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The total (England and Wales) had become (1909-10) £63,260,940. Local debts rose from £92,820,100 (1875) to £512,487,522 (1908-9). Rates per £ were 3s. 10 d. (1817), 3s. 8d. (1827), 2s. 7d. (1841), 3s. 4d. (1868), 6s. 1.2d. (1908-9).

The Agricultural Rates Act 1896, and Grants for Education, are estimated to make the Treasury Subventions, 1908-9, £12,311,000 (see BETTERMENT).

[There are three classical Reports on Local Taxation, by the Poor Law Commissioners (1843), Mr. Goschen (1870), and Sir H. H. Fowler (1893) (who reprints the Report of 1870). See also G. H. Blunden, Local Taxation and Finance (1895).E. Cannan, History of Local Rates in England (1896).-Cobden Club Essays (ed. J. H. Probyn), Local Government and Taxation, 2nd ed. 1882.H. R. Gneist, History of the English Constitution, trans. by Ashworth (1891).-J. J. O'Meara, Municipal Taxation at Home and Abroad (1894). -R. H. Inglis Palgrave, Local Taxation of Great Britain and Ireland (1871).—Repts. of Select Committee on Town Holdings, 1889, vol. xv., Index s.v. "Rate," 1892, vol. xviii.-R. S. Wright and H. Hobhouse, Outline of Local Government and Local Taxation in England and Wales (1894).Repts. of Local Government Board.]

J. D. R.

The

RATE IN AID. Previous to the year 1834 every parish had to provide for the relief of its own poor. The rate in aid was a rate levied upon neighbouring parishes to assist a parish which was unequal to this burthen. principle of a rate in aid was first introduced by an act of 1555 (2 & 3 P. and M. c. 5), but only with reference to parishes in the same city or corporate town. An act of 1597 (39 Eliz. c. 3), which amended and consolidated earlier statutes for the relief of the poor, enabled two or more justices of the peace dwelling in or near a parish alleged to be unable to maintain its poor, if satisfied of that inability, to lay a rate in aid upon other parishes in the same hundred, or upon individuals in such parishes. If the hundred were judged unequal to assisting the parishes which could not relieve their poor,

the quarter-sessions might levy a rate in aid upon any other parishes within the county. The celebrated act of 1601 (43 Eliz. c. 2) repealed the act of 1597, but re-enacted these provisions. Since the passing of the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834, the formation of unions of parishes, and the establishment of a common poor fund for London, has rendered the levying of rates in aid unnecessary.

[Cannan, History of Local Rates in England.]

RATI.

F. C. M.

See RUPEE.
RATING OF THE GUINEA. See GUINEA,
INTRODUCTION AND RATINg of.

RATIO BETWEEN GOLD AND SILVER.
See GOLD; SILVER; PRECIOUS METALS, DIS-

COVERIES OF.

RATIO OF EXCHANGE. See EXCHANGE, FOREIGN also MINT PAR OF EXCHANGE; GOLD POINTS IN FOREIGN EXCHANGES.

:

Erlangen, studied in the university of that city,
RAU, KARL HEINRICH (1792-1870), born at
and, 1818, ordinary professor.
in which he became, 1816, an extraordinary,
In 1822 he
accepted a call to the chair of political economy
at Heidelberg, where in 1845 he was made a
privy councillor. He was a member of the first
Baden chamber, and was elected to the Frankfort
parliament in 1848. He died at Heidelberg.

Rau was a follower of Adam SMITH. At first, influenced by the older German economists, with whose writings he was thoroughly acquainted, he showed mercantilist tendencies and a leaning towards a protectionist policy, as well as an inclination in favour of a revived gild-system. But gradually, as he himself tells us, larger experience led him to change many of his opinions; he entered more and more fully into the views of Smith, and adopted the principle of freedom of trade and manufactures, though not with the rigour of the English school. He studied also the later English economists, and accepted the socalled Ricardian theory of rent.

