The Sun.
London, England, 1822-11-05 00:00:00

TYTHES

There is no subject which has been more ex-
posed to the rancour of Party than that of
isfT/lES) and as we have never found it more
satisfactorily explained, and its true foundation
more ably defended, than by the Rev. Mr. CATte-
aELL, Rector of Wallasey, in Cheshire, in a late
pamphlet written by that Gentleman, entitled
" The Rights of the English Clergy asserted,
&c. &c.," in answer to " Remarks on the Con-
sumption of Public Wealth, by the Clergy of
every Christian Nation," we are persuaded that
we shall highly gratify,not only our Ecclesiastical
Readers, but all sound Protestants, in presenting
to them the following extract from that interest-

ing and valuable tract : •
" In the first place," (says the Reverend writer, p. 4,) "
think you have to shew what you mean by the consumption'
of wealth by the Clergy. In common conversation, clergymen
are talked of as a species of locust, filling their bellies with the
fruit of the ground, like that great and strong people which the
Prophet Joel describes, as desolating the fertile valleys of Ju-
dea, with the land as the garden of Eden before them, and be-
hind them a desolate wilderness;' and your use of the word con-
sumption conveys to my mind the same meaning. It seems to im-
ply, that the wealth enjoyed by the Clergy is destroyed by them,
without communicating any benefit to the rest of the community.;
for you say, the Clergy are not the producers of wealth, they
are the consumers of that produced by others ;' a truism
which would hardly havebeen worth mentioning, unless it had
been meant to draw from it some conseqUences disparaging to
the class of men of whom it was spoken. The Clergy certainly
are not the producers of wealth, but how, in this respect, do.
they differ from any of the unproductive classes—the physician,
the lawyer, the gentleman, or the Peer ? And how, in this re:
spect, could they be changed, unless it is wished to make them
at once productive and unproductive labourers, like some Chris-
tian Ministers, who mends shoes and save souls at the same time?
We never hear of the consumption of public wealth by the No-
bility and Gentry of the land ; on the contrary, they are cone
sidered, especially if they reside upon their'estates, as-the dise
Timers of opulence and comfort to all around them and in-
deed, it may fairly be said, that no wealth is consumed- in a bad
sense, but such as is actually lost to the community by whose
labour it is produced. The produce of the land and labour of
every country is destined to replace capital or produce revenue.
That which replaces capital is the most valuable, as it pays
the wages of productive labour only ; that which
.produces
revenue, is uncertain in its value, inasmuch as it main:
tains indifferently productive or unproductive labourers. But
that which is squandered upon foreign artists, singers, and
dancers at home, to be by them carried off and spent in
their own countries ; or that which is disposed of by abe
sentees abroad, is absolutely and totally lost, and the country
derives no benefit from it whatever. For this reason, therefore,
the wealth of the Clergy, which must generally, and ought
always to be spent at home, and none of it lavished upon
foreigners, is certainly as well, probably better, spent than that
of the laity ; and the community profits equally, probably .
more, from its distribution.
" In the next place, I think you should shew by what logic
you prove private property to be public wealth. The property
of the Church is as much private property as that of any cor-
poration or any individual in the realm—certainly as much as
that of the lay impropriators .1 and the condition upon which it
is held, of performing certain ministerial duties, no more makes
it public property than the condition ofperforming certain mill..
tary and civil services does that of the laity. Every man holds
his property upon conditions : he is obliged to fill certain offices,
and to perform military service by himself, or a deputy, if re-
quired : but his property does not thereby become a part of the
public wealth, neither does ours."
" I am no prophet" (continues the Author) " and therefore
and ;h-reeahnity of the financial crisis which is there
and funded prupeql.,tu.g_ case, no doubt. the liOlders. of all real
course, and doubtless will, cheerfully bear their part : but cir-
cumstanced as England is, and implicated as her church pro-
perty is by means of lay impropriationa with the strongest
interests of the State, I do most joyfully disbelieve the extreme
probability of its approaching sacrifice, and do most solemnly
deny that such a sacrifice can everhonourably or justly be made.
