remember, was at first a real fifth of the whole rental. A modus, exemptions, even compositions at a portion of the value, are the growth of later ages. It is probable that the revenues of the church (independent of the tithes) since confiscated, amounted to a larger sum than the tithes themselves. The revenues of the suppressed monasteries alone are said to have equalled one-fifth, not of the rents of the nation, but of its whole annual revenue.

We have, then, a sum probably equal to more than two-fifths of the rental in the hands of ecclesiastical bodies: two-fifths would now amount to more than ten millions: the actual tithe, probably, falls very short of two millions. I am not citing with any approbation the overgrown revenue of the church in other days, but common sense and common justice require these comparisons to be made, when we hear ferocious demands to force the church to do now, what she is said (I will not now question how truly) to have done then; that is, to maintain ecclesiastical buildings, support poor, &c. But even the comparison just made gives no accurate notion of the comparative means of the ecclesiastics of those days and of our's. They were then single persons; we have a married clergy; and a pastor with a family is not certainly richer with 300l. a year, than a single man with one. There are persons who may agree with Mr. Cobbett, that it would be as well if the clergy were unmarried still; but those of our liberal politicians who have any respect for the opinions of their brethren on the continent, will certainly not be of that opinion; for these foreigners, as all who have conversed with them must know, consider the celibacy of their clergy, and their consequent esprit de corps, and unity of political objects, as among the foremost of their national grievances, and speak always with something like envy of the sympathy and intimate connexions with the body of the people which the family ties of the English clergy

ensure.

We have then in other days a body of unmarried ecclesiastics with an income equal to a portion of the national revenue which would now amount to ten millions; in our own days, a body of married pastors with a revenue of less than two. I am not going to discuss on religious grounds the merits of an established church, nor even its adaptation, on secular grounds, to the wants and character of our population; on this last point light is already beginning to break in upon us from a quarter in which it was hardly to be expected to appear so soon-America; and the results of her experiment will go far to sober the views of many of our honest innovators. But while we have an established church, while it is a part of our national polity, a very slight attention to the facts I have adverted to will surely shew the utter folly of attempting to wring large national contributions out of the diminished revenues of a body which the nation has itself deliberately placed in a situation to have greatly increased domestic expenses. That it is impossible to diminish the aggregate revenues of the clergy and leave them efficient, all moderately acquainted with ecclesiastical statistics know full well-that it is perverse and absurd to ground attempts at spoliation on references to her revenues, and the employment of them before the reformation, the above facts will shew, I think, to all (and their number is not inconsiderable) whose delusions on these subjects are really the result of haste or credulity.

In the preceding statements I have aimed at what I understand to be one of your main objects,-namely, the getting at facts and truth about church revenues. While under the influence of ignorance or error, we must enter with most unpromising prospects on projects of amelioration or change in any great national establishment. Still I am, as you well know, by no means an advocate for the retaining tithes in their present, or indeed any analogous form. To assign to the church a definite portion of the gross produce of the soil, was by no means an inconvenient (perhaps it was the best and only efficient) mode of effecting the objects of the donors of tithes, in the days in which they were instituted, recollecting what were then the state of the cultivation, the relative positions of the landholders and peasants, and the habits, wants, and relations,

of the different classes of the community. In most of these respects changes have taken place. A different class of cultivators have succeeded to the management of agriculture, employing different means, and requiring, to ensure their full exertions, different facilities and conditions. The charge, originally neither noxious, unequal, inconvenient, or unpopular, has become, from various causes, inconvenient, unequal in its pressure on the different objects of culture which have since multiplied themselves, and, above all, hopelessly unpopular, from its being liable to such misrepresentations as we have been noticing as to its incidence, and its effects on the price of the subsistence of the population; misrepresentations which we may be quite sure will not fail to make a wide and mischievous impression, till the whole mass of the people thoroughly understand the subject,-an era we need not speculate about. For these and other reasons I am persuaded that a change in the form of that rent charge which constitutes the revenue of the clergy is extremely desirable.

To that change, if amicably conducted, there must be three parties-the government, or rather the legislature, the clergy, and a portion of the landholders. I say a portion of the landholders, because, by a common mistake, (I was going to say a common artifice,) those who give up the position that tithes are a tax on the community at large, are fond of representing the revenue of the church as affecting the owners of all the productive soil of the country. It might do so 500 years ago; at present, various alterations have confined the sources of that revenue to a portion of the land and a portion of its products. The owners of that portion have acquired it, or inherited it from those who have acquired it, subject to this peculiar burthen. They are precisely in the position of those persons who have purchased land subject to tithes payable to laymen-neither class can complain of being obliged to pay in some shape or other their own particular amount of a burthen voluntarily submitted to, because invariably considered and allowed for at every change of property. If from the form of that rent charge there results inconvenience, or peculiar pressure, then any well-considered plan of compensation must be a boon. The government and the legislature would, no doubt, watch the progress of every change with a steady eye to public objects. They would take care that alterations, meant to effect a public good, should not, either by mistake or manœuvering, be converted into the means of conferring a gratuitous and expensive boon on a portion of the public,-that portion, namely, which now holds the particular lands on which the ecclesiastical revenue is charged.