Early in life Rau inclined to the historical method, but he afterwards conceived the mistaken notion that that method dealt only with the past and did not concern itself with the improvement of existing conditions; and his interests became too exclusively practical.

Rau is not remarkable for precision of thought or strict accuracy of expression; his character is "erudite thoroughness." He interweaves with his abstract discussions many geographical and statistical illustrations. His writings are specially adapted for the use of public officials and members of the legislature, being very full on the application of theoretical principles to concrete cases. He was the economic teacher of the well-governed German middle states from 1815 to 1848. his doctrines having taken root among the liberal and enlightened civil servants of those states.

Among his most notable economic publications may be mentioned his early prize essay, Über da

RAUDOT-RAYNAL

Zunftwesen, 1815; Ansichten der Volkswirthschaft, 1821; Malthus und Say, 1821; and, above all, his Lehrbuch der politischen Oekonomie (1826-1837), which has appeared in many editions, and has been remodelled by Adolf WAGNER and Erwin NASSE, the former doing much the greater portion of this work. Rau also gave in 1819 a free, but very good, translation of Storch's Cours d'Économie politique. He established in 1835 a periodical entitled Archiv der politischen Oekonomie und Polizeiwissenschaft, and conducted it, at first alone, afterwards in conjunction with Hanssen. A very large number of reviews and other papers by Rau appeared in the Archiv.

[Leser in Allg. Deutsche Biogr. -Lippert in Handw. der Staatswissenschaften.-Roscher, Gesch. der N. O., p. 847.]

J. K. I.

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Elected a representative of the people in November 1848, Raudot was re-elected to the legislative assembly in May 1849.

The coup d'état caused him to return to private life. While he was in parliament he had published two works, which, like the first he wrote, were successful. The first of these was De la décadence de la France (4th edition, 1850), a sensational title which should not be taken literally.

He desired to make it clear that France was strangled by the laws, but that these hindrances could be easily removed, and hence had made less progress than other countries. Administrative centralisation was the principal hindrance, and Raudot eloquently described the injuries it inflicted on France. His second work, the sequel

and in some respects the complement of the first, De la grandeur possible de la France, 8vo, 1851, discusses, one by one, each of the

public offices, and shows the reforms most required

in each. Amongst these reforms decentralisation takes the first place. Even in the present day it would be well for the governing body of France, legislators and ministers alike, to study this work, one of great ability and much conscientious research. During the second empire Raudot published Napoleon Ier peint par lui-même (18mo, 1865). This condenses the first fifteen volumes of the conversation and correspondence, official and otherwise, of Napoleon I., collected, classified, and republished by order of Napoleon III., and contains revelations startlingly suggestive of the baseness of the causes of the wars, particularly the wars of conquest so disastrous to France. This work may thus strengthen the feeling of security among nations. A. C. f.

RAYNAL, GUILLAUME THOMAS FRANÇOIS (1713-1796). After having studied at the Jesuit College, he became a Jesuit himself and parish priest in Paris, until he left the

265

church and began life anew as a man 01 letters.

His first works, all of them historical, are mere compilations and quite forgotten, but his Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (Geneva, 4 vols. 1770, 10 vols. 1781-first ed., without the author's name) made a great stir at the date of its publication, and was sentenced by the Paris parliament to be burnt by the public executioner. It is full of furious attacks on religion and existing institutions, written in a pompous and declamatory style, and provoked animosity from all quarters. Grimm stated that one-third of the book was the work of DIDEROT. TURGOT was shocked by "its incoherence and by seeing the most opposite paradoxes defended with the same heat, the same eloquence, the same fanaticism. . . . He, the author, is more learned and has more natural sensibility and eloquence than HELVETIUS, but he is quite as desultory in his ideas, and as much a stranger to the true nature of mankind (Euvres, ii. p. 801). A passage from a letter of Horace Walpole to the Countess of Aylesbury (Dec. 20, 1772) conveys a "It lively picture of the contents of the book. tells one everything in the world: how to make conquests, invasions, blunders, settlements, bankruptcies, fortunes, etc.; tells you the natural and historical history of all nations; talks commerce, navigation, tea, coffee, china, mines, salt, spices; of the Portuguese, English, French, caravans, Dutch, Danes, Spaniards, Arabs, Persian, Indians; of Louis XIV. and the king of Prussia; of La Bourdonnais, Dupleix, and Admiral Saunders; of rice, and dancing women; of camels,

