mpress, or of the exchequer: that all disputes relating to
the collection of this duty should be finally, and in a summary way,
determined by the barons of the exchequer in England and Scotland
respectively: that the commissioners of the land-tax should fix and
ascertain the sum total or amount of the perquisites of every office and
employment within their respective districts, distinct from the salary
thereunto belonging, to be deducted under the said act, independently
of any former valuation or assessment of the same to the land-tax;
and should rate or assess all offices and employments, the perquisites
whereof should be found to exceed the sum of one hundred pounds per
annum, at one shilling for every twenty thence arising; that the
receivers should transmit to the commissioners in every district where
any office or employment is to be assessed, an account of such officers
and employments, that, upon being certified of the truth of their
amount, they might be rated and assessed accordingly; that in all future
assessments of the land-tax, the said offices and employments should not
be valued at higher rates than those at which they were assessed towards
the land-tax of the thirty-first year of the present reign; that the
word perquisite should be understood to mean such profits of offices and
employments as arise from fees established by custom or authority,
and payable either by the crown or the subjects, in consideration of
business done in the course of executing such offices and employments;
and that a commissioner possessed of any office or employment, might not
interfere in the execution of the said act, except in what might relate
to his own employment. By the four last clauses, several salaries were
exempted from the payment of this duty. The objections made without
doors to this new law, were the accession of pecuniary influence to the
crown by the creation of a new office and officers, whereas this duty
might have been easily collected and received by the commissioners of
the land-tax already appointed, and the inconsistency that appeared
between the fifth and seventh clause: in the former of these the
commissioners of the land-tax were vested with the power of assessing
the perquisites of every office within their respective districts,
independent of any former valuation or assessment of the same to the
land-tax; and by the latter, they are restricted from assessing any
office at a higher rate than that of t