of performers on a larger scale. For here Napoleon married Josephine, and became through her the owner of the pretty hotel, No. 6, which she had bought of Talma the actor: it had been built for the unfortunate Condorcet. Alas! the trumpet of fame has long been silenced in the Street of Victory, and its dreams of departed glory are only broken by the profane sound of Messrs Herz's pianofortes, which jangle perpetual discord, from one of its finest hotels of financial renown. But hard by, in the Place St George, dwells the last political illustrator of the quarter. Where could M. Thiers be lodged better-in those leisure intervals of his life which are so usefully spent when excluded from the Hotel des Affaires Etrangères-than here, amid the manes of the Empire, like Gibbon, breathing the inspiration of his subject in the ruined circle of the Coliseum ?

Yet we must not leave this once celebrated quarter without noticing the frail link which still connects it with the living world of 1846. The streets and modern church of Notre Dame de Lorette, are worth a great deal more to the modern Parisian, than all the remembrances which cling round the thresholds of Napoleon and his Marshals. Here, at the extremity of the Rue Laffitte, close to the noise and vulgarity of the Faubourg Montmartre, and under the immediate presidency of M. Thiers, rises a new and neat little district, peopled by all the anomalous world which pertains to the opera and the public exhibitions; and by that seductive and interesting class of the population to whom M. Nestor Roqueplan first gave the name of Lorettes. In this coquettish little Church of Notre Dame, gilt like the back of a book, with its soft carpets and sweet perfumes, the theatrical Parisian may admire the velvet prie-Dieus of the Elslers, the Dumilâtres, and other attractions. La Guimard and La Duthé, the ancient divinities of the district, have been replaced by goddesses no less ethereal.

But we are trespassing far beyond the bounds of our sober antiquarianism. We have been dreaming of old Paris, in the middle of a world too active and awake to suit with the temper of such reveries. The endeavour to fix the attention on the past has even something painful, and out of place, in full view of a present so busy and changeful as ours. Centuries of stationary ease, or slow advance, seem those in which the spirit of man most fitly addresses itself to look backward, and to indulge in historical inquiry. Now, when we are plainly commencing an era of changes in the fortunes of our race, the speculator who turns round to contemplate the past vicissitudes of things, seems almost like the man who should busy himself in meditating and recounting the dreams of the night, at his entrance on a day of active and brilliant exertion. New Paris, the centre of a great kingdom, with its lines of railway connexion, will outgrow the limits of the city of our day, ten times more rapidly than the existing city has swelled beyond the old boundary of the Romans in their palisaded island. The dense centre will be cleared out; whole quarters of the city of Philip le Bel will be swept away, to make elbow-room for the new generation; while the displaced mass is spread far and wide over the plains, which seem to invite its dispersion. The fortifications of 1841, constructed on the principle of keeping the "outer enceinte at a distance from the city, properly so called,' will become Boulevards in their turn; and the fashion of some future age will make its promenades of those specimens of the wisdom of the first Orleans reign. All this seems to stand plainly written in the earliest half-open pages of the book of the future; but how much uncertainty, in the mean time, involves the moral and intellectual prospects of the great people whose coming generations are to profit by this vast extension of civilisation!

ART. III.-1. The Local Taxes of the United Kingdom; containing a Digest of the Law, with a Summary of Statistical Information, concerning the several Local Taxes in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Published under the direction of the POOR-LAW COMMISSIONers. 8vo. London: 1846.

2.-Report from the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the Burdens affecting Real Property, together with the Minutes of Evidence taken before the said Committee. Session 1846.

The

M ANY causes have, in this country, combined to concentrate public attention upon the taxes levied and expended by the General government, and to divert it from the Local taxes. Not only is the amount of the general taxes larger, but it is looked at in the aggregate. Every body knows that the public revenue of the kingdom amounts to about fifty millions a-year. expenditure, too, involves many of those national interests, and political questions, which occupy the chief attention of the statesman, and decide the movements of parties and the fate of ministries. The conduct of wars, military and naval establishments, the defence of the country, the maintenance of the Sovereign, the salaries and pensions of ministers of state, the rewards of great men; these, and other similar questions, are intimately connected with the expenditure of the general taxes. Both their levy, moreover, and their expenditure, are under the direct control of Parliament; all the decisions relating to them are made upon the immediate responsibility of the government, and are subjected to parliamentary discussion. On the other hand, the local taxation is not only less in amount, but it is rarely viewed in the aggregate. In general, it is known merely by some fractional part. We either hear of the total amount of the poor's rate, or the highway rate, or the county rate, in England, or Scotland, or Ireland; or, what is more common, of the amount of one of these taxes in a single parish. No attempt, in as far as we know, was made to procure an authentic account of the total amount of the local taxes of the United Kingdom, until the last session of Parliament; and even now, nothing can be obtained but an imperfect estimate. There are no means at present of laying before Parliament an account of the actual receipt and expenditure of the local taxes. As to their expenditure, although it relates to important national interests, (such as the punishment and prosecution of offenders, the relief of the poor, the maintenance of roads and bridges, and the repair of churches,) the mode of its administration nevertheless withdraws

