in equity or law to those who pay them, we beg leave distinctly to deny the fact; we assert, and shall, we think, make good our position, that in the latter sense no payment is made towards the discharge of the ecclesiastical functions ordained by the state, by any member of the civil community.

We are satisfied that the hostility of separatists towards the national church is much increased, if not entirely created, by the belief, that they are obliged not only to support their own ministers, but are further compelled by law to contribute their full proportion towards the revenues of the established clergy. We shall endeavour to convince our readers that the supposition, that they do bear any portion of the expense of our ecclesiastical institution, springs entirely from misconception. But this delusion is far from being confined to those who dissent from the church; it operates, we fear, powerfully on the minds of many whom we might expect to find exempt from its influence. A large portion of the English population have been taught, by ignorant or malicious representations, to consider the established clergy as an order of men pensioned by the state-as functionaries appointed for the discharge of ecclesiastical duties, and paid by annual stipends levied upon the public.

We entreat the patience of our readers, while we point out to them the gross and dangerous fallacy of this representation. We feel a firm conviction that such notions, whoever may entertain them, arise from an entire misconception of the nature and origin of the revenues attached to ecclesiastical offices; and we implore all those who feel an interest in the permanence of the national establishment, to make every effort in their power to remove a delusion which, if not dissipated, can hardly fail to prove eventually fatal to the church of England. When, through an erroneous view of the origin and pressure of the maintenance which has been reserved for its ministers, interest is called in to deepen the impressions already made by prepossession: when the dissenter is taught to believe that, in addition to the support of his own minister, he is compelled to defray his proportion of the expenses of an establishment which he dislikes upon principle, his hostility becomes redoubled; the prejudice of the understanding becomes a passion of the heart; and he comes, by degrees, to view our ecclesiastical institution not only as the means of upholding a system which he condemns, but likewise as the instrument of depriving him of property which he conceives to be his own. And whilst the members of the church, who are most heartily attached to its doctrines and constitution, labour under this misconception—whilst they consider its expense as a burden falling upon the public, whatever sentiments they may entertain

of

of its religious, moral, and social utility, they will become less vigorous and active in opposing the innovations on its constitution and revenues, which are daily suggested and proposed by its enemies.

With a view of striking at the root of all these misrepresentations and misconceptions of the pressure of ecclesiastical revenues, we shall prove, if we are not much mistaken, to the satisfaction of every candid mind, that the land-occupier pays nothing -that the land-owner pays nothing-that the dissenter pays nothing-nay, further, that the member of the church of England pays nothing, in the sense which the expression bears in the mouth of those who use it, towards the expense attending the discharge of the ecclesiastical functions ordained by the state.

To render our observations on this subject as concise and as little intricate as possible, let it be assumed, for the sake of the argument, that the parish of S contains three thousand acres of land, and that it is the property of one individual; let it be further assumed, that the rector receives in lieu of tithes a composition of four shillings per acre, and the lay owner twenty shillings per acre as rent. Were tithes abolished-were the claims of the rector to his share of the produce to cease, it is too evident even to require remark, that, at the expiration of the contracts at present subsisting between the occupier and owner of the soil, the amount would be added to the demand of the landlord. Land which he lets, at present, subject to tithes, for 20s. per acre, would then be let by him, free from tithes, for 24s. The abolition of tithes would, in such a case, merely make an addition of 600l. to the present annual receipts of the land-owner; but it could produce no pecuniary advantage whatever to the land-occupier. It is, therefore, we conceive, as clear as any mathematical demonstration can make it, that the occupier of land, whether he be a member of the church of England, or dissent from its communion, cannot be said to make any contribution or any payment towards the support of the national establishment. The occupier now pays, in the form of rent and tithes, a gross sum, which, if tithes ceased to exist, would be exacted from him as rent.

Granting then, that if the claim of the tithe-owner ceased to exist, the amount would be added to the present demands of the landlord; does it not follow that the burden of our ecclesiastical establishment falls upon the owner of the soil? As it is acknowledged that the receipts of the landlord are reduced, by the exact amount now received by the ecclesiastical proprietor as tithes ; does it not therefore follow, that the lay proprietor of the soil has to defray the whole expense of the ecclesiastical functions ordained by the state? To these questions we shall reply, after the man

ner of our friends on the other side of the Tweed, by asking another; Did not the owner of the soil, or his ancestor, purchase his property subject to the claim of the tithe-holder? And was not the capital advanced to effect this purchase less, by the exact amount of the fee simple value of the tithes, than if the estate had been purchased free from this burden? We cannot, therefore, see on what reasonable grounds the landlord can be said to contribute towards the revenues of the ecclesiastical establishment. The part of the produce of the soil which has been reserved and set apart for ecclesiastical purposes, never was the property of the present lay-owner of the estate on which it is levied, nor did it ever belong to any of his immediate predecessors. Every acre of land, not exempt from tithes, in England and Wales, has been sold and let subject to a claim for tithes, from a period long antecedent to any written record; and on every transfer of this property, the price advanced has been invariably reduced by the estimated value of the ecclesiastical charges to which it is subject. It is then an absolute perversion of language to affirm, that the clergy are paid either by the occupier or the owner of the soil, except in the sense in which a landlord is said to be paid by his tenant. If the owner of an estate alienated it twenty years ago, reserving to himself and his representatives a perpetual rentcharge upon it, equal to a tenth part of the produce, could the individual receiving such an annuity, be described as paid or pensioned by the present owner of the freehold from which it accrued? We do not believe, that even the most violent declaimer against the rights of ecclesiastics would maintain the affirmative of such a proposition.

