ii. For be it known it is with the surveyor or rate-collector that

the parson’s first and most important concern lies. Whatever he may receive from his cure, however numerous may be the defaulters among the tithe-payers, however large the expense of collecting his dues, the parson has _to pay rates_ on his gross income. The barrister and the physician, the artist or the head of a government department, knows or need know nothing about rates. He may live in a garret if he likes; he may live in a boarding-house at so much a week; he may live in a flat at a rent which covers all extraneous charges. I suppose we most of us have known men of considerable fortune, men who live in chambers, men who live in lodgings, men who live in college rooms, who never _directly_ paid a rate in their lives. Our lamented H., who dropped out recently, leaving £97,000 behind him, invested in first-class securities, was one of these languidly prosperous men. “I do detetht violent language on any thubject whatever,” he lisped out to me once. “I hope I thall never thee that man again who thtormed at rate collectorth tho. What _ith_ a rate collector? Doth he wear a uniform?”

But a country parson and all that he has in the world, _qua_ country parson, is rateable to his very last farthing, and beyond it: the fiction being that he is a landed proprietor, and as such in the enjoyment of an income from real property. It is in vain that he pleads that his nominal income is of all property the most unreal:--he is told that he has a claim upon the land, and the land cannot run away. It is in vain that he plaintively protests that he would gladly live in a smaller house if he were allowed--he _does_ live in it, chained to it like a dangerous dog to his kennel. It is in vain that he urges that he cannot let his glebe, and may not cut down the trees upon it--that he is compelled to keep his house in tenantable repair, and maintain the fences as he found them. The impassive functionary expresses a well-feigned regret and some guarded commiseration; but he has his duty to perform, and the rates have to be paid--Poor rates, County rates, School Board rates, and all the rest of them; and paid upon that parson’s gross income--such an income as never comes, and which everybody knows never could be collected.

You may say in your graceful way that a parson does not pay a bit more than he ought to pay, and that he may be thankful if he be allowed to live at all. That may be quite true--I don’t think it is, but it _may be_--but there are some things that are not true, and one of them is, that the gross income awarded to the country parson on paper gives anything approaching to a fair notion of the amount of income that comes to his hands. And if you are going to pity the country parson, do begin at the right end, and consider how you would like to pay such rates as he pays on _your_ gross income.

iii. But when the country parson’s rates have been duly paid, the next thing that he is answerable for is the Land-tax. The mysteries of the Land-tax are quite beyond me. If I could afford to give up three years of my life to the uninterrupted study of the history and incidence of the Land-tax, I think, by what people tell me, I might get to know something about it, and be in a position to enlighten mankind upon this abstruse subject; but as I really have not three years of my life to spare, I must needs acquiesce in my hopeless ignorance even to the end. Only this I do know, that, whereas the country parson is called upon to pay sixpence in the pound for Income-tax, he is called upon to pay nearly ninepence in the pound for Land-tax: at any rate, I know one country parson who has to do so.

Let the Land-tax pass--it is beyond me. But how about the Income-tax? As I have said above, in the case of all other professions except the clerical, a man makes his return of income upon the _available_ income which comes to him after deducting all fair and reasonable _office expenses_. But for the crime of clericalism, the country parson is debarred from making any such deductions as are permitted to other human beings. Many of the “good livings” in East Anglia have two churches, each of which must be served. A man cannot be in two places at once; and the laws of nature and of the Church being in conflict, the laws of the Church carry it over the laws of nature, and the rector has to put in an appearance at his second church by deputy--in other words, the poor man has to keep a curate. If he were a country solicitor who was compelled to keep a clerk, he would deduct the salary of the clerk from the profits of his business; but being only a country parson, he can do nothing of the sort: he has to pay Income-tax all the same on his gross returns. A curate is a luxury, as a riding horse is a luxury; and the only wonder is that curates have not long ago been included among those superfluous animals chargeable to the assessed taxes.