ginghams, and muslins; of millions of millions of livres, pounds, rupees, and cowries; of iron cables and Circassian women; of Law and the Mississippi; and against all governments and religions" (Walpole's Letters, vol. v. p. 421, edit. Cunningham). Raynal expressly boasts that he has consulted all available sources, and in his

overbearing way exclaims at the outset: "I have questioned the living .. and the dead.. in

If a

whatever language they have written. capable of informing me on some important point, man living at the pole or under the line, and

on

one

had been pointed out to me, I would have repaired to the pole or the line and challenged him to tell me the truth" (vol. i. p. 3, edit. 1781). In fact he inserted whole pages taken from previous writers or histories without acknow. ledging his obligations. Putting side literary faults and extravagant attacks on religion, this treatise de omni re scibili, had it been cut down to one-half of its size, would not have been a bad historical work; a good deal of sound criticism on colonial policy is to be found in its pages. Raynal dissents from the prevailing mania of pseudo-philosophical admiration for the Chinese, and most of the historical summaries are put in a plain and sensible way.

not commit himself to absolute doctrines, he still As an economist, though he does shows a predilection for agriculture and industry, and ascribes the decay of Portugal to its neglect of the cultivation of its territory: "Enlightened

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men frankly regretted the neglect of the real sources of wealth, as the tillage of the soil, in order to run after those glittering objects, the precious metals" (vol. i. p. 241). This passage shows that he did not belong to the older school of mercantilists. E. Ca.

READ, SAMUEL

is best known by his Political Economy, An Inquiry into the natural grounds of right to Vendible Property or wealth, published at Edinburgh for the author, 1829, the preface being dated from Roslin, October 1829. He had before written (1) On Money and the Bank Restriction Laws (May 1816). (2) The Problem solved in the explication of a Plan of a safe, steady, and secure Government Paper Currency and Legal Tender, Edinburgh, 1818. (3) In his Exposure of Certain Plagiarisms of J. R. M'Culloch, Esq., author of two Essays on reduction of the interest of the National Debt, committed in the last published of those essays, the Scotsman newspaper and Edinburgh Review, In recto decus, Edinburgh, 1819, he complained that M'CULLOCH in the second of his two essays on the national debt (Nov. 1816) borrowed without acknowledgment from the above tract on Money (a) the general rule of adjustment, namely, that creditors accept the exact weight of bullion which would have been bought at the time of contract with the currency advanced then by them to the borrowers. In M'Culloch's earlier essay the standard was not bullion but corn. (b) He borrowed the application to the stockholders, practically reducing the interest on the national debt. Read, in any case, was not followed by M'Culloch in applying the principle to all debts, private as well as public. He had written also on population (see below).

"Political economy," he writes in the preface to his Inquiry, "has been hitherto designated as the science which treats of the production and distribution of wealth, and it has been totally overlooked that this includes the demonstration of the right to wealth. It is here, therefore, for the first time, treated as an investigation concerning the right to wealth or property." "Its chief object (Introduction, p. xviii) is to demonstrate what is just or unjust in all the most important and difficult points relating to the production and distribution of property or wealth; property, i.e. vendible or transferable property being the chief, if not the only subject of the virtue of justice;-political economy might indeed be called the science of political justice." But if we expect from this beginning a treatise on the lines of the Inquiry concerning Political Justice by W. GODWIN, we shall be disappointed. Read's book is mainly economical, and to a large extent orthodox. God win's view of inherited property is expressly rejected (pp. 121, 122) on the ground that labour by itself is far from producing all the wealth in existence; accumulated capital plays a part that cannot be ignored (p. 124). Read leals severely with Labour Defended against the Claims of Capital (anon., 1825) (pp. 125-132). He has little but praise for Adam SMITH, but no praise for MALTHUS, against whom he had written a pamphlet, General Statement of an Argument on the Subject of Population in Answer to Mr. Malthus's Theory (Edinburgh, 1821). The

principle of population seems to him to be in no other sense the cause of poverty and misery among the lower classes of the people "than as that principle is the cause of their existence" (Inquiry, p. 158, cp. 158-170, and 55 n.).

