On the meeting of the Board in 1793, Sir John Sinclair had particularly requested me to draw up a Report for the County of Suffolk, to effect which I took several journeys into different parts of the county at some expense, and formed the Report which was printed in 1794. I never executed any work more commended in Suffolk than this. I had no remuneration. Letters received this year:— From Jeremy Bentham, Esq., enquiries into the landed property of Great Britain and into the rental and value of houses:— ‘Hendon, Middlesex: Sept. 1794. ‘Dear Sir,—Permit my ignorance to draw upon your science on an occasion that happens just now to be a very material one to me. I have a sort of floating recollection of a calculation, so circumstanced, either in point of authority or argument, as to carry weight with it, in which the total value of the landed property in this country (Scotland, I believe, included) was reckoned at a thousand millions, and that of the movable property at either a thousand millions or twelve hundred millions. Public debt did not come, I think, at least, it ought not to come, into the account; it being only so much owned by one part of the proprietors of the two thousand or the two thousand two hundred millions to another. ‘Upon searching your book on France, which was the source from whence I thought I had taken the idea, I can find no calculation of the value of the movable property, nor even of the immovable in an explicit form; on the contrary, in the instance of the immovable, I find suppositions with which any such estimate appears to be incompatible. The land tax at four shillings, I find, you suppose, were it to be equal all over the country, would be equivalent to as much as three shillings, on which supposition the rental (the tax of four shillings producing no more than two thousand millions) would amount to no more than 13,000,000_l._ nor consequently the value, at so many years’ purchase, say twenty-eight, to more than three hundred and sixty-four millions; or at thirty, to three hundred and ninety millions; to which, in order to complete the calculation of the landed property of Great Britain, that of Scotland would have to be added.