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Civil Government to exempt the premises of Mess's Fletcher wherein the above officers reside from the rate in question, as those adjoining them which are owned by the same proprietor, and it is through oversight alone that it has before been demanded.
Lever
This oversight, His Excellency would have admitted, would have afforded ground for a doubt on the part of the recipients as to the propriety of what seemed to them a proceeding entailing loss on themselves; but His Excellency has read with considerable astonishment the remarks that those gentlemen have seen fit to make upon the motive of Government.
That the writers, as Military men, should have been unacquainted with the process and requirements of the law under which the rate is levied, is not surprising. They were evidently under the impression that a rate, for which the owner's residence is liable, unless his lease imposes it upon the lessee, was to be drawn from their pay; they were not aware, either, that if the rate levied appeared to them exorbitant, they would have, under the provisions of the ordinance if they were liable to payment, an appeal to the Supreme Court. But His Excellency cannot consider an officer in Mr. Smith's position entitled to pronounce a rate "levied according to law an exaction"; or to style the opinion of the legal authority under which it is levied "unreasonable"; or to insinuate that it is levied with a view to producing an "appearance of increase in the revenue."
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