The church has an evident interest in cheerfully and frankly joining in any plan which, without affecting the proper support of its ministers, and so its efficiency, would still dispel all doubt as to the nature of its income, and leave the disposition of the community towards the establishment untainted by irritation founded in error.

I am not going, however, to propose to you any one uniform mode of commutation as a specific. The bane of all schemes for the commutation of tithes appears to me hitherto to have been, that the proposers of them, each in love with some one plan of commutation, have relied on it alone, and expected to be able to introduce it exclusively and unchanged into all our many thousand English parishes, without any reference to the wide differences which exist in their local circumstances, or in the disposition or means of the proprietors of land in them. Now, whatever may be the merits of different schemes with reference to particular cases, to suppose it possible to find any one scheme susceptible of such universal adoption has always appeared to me little better than a dream. In one parish, land would be easily obtained and be desirable; in another, not an acre might be had fit to be accepted. In some places, rent charges would be readily granted; in others, steadily refused. In some cases, the proprietors would prefer to advance money; in others, they would dislike to do so. In some districts, a commutation would be rapidly and extensively carried into effect; in others, if completed at all, it must be gradually, and for some time, therefore, partially. Throughout the whole operation, the circum

stances and means, even the tastes and prejudices, of the landowners must be consulted, if we would not have the attempt at change produce fiercer discord and greater peril than what we seek to alter.

These difficulties in the way of any plan, uniform and rapid in its operation, appear, I know, to many persons fatal to all plans of commutation. It is otherwise with me. I think that if, in the heat of change, we would but allow ourselves reasonable time for the completion of our operations-if we would bend to human circumstances and difficulties, instead of attempting to control and do them violence, then a general commutation might be begun at once, might go on progressively, quietly, without struggle, without effort, and would, after its very first stages had been passed through, calm almost all the irritation, and remove most of the errors, which are now impeding the usefulness and threatening the safety of the church.

The objects to be kept in view in legislating for such a purpose would be principally these :—

1st, That the modes of commutation legalized should be adapted to the different means and circumstances of different districts, and even as far as possible of different individuals.

2ndly, That the whole system should have a tendency quietly and progressively to execute itself; that it should not be such as to require any violent efforts, any great simultaneous changes.

3rdly, That the property received in exchange should be placed, as far as is humanly possible, out of all danger of loss, and especially that changes in the value of money should be guarded against.

It would be necessary then, in order to set safely and practically about a general change, that machinery should be found and established, which, while it left the fullest liberty, and offered the greatest facilities to individual bargains, would effectually provide that none of these objects (except, perhaps, the last mentioned) should, in any one instance, be frustrated. Far from thinking that it would be impossible to find such machinery, I really believe that it would be easy to establish it efficiently and conveniently. Let me shortly repeat, that I am convinced that the obvious impracticability, as general measures, of most of the plans proposed, has arisen from a too sanguine persuasion that what was evidently good and beneficial for some cases might be made available in all, a persuasion which must inevitably, I think, ensure the failure of every plan based upon it. Your's ever,

Z. Y.

To the Editor of the British Magazine.

MR. EDITOR, Shelley Parsonage, Sept. 3rd. THE torrent of ignorance, dishonesty, malignity, and envy, now directed against the church and its beneficiaries, has already had the desirable effect of bringing forward much authentic and useful information. This is written with a hope of adding to the materials, generally accessible, for the guidance of just and reasonable men in their judgments upon ecclesiastical affairs.

It might seem to be represented, or at least pretty plainly insinuated, among speculators upon clerical spoliation, that were tithes disbursed as their original donors are said to have intended, the levy of poor's rates might cease in agricultural districts. It is assumed, then, that the tithes of a country parish would relieve adequately all the real indigence of those who settled upon it; would pay for the labour of individuals, thus settled, who are unable or unwilling to find work for themselves; and would eke out wages, often reduced iniquitously low, for the known purpose of encroaching upon the tithe-property. Of course we are to understand, that the tithe-owner would still have suffi VOL. II-Oct. 1832.

Y

cient left for maintaining an officiating minister, and a suitable residence for him, for superseding the necessity of church rates,-and for contributing handsomely to the support of diocesan episcopacy.

