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which is certainly a less exceptionable custom, an account of the number of tons worked in each year for three or four years back is furnished by the person who rents. or gets the coal. To come to a more legal, and perhaps more equitable mode of rating coal works, where assessments are collected quarterly, an account might be taken of the coal worked and the assessment charged at the end of every quarter.

When coal pits cease to be worked, they cease to be rateable; their annual value is then suspended or relinquished, the same as a house unoccupied. A person took a coal mine on a lease for a number of years, at a rent of 2001. per annum, which he agreed to pay during the term, whether the mine yielded coal or not. The mine ceased to be worked before the expiration of the term; therefore it was decided in Court to be no longer rateable, although the rent was due throughout the term.

Coal mines must not be coupled in the rate with lead, iron, or other metals, which are not rateable. In the King's Bench a

Coal mines

not rateable

when not

used.

rate was quashed for having "iron and coal mines" joined together in one sum. Iron mines not being rateable property, it was decided that coal mines only should have been mentioned in the rate.

WOODS.

is rateable.

THE last kind of property mentioned in the Underwood statute of 43 Eliz. as liable to the poor'srate, is saleable underwoods; by which is understood small coppice woods and young shoots from the stools of larger trees, which are occasionally thinned or taken down under the age of twenty years. The larger Timbertrees, and those of twenty years' growth not rateand upwards, are purposely excepted out of the statute, with a view, as is generally thought, to encourage the planting of trees for ship-building, and prevent our being dependant, in time of war, on foreign timber.

trees are

able.

ner of

The legal rate due for saleable under- The manwoods amount to very little compared with valuing unthat on land in cultivation. Where the derwood. growth of trees of a large size is encouraged,

Fir-trees

are not underwood.

Saleable under

woods.

the underwood, being shaded and overtopped, is seldom worth more at twentyone years' growth than six or seven pounds an acre. The rate being laid in anticipation of the profits of the growing underwood, the price that it may sell for at the end of the term, deducting the expences of taking down, &c., and the interest of the money received at so distant a period, must be apportioned equally in all the years of its growth. The rate for the above amounts would then be only about 4s. per acre.

Fir-trees yield no underwood; when the trees are cut off, the stumps do not send up any young shoots: therefore a regular plantation of firs, intended to stand thirty years or upwards without thinning, is not rateable. But if there be a mixture of oak, ash, elm, hazel, or other trees forming underwood, or from which, when cut off, young shoots will grow, such underwood, if intended for sale, is rateable according to its progressive annual value.

The court of King's Bench have determined, that by "saleable underwoods" is

meant, "underwoods intended or destined for sale, in contra-distinction to such as are to supply the landlord with estovers for fuel, and the other purposes of the estate," and that they are not to be rated in every twenty-first year, or in the year when they are taken down only, but that they are at all times rateable according to their annual increase in value. But, in practice, to value their improved state in each year, would be very troublesome as well as difficult; it is therefore more common to rate underwoods according to their average annual value for the whole term, which is computed from their supposed profit when they are expected to be saleable.

underwood.

Suppose underwood be worth 87. per acre Estimate of at the end of twenty-one years; by the rule of compound interest, 37. will make about 81. in twenty-one years: therefore, at the end of the first year, the underwood is worth 31. 3s.; at the end of the second year, about 31. 6s. 2d., and so on, increasing in arithmetical progression more rapidly as the sum is augmented. 37. in ten years, at com

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