,,

Read follows Adam Smith in considering "labour the only certain measure of value' as well as the chief though not the only "ingredient in the cost of production" (p. 199). He attaches importance to the idea of an "absolute value," though this is, he admits, less an economic than a philosophic idea; it is "happiness itself or pleasurable sensation" (p. 229). He considers that the desire of bettering our own condition is resolvable into the preference of pleasure to pain (p. 146). The utilitarian standard is to be continually borne in mind (p. 229, cp. e.g. p. 362). The fact of appropriation ought also to be better remembered than it usually is; Read deduces from it that rent enters into price (p. 243), and he justifies by it his use of "vendible property" for wealth (pp. 19-21). He is certainly no assailant of the received rights of property; and thinks to place them more surely beyond attack by a poorlaw system that would allow 4s. a week to the aged and infirm, and 3s. to the unemployed, in addition to the usual forms of relief (p. 361). Like recent writers, he considers that, since the land is no longer open to the labourer, the labourer out of employment has a very special claim on society (pp. 364-375). "The right of the poor to support, and the right of the rich to engross and accumulate, are correlative and reciprocal privileges, the former being the condition on which the latter is enjoyed " (p. 375).

Finally, in regard to taxation, Read's view is that there is a point up to which it acts as a whole. some stimulus to industry (p. 388), but the limit is easily overstepped, and was overstepped in the late war. "Those who are old enough to remember the state of the country and of the labouring classes before the commencement of the late war, can bear ample testimony to the fact that their hours of labour were not so long, nor their exertions so arduous as they became towards the conclusion of it, and that they gradually increased with the increase of the taxes" (p. 390 n.).

Read is by no means the worst of the minor writers on political economy who abounded in the first half of the 19th century; and it is to be regretted that the dictionaries of English biography give no information about him.

J. B.

REAL. From 1497 to 1772 the principal Spanish silver coin was the piece-of-eight reals, which subsequently to the latter date became known as the dollar (see DOLLAR, HISTORY OF; DOLLAR, HARD).

In 1642 a "real of new plate," intended solely for use in Spain, and known as a "provincial" coin, was introduced. The circulation of these pieces, however, was not restricted to the provinces of Spain, but the coins were largely exported to America.

The weight and fineness of these reals are given by Chalmers in his History of Currency in the British Colonies, as follows:-

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REAL ESTATE. See PROPERTY, Sec. vi., Real and Personal Estate; and REAL PROPERTY.

REAL PROPERTY is the property the beneficial interest of which in the case of intestacy in the United Kingdom passes to one person called the heir-at-law, who, if the deceased owner leaves any sons, is always the eldest son. It is distinguished from "personal property," which is divided among the next-of-kin (see INTESTACY). Real property consists of freehold estates in land (see ESTATE; FREEHOLD), and certain rights called incorporeal hereditaments (see INCORPOREAL PROPERTY), e.g. advowsons. Leasehold interests in land are personal estate, as well as all movable property, stocks, shares, bookdebts, etc. The legal interest in real property of persons dying after the 1st January 1898, by virtue of the Land Transfer Act 1897, passes in the same way as personal property. E. S.

REALISE. To convert a security into cash; also, in closing a bargain upon the stock exchange, to convert into a reality a profit or loss which is otherwise contingent upon quota tions remaining unchanged.

R. W. B.

REBATE. An abatement allowed in retiring a bill of exchange before maturity, calculated upon the number of days the bill has yet to run, and at the prevailing rate of interest, or at a rate decided by the custom of a special trade or place. In London it is now usually taken at one half per cent above the bankers' deposit rates.

