to compel parishioners to make a rate. The ecclesiastical courts cannot make a rate, nor appoint commissioners to make one. An obiter dictum of Chief Justice Tindal in delivering the judgment of the Court of Exchequer Chamber in error in the Braintree case, has lately suggested the possibility of proceeding criminally against parishioners for voting against a a rate, or absenting themselves from a meeting called to consider of a rate, where repairs are needed. In Braintree parish, after the parishioners on meeting had refused to make any rate, the churchwardens had levied a rate of their own authority, and proceeded against a parishioner for refusing to pay his portion. The Court of Exchequer Chamber, to which the churchwardens appealed against a prohibition issued by the Court of Queen's Bench, confirmed the prohibition, and declared the churchwardens' rate to be illegal. But in delivering the judgment of the court, Chief Justice Tindal made the following remark:-"It is obvious that the effect of our judgment in this case is no more than to declare the opinion of the court, that the church wardens have in this instance pursued a course not authorized by law, and consequently all the power with which the spiritual court is invested by law to compel the reparation of the church is left untouched. If that court is empowered (as is stated by Lyndwode, page 53, voce sub pana, and other ecclesiastical writers) to compel the churchwardens to repair the church by spiritual censures; to call upon them to assemble the parishioners together, by due notice, to make a sufficient rate; to punish such of the parishioners as refuse to perform their duty in joining in the rate by excommunication, that is, since the statute of 53 Geo. III. c. 127, by imprisonment, and under the same penalty to compel each parishioner to pay his proportion of the church-rate; the same power will still remain with them, notwithstanding the decision of this case." In December, 1842, some parishioners of St. George's, Colegate, Norwich, were articled in the Court of Arches for having wilfully and contumaciously obstructed, or at least refused to make, or join and concur in

making, a sufficient rate for the repair of the church of the parish. The articles were admitted by Sir Herbert Jenner Fust, the judge of the Court of Arches; but on application to the Court of Queen's Bench the proceedings were stayed by prohibition. Church-rates depend, therefore, entirely on the will of a majority of the parishioners assembled: and this is obviously a state of things which, where dissenters from the established religion abound, may lead to parish churches being left to go to ruin.

The existing poor-rate of the parish is generally taken as the criterion for the imposition of the church-rate; but decisions as to poor-rates are not binding in cases of church-rates, and the proper test for church-rates is a valuation by competent judges, grounded on the rent the tenant would be willing to pay for the premises. All property in the pa rish is liable except the glebe-land of that parish, and the possessions of the crown when in the actual occupation of the crown, and places of public worship. Stock in trade is not generally rated for church repairs, but a custom may exist rendering it rateable in a particular parish. The ecclesiastical courts have the exclusive authority of deciding on the validity of a rate, and the liability of a party to pay it; but a ratepayer cannot by an original proceeding in those courts raise objections to a rate for the purpose of quashing it altogether. If he wishes to dispute it, he ought to attend at the vestry, and there state his objections; if they are not removed, he may enter a caveat against the confirmation of the rate, or refuse to pay his assessment. In the latter case, if proceeded against in the ecclesiastical court, he may in his defence show either that the rate is generally invalid, or that he is unfairly assessed. The consequence of entering a caveat is an appeal to the ecclesiastical judge, who will see that right is done.

A retrospective church-rate, or rate for expenses previously incurred, is bad. This has been often decided in the courts of common law and equity, and in the ecclesiastical courts. The reason is stated by Lord Ellenborough in the judgment of the court in Rex v. Haworth (12 East,

556):-"The regular way is for the churchwardens to raise the money beforehand by a rate made in the regular form for the repairs of the church, in order that the money may be paid by the existing inhabitants at the time, on whom the burden ought to fall." It has lately been decided by the Judicial Committee, in the case Chesterton v. Hutchins, reversing the decision of the Court of Arches, and confirming the previous decision of the Consistory Court, that a rate not retrospective on the face of it, but admitted to be partly retrospective, was bad. Previously to 53 Geo. III. c. 127, the only mode of recovering church-rates from parties refusing to pay was by suit in the ecclesiastical court for subtraction of rate. By that statute, where the sum to be recovered is under 107. and there is no question as to the validity of the rate, or the liability of the party assessed, any justice of the county where the church is situated may, on complaint of the churchwarden, inquire into the merits of the case, and order the payment. Against his decision there is an appeal to the quarter-sessions. By several statutes, principally the 58 Geo. III. c. 45, and 59 Geo. III. c. 134, acts passed for the promotion of building churches, the common-law powers of churchwardens have been varied, and extended so as to enable them to raise money on the security of church-rates, and to apply them for the enlargement, improvement, &c. of churches, and for the building of new ones, &c.