For, strange as it may appear to those who affirm that the
property of our Ecclesiastical corporations is justly transferable
at the caprice of the Legislature, I consider it to be as inalienae
ble as that of any individuals in the State : that the income
which we derive from it can no more be considered a burden
upon the community than the rent of the landlord, and that it
is as illogical to talk of the wealth expended upon the Clergy as
it would be to talk of that expended upon the Nobility and
Gentry of the land. The Clergy inherit their property by a title
more ancient than that of the most ancient family in the king-
dom. They draw their tithe trom the land by the same right
that the landlord draws his rent, and spend it as usefully, per-
haps more so ; and if you compel them to co tribute the pro-
ceeds oftheir freeholds singly to the exigencies of the State, you
can do so by no law but that of the strongest.
" More fully to comprehend the Violation of justice which
would be committed by transferring to the people by a forced
sale the freeholds of the Clergy, we have only to inquire whence
the appropriation of those freeholds in most instances had its
origin. Upon the first establishment of Christianity, the owners
of lands built churches for themselves and their vassals,
and the lord snaking use of that liberty .which he enjoyed
previous to the settlement of parochial tithes in A.D. 1200, of
granting his tithes or lands to any Ecclesiastical Body or per.
son that he pleased, settled a certain portion of them for the
maintenance of a Minister, whom he thus appointed superin-
tendent over the manor of which he was lord, and which was-
thereby constituted a parish ; so that the extent of a manor
and a parish are ordinarily the same. The endowment being
thus originally the gift of the landlord can never by any elle-
doW of justice be transferred to the people : the subsequent
possessors of the property have the same indefeasible right, and
every contract which has been made for the purchase of land
since the first infeudation of tithes has been made subject to
this invariable provision. Thus, in the parish of which your
humble Correspondent is the unworthy minister, a certain
William de Walley did some time before the year 1182 give to
the Abbey of St. Werburgh, which furnished an incumbent,
a mediety. of the church of 'Wallasey, cum omnibus pertie
neqtibus in puram eleemosinam :' and perhaps about the same
time gave to the priest thereof for ever certain fields, now my
glebe. Now let me ask what possible right the land or fund-
holders of this realm can have to enjoy any part, however small,
of this property, which was absolutely given away in puram
eleemosinam above 600 years ago by 'William de MTalley ;
which was secured nearly three centuries ago to my predeces-
sors as their sole property, under the most clear anti undeni-
able sanctions of the Legislature ; which has been recognized
as theirs ever since, and employed by them in the same man-
ner, and perhaps to better purposes, than the other rents of
the kingdom have been devoted to. The tenants of course can
have no right, neither would they in any case lie freed from a
tax, which formed an integral part of their contract with their
landlords. The landlords can have no right to be freed from a
tax, subject to which they either inherited their estates or
bought them for a less price than they otherwise would have
. given ; and certainly they who have no land at all, have no
right whatever to seek relief from fbur millions of taxes by the
spoliation of a neighbou4, merely because that neighbour hap-
pens to be a priest instead of a layman, and to)preac.h in church
on a Sunday, instead of going to sleep in it. Nolman inherits,
or has purchased, or holds land that was not antecedently
' subject to tithes. Therefore the Cleagy does not claim any
thing that ever belonged to any present proprietor of landeof
whatever kind his title may be.' Men of fortune,' says Bi-
shop Watson, grudge the Clergy their due by laws which
' were made long before they or their ancestors , possessed their
estates : this grudging is as evidently founded in injustice, as
if all the copyholders of the kingdom were to demand an ex-
' emption from the payment of the lord's rents to which their
' estates have for many centuries been subject.'
" This payment, however, is a burthen which, according to
your doctrine, the community have a right to be freed from in
these times ofi difficulty. But I ask why ? why of this More
than rent, which is a burthen too ? and one of the same Sort ;
for it is a gross misrepresentation to say that tithes are generally
taken in kind ; they are more generally leased for a term of
years, and therefore do not increase with the gross income.—
They increase with the improvement of cultivation, and rents
do the same ; they raise the price of produce, and rents do the
same : they belong to one class of proprietop, and rents belong

'to another : and why you are to rob the one, and lend money !
to the other to buy the fruits of the robbery, I cannot conceive.