it from public notice. Instead of its application being decided by Parliamentary grants, and the debates being reported daily in the newspapers, the expenditure of the local taxes is managed by small bodies of magistrates, guardians, parish-vestries, surveyors, &c., whose proceedings are rarely known beyond the circle of their respective neighbourhoods. The salaries paid out of the local taxes are also petty in their amount, and received by obscure functionaries. Lastly, there is no public department having a general control over the local taxes, and charged with the duty of reporting upon them periodically, for the information of the legislature.

Since the establishment of the Poor-Law Commission, however, full accounts of the receipt and expenditure of the poor's rate the largest of the local taxes in England-have been annually presented to Parliament. Moreover, in 1843, the PoorLaw Commissioners made a Report upon the local taxation of England, containing a complete statement of the law relating to this extensive subject, together with a summary of all the accessible statistical information. The materials contained in this Report have been arranged in a more commodious form, and the statement of the law has been brought down to the end of 1845, in the publication authorized by the same Commissioners, the title of which is prefixed to this article. In this volume are likewise contained, accounts of the local taxes of Scotland and Ireland, as well as of England.

A select committee of the House of Lords, appointed at the beginning of last session, to inquire into the burdens affecting real property, received much evidence upon the incidence and effects of the local taxes; and upon this evidence Lord Monteagle contributed a very valuable comment, which was subsequently printed as a separate Parliamentary Paper. [No. 449, sess. 1846.]

From the materials thus collected, we propose, first, to give a concise account of the local taxes of England, Scotland, and Ireland, showing their number, the purposes to which they are applicable, the property on which they are incident, and their annual amount; as well as the principles on which they are founded, and the reasons for distinguishing them from the general taxes. We will afterwards examine the objections which have been made-particularly within the last few years— to the justice of the principle on which they are assessed; and will consider the proposals for the alteration of that principle, by extending the basis of their incidence.

By local taxes we understand taxes levied for a specified purpose, within a defined district, and expended by public officers whose functions are limited to that district.

As so understood, the local taxes of the United Kingdom fall into two classes, viz.-1. rates raised in defined districts; and, 2. tolls, dues, and fees, paid for particular services, or on certain occasions.

With regard to these two classes, the incidence of the first professes to be determined by the ability to pay, while that of the latter is regulated by the benefit received. In the levy of a rate, the tax-payer is called upon to contribute to a general fund, on account of his possession or occupation of certain kinds of pro'perty within a defined district,-the amount of his contribution being proportioned to the value of the property. In other words, the ability to pay, as arising from such property, constitutes both the foundation of the liability and the measure of its extent. But when the tax assumes the shape of a fee or toll, it is de'manded of the tax-payer without regard to his ability to pay it, in consideration of his receiving some advantage, for which it 'serves as the equivalent. The purposes attained by means of 'highway rates and turnpike tolls are precisely similar; but in the one case, the burden of maintaining the roads falls on the occupiers of property in the district, according to their ability as derived from that property; in the other, it falls on the particular individuals who actually experience the benefit, and who ' are required to pay certain sums on the specific occasions of their ' doing so.'

Beginning with ENGLAND, the principal local rates are,1. The county and borough rates.

2. The poor's rate.

3. The highway rate.

4. The church rate.

Besides these, there are the sewers' rate, and the lighting and watching rate, with some other rates of minor importance.

Of these rates, the county rate is applicable to the erection and repair of county prisons, the payment of the prison officers, the expenses of prisoners, the costs of prosecuting offenders and of coroners' inquests, the payments to special constables and the costs of a county police, the maintenance of county bridges, the repair of shire-halls and judges' lodgings, the erection and maintenance of lunatic asylums, together with some other purposes.

The borough rate is applicable to the expenses of municipal government, such as the salaries of the borough officers, and to the expenses of criminal jurisdiction, similar to those defrayed out of the county rate.

* Local Taxes of the United Kingdom, p. 182,