Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/211

 The land of England was held on certain conditions, which may be termed the purchase-money of that land. That purchase-money had been made payable as a sort of perpetual annuity to the State, increasing in value as the land increased in value. But the Convention Parliament of 1660 passed an Act by a majority of two—the votes being 151 for, and 149 against—the Act 12 Car. 2, c. 14—that the holders of the land of England should be totally exonerated from the future payment of this perpetual annuity, which constituted the purchase-money of their estates; and that this annuity, or purchase-money, should for the future be paid, in the shape of an excise, by people who held none of the land for which they were thus made to pay. In the debate many members spoke vehemently against the measure proposed. The most learned lawyer of that time, Prynne, said it was not fit to make all housekeepers hold in capite, and to free the nobility; and inveighed passionately, says the Diary, against the excise, which was to be substituted in lieu of the payments for which the lands of England had been granted to be held as private property.

Without embarrassing the reader with legal technicalities, it may be sufficient to say that so