The levying of church-rates on dissenters, who are so numerous in this country, has caused so much irritation, and the frequently successful opposition of dissenters at vestry-meetings called to impose rates has rendered church-rates so precarious a resource, that various attempts have been made of late years to abolish them, and to substitute some more certain and less obnoxious provision for the repair of churches and the due celebration of divine worship. Lord Althorp, as chancellor of the exchequer in Lord Grey's government, brought in a bill for the abolition of church-rates in 1834, which proposed to charge the Consolidated Fund with 250,000l. a year, to be devoted to the repair of parish churches

and chapels (including the chancel), and to be disbursed by commissioners after certificate from the quarter-sessions of the county in which the parish might lie, founded on a report by the county surveyor,-to place on the rector or lay impropriator, relieved of the duty of repairing the chancel, the burden of providing necessaries for the performance of divine service, to leave the preservation of pews to the owners or occupiers, and to leave the provision and repair of bells, organs, and ornaments to voluntary contributions. This bill fell to the ground, principally owing to the opposition of dissenters, who viewed the substitution for church-rates of a charge on the public taxes as a mere shifting of the burden upon themselves, and objected altogether to being called upon to contribute to a church to which they did not belong. In 1837 Lord Melbourne's government made a second attempt to settle the question; and a bill was brought in by Mr. Spring Rice, chancellor of the exchequer, to abolish church-rates, and provide for the objects of them by a surplus created by a better management of the church lands held by the archbishops, bishops, and deans and chapters; these lands to be managed by commissioners, and 250,000l. a year to be the first charge on the surplus. The opposition of the church and of church lessees frustrated this measure, and no measure has since been brought forward by any government.

Lord Althorp stated, in introducing his measure, that the amount of church-rates annually levied was from 500,000l. to 600,000l.; and about 249,000l. was annually expended on the fabrics of churches. Mr. Spring Rice calculated that in 5000 parishes in England no church-rates are levied. There are endowments in many parishes for the repair of the church, which render church-rates unnecessary; and in many parishes arrangements have been made for voluntary subscriptions, to avoid squabblings between churchmen and dissenters, and the scandal of such disputes.

The Parliamentary Returns respecting local taxation issued in 1839 (No. 562) give the following particulars respecting church-rates in England and Wales for

sea-coast of which, after the victory of Hastings, he showed most eagerness to possess himself, by sweeping along it with his army before he directed his march towards London; and the surrender into his hands of the castle of Dover, which is the centre of the Cinque Ports' jurisdiction, was one of the stipulations introduced into the famous oath which, in Edward's lifetime, the duke had extorted from Harold. To enable his government to wield the resources of this maritime district with the greater vigour and promptitude, he severed it wholly from the civil and military administrations of the counties of Kent and Sussex, erecting it into a kind of palatine jurisdiction, under a gardien, or warden, who had the seat of his administration at the castle of Dover, and exercised over the whole district the combined civil, military, and naval authority; uniting in his own hands all the various functions which, to use the terms most intelligible to modern readers, we may describe as those of a sheriff of a county at large, a custos rotulorum, a lord lieutenant, and an admiral of the coast.

To the five ports of the Conqueror's time were added, before the reign of Henry III., with equal privileges, what were called the ancient towns of Winchelsea and Rye, lying on the Sussex coast, between Hastings and Romney. To each of these seven municipal towns, except Winchelsea, were attached one or more subordinate ports or towns, denominated members of the principal port.

The internal constitution of each port, as well as the Norman denominations of jurats and barons, which, in lieu of aldermen and freemen, have constantly prevailed in them all since William's time, concur to show the solidity of his plan for rendering this maritime line one of the grand outworks of the Conquest. The earliest members of the municipal bodies established under these foreign denominations, at a time when the English municipalities in general were subjected to the most rigorous enslavement, were doubt less trading settlers from William's continental dominions; and the term barons, as applied to the Cinque Ports' representatives, which in the later periods of English

parliamentary history has usually been considered as simply synonymous with burgesses, did, before the several elements of the Commons' House coalesced into one homogeneous body, imply a political as well as a municipal superiority.

Until the time of Henry VII. the crown appears to have had no permanent navy: the Cinque Ports constantly furnished nearly all the shipping required for the purposes of the state, and their assistance to the king's ships continued long after that time. When ships were wanted, the king issued his summons to the ports to provide their quota. In the time of Edward I. the number they were bound to provide was fifty-seven, fully equipped, at their own cost: the period of gratuitous service was limited to fifteen days.

Each of the five original ports returned two barons to parliament, as early as the 18th of Edward I. The peculiar nature of the relation between the Cinque Ports and the crown must have given the latter, from the commencement, a very powerful influence in their internal transactions; and, in later times, when the parliamentary relations of the municipal towns came to be the grand object of solicitude to the royal prerogative, these municipalities imbibed an ample share of the prevalent municipal as well as political corruption. In the 20th of Charles II. the first open blow was struck by the crown at the liberties of the Ports in general, in the provision of Charles's charter of that year, by which the elections of all their recorders and common clerks were made subject to the royal approba tion. Subsequently, in 1685, all the general charters of the Ports, and most of the particular charters of each individual town, were, by the king's special command, delivered up to Colonel Strode, then constable of Dover Castle, and were never afterwards recovered.

but

Before the Revolution in 1688 the lordwardens assumed the power and the right of nominating one, and sometimes both, of the members for each of the port-towns having parliamentary representation; this practice was terminated by an act passed in the first year after the Revolution, entitled An Act to declare the Right and Freedom of Election of Mem