Also, in bankers' book-keeping, an allowance in a balance-sheet for discount received upon bills not yet matured. In practice, rebate may be calculated either at a fixed or arbitrary rate, at the average discount rate for the last three or six months, at the rate of the day upon which the closing entries are made, or at the actual rate at which each bill was discounted (see also DISCOUnt).

R. W. B.

RECEIPT. A written acknowledgment of the payment of money or of the delivery of goods. In the case of a ready-money transaction a receipt does not require a stamp, but where credit has been given, any written acknowledgment of the receipt of money or of a bill of exchange, or of a cheque or a promissory note or satisfaction of a debt, where the money, bill of exchange, cheque, note, or debt is £2 and upwards, requires an adhesive stamp of 2d. The obligation to provide the stamp is thrown on the person to whom the payment is made. [Alpe's Digest of the Stamp Acts, 1896.]

J. K. C. M.

267

RECEIVER. Where it is desirable that property in dispute should be protected, or that income should be appropriated to satisfy a judgment, the court will appoint a receiver for the purpose.

J. E. O. M.

RECEIVING ORDER. The name of the order made on the petition of a creditor or the debtor for the institution of bankruptcy proceedings. Its effect is to put the official receiver in charge of the debtor's property and to stay proceedings pending against the debtor (see BANKRUPTCY LAW AND ADMINISTRATION).

E. S.

RECIPROCITY, as used by writers on trade, denotes a special class of trading arrangement between nations, which is limited by the grant of special advantages on one side in consideration of equal advantages given by the other. At one time the use of the term was so extended as to embrace a regular system of trade; at the present day it rather imports a principle which has its effect in special cases. The term first came into use in the early years of last century, in connection with the relaxation of the navigation laws of the United Kingdom, in return for similar relaxation of restrictions on shipping on the part of a foreign nation. The first application of this principle was in the treaty between Great Britain and the United States in 1815, which contains a clause to the effect that the ships of each of the contracting parties, on coming into the ports of the other party, should not be liable to any greater charges than the ships of that other contracting party were subjected to in the ports of the first. The action of Prussia in 1822 forced the hand of the United Kingdom into extending the same principle to our dealings with European countries. On 2nd April 1824, a convention was made with Prussia in which the principle of a reciprocal concession in regard to duties on tonnage was embodied (Hertslet's Treaties, iii. p. 313). The matter was taken up by HUSKISSON (q.v.), particularly from the point of view of the shipping interest, and the plan was then applied by treaty to the new South American states which had just declared their independence of Spain. Conventions during the immediately ensuing years were made with Buenos Ayres (2nd February 1825), Colombia (18th April 1825), France (26th January 1826), and Sweden (18th March 1826) (see Hertslet's Treaties, vol. iii.), and at the same time the principle was extended so as to apply to duties on imports.

This extension of the system to import duties suggested a new idea to certain economic writers, who conceived that the correct theory of international trade was to base it on reciprocal concessions, so that no nation would admit the goods of another on any given terms unless that other nation treated its commodities in an equally favourable manner. This is the idea

268

RECIPROCITY-RECIPROCITY IN THE UNITED STATES

of the "reciprocity" of about the middle of the 19th century, which recommended retaliatory duties on all countries imposing hostile tariffs on the national products. The question revived early in the 20th century with the TARIFF REFORM MOVEMENT (see App.). It found several adherents of note, and its claims are not unfrequently advocated in the pamphlet literature of 1840-50, but it made no headway in the face of the free-trade movement, and the act 12 & 13 Vict. c. 29, which embodied the principle of extending favours to foreign powers where those powers gave favourable treatment to British goods, carefully avoided any suggestion that such treatment must be a condition precedent to the grant of the favours.

The basis of the reciprocity theory is the idea that where two countries trade with each other to repeal an import duty in one while a high duty is kept up in the other is to make the first country, pro tanto, tributary to the second. See a letter from TORRENS to Sir Robert PEEL.

