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it necessary to re-enact them; and accordingly in 1869 "the Poor Kate
Assessment and Collection Act "was passed which, by sections 3 and
4, provided for the rating of the owners of all rateable hereditaments
under £20 in value, but at the same time secured the occupiers in all
the franchises dependent upon rating by sec. 19, which reads as
follows:—"The Overseers, in making out the Poor Rate, shall, in every
case, whether the rate is collected from the owner or occupier, or the
owner is liable to the payment of the rate instead of the occupier, enter
in the occupiers' column of the rate book the name of the occupier of
every rateable hereditament, and such occupier shall be deemed to be
duly rated for any qualification or franchise as aforesaid; and if
any overseer, negligently or wilfully and without reasonable cause
omits the name of the occupier of any rateable hereditament from the
rate, or negligently or wilfully misstates any name thereto, such Overseer
shall for every such omission, or misstatement, be liable, on
summary conviction, to a penalty not exceeding two pounds; provided
that any occupier whose name has been omitted; shall, notwithstanding
such omission, and thai no claim to be rated has been made
by him, be entitled to every qualification and franchise depending
upon reting, in the same manner as if his name had not been so
omitted The interpretation of this section was, at the time, the
subject of the following legal decisions:—"Cross v. Alsop," decided in
1870 (19 W. R. 131), although an appeal by the occupier of a room
in a "Let Out" house against the refusal of a Revising Barrister
to place his name upon the Parliamentary Register was decided by
the Court of Common Pleas, on the ground that section 19 of the
Poor Rate Assessment and Collection Act 1869, under which appellant
claimed, applied only to cases where an agreement to pay the rates
had been entered into by the owner under section 3, or where an
order to pay them had been made by the Overseers, upon the owner
under section 4 of the same Act, although Mr. Justice Willes added
that, in his opinion, the section in question only applied to cases
where the tenant occupies the whole of a house. In "Smith v. Overseers
of Seghill" decided in 1875 (23 W. R. 745) a different view was taken
by the Court of Queen's Bench of the construction to be placed upon the
section, it being held that it applied to "all cases" and not alone to
those where the Owner pays the rates under sections 3 or 4 of the Act in
question, but the Appellant in that case was a workman residing in