There are, we know, some pretenders to political economy, who maintain that tithes constitute a charge which falls not upon the occupier or owner of the soil, but upon every consumer of titheable articles; and that the dissenter must therefore be considered as bearing his full proportion of the expense attending the discharge of the ecclesiastical functions ordained by the state.' With the affectation and parade of arithmetical precision, an attempt has been recently made to demonstrate that tithes have the effect of adding, in proportion to the amount, to the exchange able or money value of the articles on which they are levied. Those speculators contend that, contrary to the notions hitherto entertained on the subject, tithes do not diminish the net revenue received from land in the form of rent, but add one-tenth to the money price of the article on which they are levied when sold in the market. We shall attempt to be as concise as possible while putting our readers in possession of the theory to which we allude. Let it be supposed that an acre of land, subject to tithe, and let

1

for

for 20s. produces ten bushels of wheat, which sell for 50s.: the tithe of this acre would be one bushel of wheat, worth 5s. According to the opinion generally entertained by every respectable writer on this subject, if the 5s. paid on the acre in question ceased to be levied as tithes, it would be added to the 20s. now exacted by the landlord as rent, and make no alteration whatever in the money or market price of the wheat which it produces. But this notion, although maintained by Adam Smith, Malthus and other eminent political economists, is discovered to be a vulgar error by a corps of theorists and projectors who feel, of course, a due contempt for the common sense and experience of all the rest of the world. They assure us, that if tithes were not levied on the acre in question, the result would be, not that the landlord would add 5s. to the 20s. already received by him as rent, but that the price of wheat would fall one-tenth, and that the grower would sell the whole produce for 45s. instead of 50s., which is now obtained for it!

From this singular theory, it is inferred that tithes constitute a tax, increasing with the gross produce of land; not falling upon the net produce, or diminishing the portion, which, as a surplus, the landlord exacts under the name of rent, but paid by the consumer of titheable articles, and falling equally on every individual in the kingdom; on the poorest beggar as well as the richest lord, in proportion to their respective consumptions. The above theory of the incidence of tithes,' to borrow a phrase from the vocabulary of these economists, and the inferences drawn from it, are proved to be correct by a process of reasoning, which seems to us no less novel than, we are satisfied, it appears to its author ingenious and conclusive. The whole kingdom is divided, after the manner of Mr. Owen's spinning establishments, into parallelograms of different degrees of fertility; it is assumed, that the land contained in the first parallelogram being of the best quality, produces 100 quarters of wheat, on a given space, and that land which ranks second, third and fourth in quality, produces 80, 60, 40 quarters respectively. For the basis on which the whole theory rests, it is then assumed, as a fact which cannot be controverted, that the least fertile soil, in a state of tillage, No. 4, pays no rent, and that the expense of raising the forty quarters of wheat, which it produces, constitutes the cost of production, and is therefore the natural price' which regulates the value of wheat grown on more productive soils. It is then contended, that tithes, forming a tenth part of the cost of producing these forty quarters, must add one-tenth to their exchangeable or money value in the market.

The very basis on which this delusive theory is constructed, is MM 4

utterly

utterly destitute of foundation; it is an assumption perfectly unsupported either by common sense or experience, that the least fertile soil in a state of cultivation, pays no rent; that the owner of the least productive spot in a state of tillage, will permit it to be occupied permanently, without exacting some compensation from the occupier in the form of rent. We are satisfied, that no spot of land can be found in England, Wales or Scotland, permanently in a state of tillage, which yields no surplus to the owner as rent. The very worst soil which can be tilled, with a remunerating profit, possesses some natural powers and local advantages, which are the property of the owner, and for which he will exact rent from the occupier.

But as we feel the importance of removing the prejudices, which this view of the pressure of tithes cannot fail to perpetuate, if its unsoundness and absurdity be not fully exposed, let us, for the sake of discussion, admit that land of the quality No. 4, pays no rent, we must still reject the inference which the school' would draw from this concession. If we concede, in the teeth of all experience, that the land last taken into cultivation, subject to. tithes, yields no surplus as rent, but barely makes the ordinary return of profits for the capital employed on it; still we must contend, that in this very case, the portion of the produce levied as tithes does not at all affect the money value of the remainder. For this land, even on the supposition that it yields no surplus as rent, evidently yields a surplus as tithes. If the demand for tithes ceased to exist, the consequence, we conceive, would be, not that the money value of the whole produce would be diminished, but that the land-owner who is now said to receive nothing, would then claim and receive as rent, the portion which at present is paid to the tithe-owner, Conceding, then, to these ingenious economists, a fact which we utterly disbelieve, that the least fertile soil permanently in a state of tillage, yields no surplus to the landowner, still it appears to us perfectly clear, that the quantum now. levied upon it as tithes would, if this charge were abolished, be, exacted from the cultivator of the same soil as rent by the landlord.

On their own showing, the produce of the least fertile soil in a state of tillage, paying no rent, but subject to tithes, yields a remunerating profit to the cultivator: were the charge for tithes to cease, it would evidently yield more than the necessary remuneration, by the amount of the tithes now levied upon it; and this excess of profit, arising from the abolition of tithes, would be instantly claimed by the land-owner, who, as these economists assert, now receives no rent for his land. Let us suppose, that the produce of a given quantity of the least fertile soil, which is