13 JULY 1889, Page 23

The law bearing on the assessment of mill machinery for

the relief of the poor is very clearly and pithily stated in The Rating of Textile Mill Machinery (Cousins and Co.), which is reprinted in the form of a penny pamphlet from the trade newspaper in which it originally appeared. The writer runs through the leading judicial decisions which have been pronounced since the passing of the tolerably well-known statute of 43 Eliz., cap. 2, and certainly makes good his point that the law on the rating of machinery is in an anarchical, and therefore unsatisfactory condition, and that some Bill, resembling more or less the one introduced during the present year by Sir Bernhard Samuelson and others, must be passed, specifying what machinery is actually to be subject to poor- rates.