It is not law, it is not equity ; and if it is policy, I confess I
am too blind .to it. If tithes are an intolerable impediment
to agriculture-4it is strange .they should be so, as the lay im-
propriations are scarcely ever bought up, and we are now suf-
firing from a load of capital misplaced in agriculture, so that it
needed drawbacks rather' than bounties)—if however this be the
:case, make a bargain with the church in the name of peace, and
commute them, but do not rob her. It is needless to say that
it is no robbery, when all the present incumbents are offered an
equlvalent ; for in the first place, you cannot give us an equi-
valent for our freeholds ; and in the next, you cannot compen-
sate the church -in her corporate capacity by the money pay-
ment which you offer to us as individuals. Take the church
property,' you say, and sell it for the general good ;" divide
the land among the people,' say the Spenceans, anti establish
an Agrarian republic.' The plea is the same in both proposals
—the public good. .In equity Mr. Spence has the advantage,
as he is no respecter of persons. Of such sweeping plans, how-
ever, Dr. Johnson says, that ' no man is more an enemy to
public peace than he who fills weak heads with imaginary
claims, and.breaks the series of civil subordination by exciting
the lower classes of mankind to encroach upon the higher.'—
When Robespierre guillotined the rich landlords to assign their
estates to the disposal of the nation, he. did no more than draw
a *ery'accurate deduction from the principle that had been esta-
blished by the first assembly relative to the Clergy.
" Tithes are a rent charge laid upon their estates by the
original proprietors for the maintenance of religion amongst
• their tenants and vassals ; but even supposing them to be ori-
' ginally granted by the Crown, does it follow that the Crown
may justly resume theni ? if so, it may as certainly resume
half the estates of the kingdom belonging to Lords and Com-
' mons, which , were originall y grants from the Crown.
,All
charters of corporations were given originally by. grants from
the Crown ; and if the,Legislature can resume tithes at plea-
' sure, because they were originally given by the Crown, she
can resume all the estates and all the charters which were ever
so given.'
From the united considerations of religion and constitu-
• tional policy,' says Burke, the people of England have in-
' corporated and identified the estateof the church with the mass
Of private property, of which the state is not the proprietor,'
either for use or dominion, but the guardian only and regu-
' lator. 'They have ordained,.. that the provision of this este-
' blishrhent might be as stable as the earth on which it stands,
and should not fluctuate with the Euripusof funds and actions.'
On this private property, though it has ever been the Naboth'S
. vineyard of revolutionary leaders and needy statesmen, they
cannot trespass without a breach of 'the eternal laws of justice,
and the fundamental laws of the land ; and although you would
content yourself with robbing the corporation, of which 1 am a
member, of its freeholds, anti leave the Duke of Bedford and
other lay impropriators in possession of that property which
was transferred in the sixteenth century, from a plundered
church to a court favourite, the matter could not stop' there :
the robbery of the one would very speedily be followed by the
spoliation of the other.
The whole course of reasoning in your work is grounded
upon an erroneous principle, namely, that the state is the pro-
prietor of the church revenues, and may resume them whenever
she will ; than which nothing can be more unfounded. The
. state is the guardian and the regulator, but not the proprietor.
. She can never take possession of them by any other law than
. that which will enable her to take possession of any other pro-
perty in the kingdom. The tithes are not, as you seem to sup-
pose, a tax upon an estate, which, like other taxes, may be con-
verted at the pleasure of the Legislature ; they are, according
to Lord Coke, an ecclesiastical inheritance, • collateral to the
estate of the land.' To compel the Clergy to exchange a
permanent landed security, inextinguishable without the ex-
tinction of the land itself, for an uncertain and fluctuating
security, perhaps not durable in itself even from the operation
of redeeming the national debt, and at all times exposed to an-
nihilation by the breath of political convulsion and distress ; of
this plan it has been remarked, that to convert the stipend of
the Clew to a money payment, and vest their property in the
funds, is the wickedest idea a profligate and unprincipled
mind ever seriously conceived.' I should be sorry to apply
such virulent language to the offspring of any man's brain ;
but I certainly must think that the present proposal, in which,
though the provision for the Clergy is dignified with the title of
a rent charge Of undoubted security, it is in fact nothing but a
tax upon all real property,. and of course therefore not so stable
as funded seeurity, which is a mortgage upon real property ; a
tax too which would very scionbe es odious as the tithe, paid
as unwillingly, and taken away as easily, upon the first financial
difficulty, and certainly as justly as in the original spoliation ;
that such a proposal as this, though I will not call it profligate,
is in principle utterly destitute of law and justice.

" Having thus far considered its justice, I will proceed to con-
sider its expediency. • 'Now • expediency,' according to Dr.
