" A. Country Parson" writes to the Times of Monday,
to sup- port Mr. Henley's view of the Small Tenements' Act as " a device of Old Nick," leading to extortion on the part of landlords, and degradation on the part of the tenants, who "have no induce-
meat to lessen the poor-rate, as is the case where the Act is not in force, and who have come to believe that habits which raised them .above a claim on the rate only tend to save the landlords' pocket, with the suspicion (often but too true) that the composition for rates costs more than the rate itself ; improvidence and rate plunder are encouraged and fostered among them by the law of the land." Surely these are the oddest and most unaccountable forms of superstition? Composition is bad, says "A Country Parson," because (1) compounders fancy they do not pay rates at all, but only the landlord, whose pocket they do not care to spare, —and because (2) compounders suspect the composition costs more than the rate itself. That is, they believe they do not pay any, and also believe they pay twice as much as they ought. They are not quite so stupid as all that. In point of fact, paying rates through a landlord in a rent raised equally for every week of the year, and paying them through a collector in four quarterly instalments, is well understood to be precisely the same process, but the former is so much more convenient to most men, that they do not object even to forfeit a trifle for the convenience.
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