The ground from which the tax is to arife are lands, houfes inhabited, and other things arifing out of lands or immoveable poffeffions.

The rate, in cafe of refufal or neglect of payment, is to be levied by diftrefs and fale of the goods of the party.

There is no doubt but the houses, lands, and other eftates of colleges, are liable to the rate fo far as they are occupied by any leffees of a college.

And fo are the occupiers leffees of hofpital eftates. So 2 Salkeld 527. is a cafe that makes nothing to the point here. But it does not appear that a college, as an aggregate body, can or ought to be rated for its manfe, occupied by its members. The impoffibility of levying a rate upon them is an objection not to be got over. According to the act it must be laid upon separate perfons, and upon separate rents and appretiaments.

The mafter pays no rent for his lodge. The fellows pay no rent for their apartments. They are fo little separate perfons in the eye of the law, that they do not even pay separately to the land-tax, but the univerfity pays for the whole together.

That colleges are liable to the land-tax does not make them equally liable to the taxation for the poor, under 43 of Elizabeth. The land-tax is totally different from the poor's tax: there is io analogy between the nature or operation of two diftinct taxes, laid on different objects, by two different acts of parliament. The one, the poor's rate is upon the occupier inhabiting; and the other the land-tax is upon the owner. The one depends upon a perfon fingly and his locality, and ceases with the occupancy

B 4

cupancy and inhabitancy: The other follows not the inhabitancy but the property.

But how can a rate be laid upon the master for his lodge, for which he pays no rent, and which he occupies in autre droit as a trustee in right of his college, and as a constituent part of his corporation? the apartments of himself and fellows have no value feparate from the whole college, and fo there is no rent by which the rate can be measured and appretiated: and there is no perfon in law who can be feparated from the complex of his fociety fingly. to be rated.

Colleges cannot let their apartments but to members of their own inftitution; and fo they cannot be valued as other tenements are, which are affignable.

As in monafteries, by law, in the spirit of the feudal fyftem, every member was held to be Servus Monafterii; fo in colleges at this day, which are but monafteries reformed, the mafters and fellows are still but public fervants of their own politic and legal effence, and remain fo indivifible in respect to college rights. They must fue and be fued together.

With refpect to any other bodies politic, it is undoubted that the univerfity, and its colleges, are corporations perfectly independant, and fo not liable to be involved in any other corporate bodies, or fmall bodies politic, fuch as parishes are, if there is any weight in their charters: or in the common law and ufage of the realm by folemn decifions eftablished in their favour. It is contrary to law that one body politic fhould rate another, and that the inferior fhould tax the fuperior.

No

Noblemen, fellow-commoners, penfioners, are not occupiers, refiants, rateable in the eye of the law, any more than lodgers for a winter at a house in Bath or London are rateable as occupiers. They are not fuch inhabitants in the parish as can acquire this quality; they are inmates, and have no permanent domicility.

Colleges are conftantly in a flux ftate as to occupancy; masters, fellows, fcholars, are frequently changing apartments; frequently not refident, even for years.

By the poor act all perfons are to be feparated, and yet by the conftitution of colleges all persons are indivifible as to all dues to or from the fociety.

Nothing can be argued from the fcite of colleges, in whole or in part. As one manor often exifts in the very midft of another, so do parishes; which generally, from the endowments of lords, have followed the bounds of manors.

It is not impoffible therefore that a college, or a part of it, may exift in the midst of a parish or parishes, as to the scite of their manfion, and yet may have parochial rights within themselves, may be parifhes in reputation, or may be exempt as independent bodies politic.

That such independent places may exist, at common law, exempt from any adjoining parishes, is clear from the provifo of this very ftatute, 43 Eliz. in the cafe of the island of Foulness, c. 2. fect. 18.

The words are,

"In regard to the ifland of Foulness, having a chapel of ease for the inhabitants thereof, yet the 'Said island is no parish, but the lands in the fame

are fituated within divers parishes, the juftices are "authorised to appoint inhabitants within the faid "ifland to be overfeers of the poor dwelling "within the faid ifland."

In cafe of establishing the rate upon the colleges, a diftrefs must be made; but none can be made without being liable to replevin upon the goods of any particular perfon; because the goods are his own, and not the goods of the college. It is to very little purpose to diftrain upon bare walls.

The confequence follows, That as no body is rateable fingly, nor liable fingly to diftrefs, fo no rate can be made upon colleges or their members at all. And then the rate is void for Uncertainty..

Certainty is requifite in law.

In the cafe of St. Luke's hofpital, 2 Burrows, p. 1057. the court held, That the occupier rated must be particularly fpecified; and held the cafe of Brickhill not to the point, because the man, (although not rated nominally, but as the occupier of Rofcoe's tenement) had long acquiefced and paid the rate.

A master of a college, or cuftos hofpitii, is not more an occupier than the fteward or houfekeeper of St. Luke's hofpital is an occupier, under the ftatute: And yet in the latter cafe it was determined against the rate.

A ftrefs was laid upon Colleges of the Univerfity being eleemofynary foundations of antient time for conftitutional purposes, in order to diftinguish them from any modern charitable foundations.

But this cafe does not reft merely on the fingle quality of the eleemofynary Inftitution.

The

The rate in queftion need only be looked upon, to how the difficulty the churchwardens were under in making a rate, in refpect to the colleges without partiality, and with certainty. The two, mafters are rated; a part of the fellows only: but one fellow-commoner, and not one penfioner or scholar.

The obfervation already made upon the landtax extends to the window-tax. It is intirely different from the poor-tax, and ftands upon the defcriptions in its own particular act of parliament, and circumftances.

That a corporate body can be only taxed in its corporate capacity to a public tax; and that it is impoffible to tax its individual members, was the determination of Lord Mansfield, in the cafe of the Royal Affurance Company. 1 Burrows, 155.

But if it fhould be admitted, which we do not admit, that colleges, or the university, are rateable in fome way or other: it may be infifted upon that they are only fo of their own free will, fub modo, and by composition with reciprocality of benefit from the agreement.

This leads to an inquiry into a fact, whether colleges have paid, or do pay any thing in aid of the poor, either as rated, or by compofition, or by a voluntary contribution? Or do charge their own poor upon the neighbouring parishes

The fact is admitted, that the ftatute for the poor's rate, 43 Eliz. made in the year 1601, never was put in force, in refpect to colleges, at any period: And that colleges did voluntarily contribute, both before and after the act, in private charitable gid of the poor: And about the year 1620,—19 years