§ GENERAL BUCKLEYsaid, he would beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what course it is his intention to take respecting the Local Assessments Exemption Abolition Bill?
§ MR. SOTHERON ESTCOURTsaid, that the claims put forward by Charitable, Scholastic, and Literary Institutions to exemption from local assessments had been very numerous. Many of those Institutions had represented that if they were obliged to pay any Rates at all their means of usefulness would be either totally put an end to, or very much circumscribed; and, after hearing several deputations which had waited upon him on the subject, he was persuaded that he should not be able to induce the House to pass the Bill in its present shape. There now lay before him two courses, either practically still to preserve as a principle of universal application the liability to rating, or to withdraw the Bill, and deal only with that part of the subject which related to Public Buildings, in which case he thought the proper course would be to proceed by means of a Royal Commission.