Of these the parish was the first and most important division, having been introduced in the sixteenth century, when the dissolution of the monasteries had raised the question of poor relief. It was adopted for convenience, as the contributions were at first entirely voluntary; but as the problem of the poor increased in importance, compulsion was applied, and at the beginning of the seventeenth century, by the acts of Elizabeth of 1597 and 1601, compulsion was fully established and the parish adopted as the area for levying rates for the relief of its poor. It now became necessary to define more specifically the persons liable for this rate, but the law framed no system by which assessments were to be made or rates collected. A distinction was made between the occupier of certain properties (such as lands, houses, coal mines, or salable underwoods) and an inhabitant of the parish. The occupier was to be taxed upon the basis of the annual benefit arising from the property situated in the parish; but the inhabitant was taxed not in respect to any specified subjects, implying an intention to tax them upon some other basis. This raised the question of "ability," and how that question was to be determined. The act said nothing that could point to personal property, "and it was only on the ground of his being an inhabitant that any owner of personal property could be rated for that property, because there was no word in that statute to include him, except the word inhabitant. Under that statute, therefore, there was necessarily a distinction between residents and nonresidents, because the resident would be ratable for his personalty within the place, the nonresident not. The distinction, however, under that statute applied only to those kinds of property which the statute did not specify, for the occupier of lands, houses, etc., and whatever the statute enumerated, was ratable whether he were resident or not."[55] And when the judge of assize was asked to give an opinion he decided that lands should be taxed equally and indifferently, but an additional tax could be laid on the "personal visible ability" of the parishioner. Further, "all things which are real, and a yearly revenue must be taxed to the poor." Yet there were limitations on this apparently wide interpretation, and as early as 1633 it was only visible properties, both real and personal, of the inhabitants within the parish, and only within the parish, that could be taxed. The property to be assessed must be local, visible, and productive; it must consist only of the surplus left after deducting debts; it must be rated according to the profit produced; and its nature must be distinctly specified. "Consequently, such subjects as wages, pensions, easements, profits derived from labor and talent, profits from money invested or lent elsewhere, and furniture, were exempt." [Footnote 55: Abbott (Chief Justice) in R. _vs._ The Hull Dock Company, 3 B and C, p. 525.]