23.
408
if only a park were so held, the rate to be levied this fact would be determined in like manner from the proportion borne by the sum of the former ground rents to the sum of the present annual assessment of such part.
The rates to be levied on lands sold hereafter would be seventeen per cent, and it would not be fair to reduce this rate, unless a corresponding reduction were made in the burden borne by all other lands, whether such burden existed in the shape of an assessment rate or of a fixed Government ground rent.
Let then all the real property of the Colony, not held on lease, be assessed periodically, say every three or four years. Let the Justices of the Peace be ex officio Commissioner of the tax; let them choose one among themselves as Community assessor; let them hear and decide all appeals against assessment. With the assessor so appointed, let the Surveyor General and the Superintendent of Police be joined; and let the latter be also collector, or joint collector. From his knowledge of the inhabitants and their localities, and from the number of his command for the protection during transit of the money collected, the Superintendent of Police has facilities that any other person has not for the collection of revenue; and in the performance of his duties as Assessor and Collector he would acquire much information as to persons and places which would be essentially useful to him in the performance of his police duties. This is much the same system as that pursued in England for the collection of the Land tax, though the Land tax itself differs in being a fixed annual sum placed on each county.
070
and the Commission...