Before any inquiries are made into the capacities of tithes for answering these multifarious demands, it is fair to observe, that vicarages have no concern whatever with such questions. It is notorious, that a vicar's portion of tithes does not often exceed that share of such whole property within his parish which antiquity is universally admitted to have reserved as the incumbent's own. In justice, therefore, to their avowed principles, our antiquarian reformers of the church are bound to propose that vicarial tithes should even be exempted from poor's rates.

The small parish, however, from which this is written, has a rectory provided for its minister, and it is exclusively agricultural. The present incumbency began in the year 1812. During the first ten months of its continuance, a curate served the church, and the glebe exactly provided for his stipend. The rectorial emoluments, therefore, in 1812, available for the incumbent's own use, arose merely from the tithes. The fees and stamps for institution and induction, the first-fruits, the land-tax, and the cost of a tithedinner, amounted altogether to 571. 78. 4d. The church had lately been rebuilt, and the parish was, consequently, in debt. Ten pounds were given from the tithes towards the liquidation of this. Thus 671. 78. 4d. must be deducted from the year's available receipts for tithes. The total gross amount of these receipts was 1467. 11s. Consequently, the whole sum, from the tithes of this parish, at liberty in 1812, for answering the multifarious demands which rectories, we are told, were instituted to answer, amounted to 791. 3s. 8d. The subjoined account will shew how far the tithes, in that year, were equal to find supplies for the overseer alone. In subsequent years, undoubtedly, the rectorial property became more available. The amounts of composition received were generally greater, and they were, of course, not curtailed by stamps, fees, and first-fruits. Still, it will be found from the following table, that any expectation of paying the poor's rates merely of this parish by confiscating that property in tithes which the incumbent has earned by many years of service, and which his father bought for him at no inconsiderable cost, would hardly be less chimerical than unjust.

In this table, the constable's bills and the county rates have been taken out of the overseer's accounts for each year. No deduction, however, has been

made from the amount of composition for tithes for an annual land tax of 171. 10s., nor for tenths and procurations, nor for the repairs of a horsebridge in the highway, of no use to the rector personally, but saddled immemorially upon his benefice. In the earlier years a practice prevailed of charging in the overseer's accounts all sums expended on the roads. This practice has been discontinued; but a considerable expense has been incurred, every winter, under the surveyor's direction. As this expense bears, in a very great degree, the character of a relief granted to necessity, ordinary speculators upon ecclesiastical endowments will probably determine that, according to ancient usage, it ought to fall upon the tithes. Such persons, therefore, must reckon the amount of assessment for the poor in this parish at a rate considerably higher during the last years than the preceding table makes it appear. By way of guiding mere inquirers after truth, it may be useful to state that the parishioners here, desirous of encouraging those habits of prudence in humbler life which are the source of happiness and respectability in all other stations, have latterly refused to eke out the wages of able-bodied labourers. To this refusal, as well as to the exclusion of the surveyor's accounts from those of the overseer, is attributable the recent diminution of our poor's rates."

HENRY SOAMES.

To the Editor of the British Magazine.

SIR,—There is no department of the work in which you have embarked which is so deserving of the patronage and support of the clergy, and, indeed, of the public at large, as that which gives an authentic account of the real value of church property, or ecclesiastical benefices. To obtain this information, is the object for which the "Ecclesiastical Revenues Commission" has lately been issued; but as some of the answers to the questions (and I particularly allude to the 25th Article of Inquiry) must necessarily be defective in affording the desired information, great good, I apprehend, would be accomplished, were the parochial clergy to furnish your readers with a brief account of the net amount of the average annual incomes of their respective benefices, with a statement of all their out-goings or yearly deductions from the gross amount of their livings; and, as anonymous statements are comparatively but little regarded, it would be desirable, in all instances, as the refutation of calumny and the establishment of truth are the only objects which a good man has at heart, that the names of correspondents should be affixed to their respective statements.

In the year 1828, I was collated by lapse to this benefice, by the present Bishop of Bristol; and on coming to live in this place, I found that the rectory-house was in the most neglected state, and that instant repairs for so dilapidated a building were indispensable. A great outlay of income was expended upon it to render it at all habitable; and though nothing but what was absolutely necessary was done, and the strictest economy was observed, I have laid out upon it, out of my own pocket, between 6007. and 700l. I say out of my own pocket, for I was unable to receive anything by way of dilapidations. Like many other clergymen, I have not escaped calumny and misrepresentation as to the productive revenue of my benefice, and its annual value has been even quadrupled by many in this neighbourhood; and it was declared, among other gross misstatements, at a neighbouring Political Union Club, that its annual amount was 1800l. a year. The following authentic

* This communication is a most valuable document, and illustrates admirably an assertion made in the "Six Letters on Tithes," but there illustrated by only one or two examples.