"By a failure to oppose hostile tariffs with retaliatory duties we confer on foreign powers a bonus on the continuance of their restrictive systems, while by maintenance of retaliatory duties against countries refusing to receive British goods on terms of reciprocity we shall render it the palpable and unmistakable interest of foreign states to act upon the true principles of free trade" (Torrens' Commercial and Colonial Policy, 1844, ad finem, pp. 26, 27 of the "Letter" to Sir R. Peel).

The principle advocated by Torrens is much the same as that of late years current under the name of FAIR TRADE.

The term "reciprocity" survives in the commercial legislation and treaty arrangements of the United States of America. The "reciprocity treaty" has long been a favourite instrument with that republic. Under such a treaty one nation grants the other special reductions of import duties in return for equivalent reductions by the other country (see RECIPROCITY IN U.S.). It may be said, therefore, that the treaty policy of the United States has for some years been based upon a principle of reciprocal concessions.

This policy is nearly akin to the interpretation of the most favoured nation clause adopted by the United States government (see Parl. Paper C 4340, 1885). Under this interpretation, where any nation as a result of bargaining receives concessions in the ports of the United States, the States decline to give the benefit of the clause to any other nation which has not made specific concessions equivalent to those made by the nation to whom they grant their

favours.

[Smith, Wealth of Nations, M'Culloch ed. 1870, note xii. p. 538.-Torrens, Budget of Commercial and Colonial Policy, London, 1844, pp. 48-49, 61, 242.-Huskisson's Speeches. See also Sir Louis

Mallet, "Reciprocity" in Cobden Club Papers, p. 6. "The imposition of a duty by one country on the produce or manufactures of another only affects the transactions by rendering it less profitable both to the seller and to the buyer; the variations of supply and demand will cause the incidence of the tax to fall upon the seller and the buyer, the producer and the consumer, in varying degree; but, in the long run, it will be equally shared between them." Also bibliography, art. on RETALIATION; INTERNATIONAL TRADE.]

RECIPROCITY IN THE UNITED STATES. Commercial reciprocity as a distinct system has had an uncertain existence in the United States. Upon the establishment of the present form of government in 1789, American legislation was in harmony with that of the rest of the world as to protection to home commercial interests. Higher duties were placed on goods imported in foreign ships. Treaties of 1794 and 1815 tended to liberalise commercial arrangements and to remove certain special restrictions. Between 1845 and 1854 there was considerable discussion as to reciprocal free trade between Canada and the United States, and in the latter year a treaty of reciprocity was ratified by which the British-American sea fisheries were open to citizens of the United States and free import of certain raw and some manufactured commodities was given to Canada. This was terminated in 1866. The advantage of this to the interests of the United States has been much questioned, as for example by James G. Blaine in Twenty Years of Congress, vol. ii. p. 620. An attempt was made to renew this treaty in the treaty of Washington of 1871, but was unsuccessful (for detailed references to this question see E. Schuyler's American Diplo. macy, New York, 1886, p. 430).

In 1844 a treaty was signed with the ZOLLVEREIN providing for certain reciprocity favours, but was rejected by the United States senate on the ground that this was an invasion of legislative rights by the executive. Reciprocity treaties with Mexico in 1860 and 1883 also failed of ratification by the senate. A reciprocity treaty with the Hawaiian Islands was ratified in 1875, by which provision was made for the admission of sugar free of duty in the United States in return for the remission of duties on certain articles manufactured and produced in the United States. A reciprocity movement with the Latin-American countries developed in 1882, but for this it was also impossible to secure congressional endorsement.

By act of 24th May 1888, the president of the United States was authorised to invite delegates to an international American conference to consider measures for the formation of an American customs union. This proposition was found to be impracticable, but nearly all of the American republics recommended the negotiation of reciprocity treaties. This idea was incorporated into the Tariff (McKinley) Act of 1890, § 3. Agreements were made with various countries, notably Brazil, San Domingo, Costa Rica, and other countries by

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