Johnson, is a good rule in little things, where no other rule
has been established ; but as the great end of government is
-6 to give every man his own, no inconvenience is greater than
that of making right uncertain.' That plan, therefore which
robs the church of her own, and sells it to another, makes all right
uncertain, and must be inexpedient_; trtll fin„tilito itniwinlgnj
Owe). -teastaiN.

" In the first place, the church establishment is celled a bit--
.den upon the people. 1 wish, however, to know on what part
-.of the people this burden rests. Not upon the tenant, for if'the
tithe were taken off, his rent would be mcreased by a sum equal
-to the highest ever paid for tithe ; land, tithe-free, is always let
at an increase far exceeding the highest rate of tithe: Not upon
the landlord, for he either purchased his land at a less price be-
cause it was subject to tithe, or inherited it subject to that tax,
and valued accordingly, and therefore if you take off the tithe,
you make him apresent of that which the law never gave, and
never can justly give him. Is it then the consumer ? Yes, it
may be said, because he pays a higher price for his corn than
he would if there was no tithe. Air. Ricurdo,_ in contradiction
to Dr. Smith, says that the tenant and the landlord do not hear
the burden of the tithe, but the consumer. Tithes are a tax
on the gross produce of the land, and, like all taxes on raw
produce, fall on the consumer.' He says that the farmer is
compensated for the expence of tithe by the higher price of his
produce, and not by a deduction from his rent; and -that, con-
sequently, when wheat is 80s. per quarter without tithe, it must
and will rise to 88s. with tithe, in order to pay the cultivator the
Bs. which he pays to the church. But supposing this to be true,
which it probably is, the right of tithe is just as sacred as right
of rent, and the 'consumer is no more entitled to demand a di-
minution of the price of corn by the abolition of tithe, than he
has to demand it by the abolition of rent. The tithe is a legal
charge upon the land, known to exist previous to cultivation,
and not like a new tax imposed subsequent to it, 'and therefore
it may be theoretically considered as a sort of tint only paid to
the Clergyman instead of the landlord • and ie the consequence
of its abolition is to be a proportionable dr4 in the price of
produce, I do not exactly see how the suffering interests of
the farmer and the landlord are to be aneywise bettered by the
change.
" Your plan, however, for lightening this ecclesiastical bur-
den seems to me, if I understand it rightly, somewhat a singular
one; not the abolition, but the sale of tithes—not the allevia-
tion, but the transfer of the weight. In the first place, the
maximum onus, the lay titles s, arc left untouched. In the
next, it is proposed to sell the church tithes, and presumed
that they will nearly all he bought up by the owners of the
soil, to whom, however, money at four per cent. is very kindly,
and, as times are, very Judiciously offered. And who are to be
the gainers ? Not thc tenants ; for either their rents will rise,
or the price of produce will fall; not the landlords, for if, in con-
tradiction to Mr. Ricardo, they should gain five millions and a
half of rent, they/would loee it in the payment of their four per
cent. loan. Bus suppose the landlords cannot buy their tithes,
(and to do justice to the country they ought to be sold by auc-
tion, and then the fundholders will carry the day) what will be
the consequences ? The. tithe will remain in its most odious
form, exclusively in the hands of the lay impropriator, whose
little finger must always be heavier than the loins of the priest.
Who, then, would be the gainer ? I see none but he whose
prosperity is already a source of 'such vexation to the landlord
—the fundliolder ; if indeed he, or any other class of the com-
munity, could be gainers by a breach of faith, which, by shak-
ing the basis of national security, would poison the source of
'national wealth, and make us poor indeed.
" I do not wish to enter the lists as a champion in the cause
of decithation ; but
.yet I must be permitted, on this occasion,l
to say a few words in behalf of those poor persecuted tithes to
which I have naturally a professional attachment, and whose
cause we ought not to desert in their dying hour. The English
language scarcely supplies an opprobrious epithet which has
not been applied to them ; and that right which in times of
darkness was upheld as divineeis now considered little less-than
devilish. ' Satan himself,' says one antagonist, could not have
devised a greater source of mischief in the Christian world
' than the payment of tithes.' Now the grand objection to them
is, that they are a tax upon produce"; but if they are so, does
not the ability to pay increase with the produce, and that in a
much higher proportion than the tithe suppose a farmer pays
10s. an acre rent, and gets-a crop worth 205., lie pays 2s. tithe,
and has Bs. profit.; suppose his crop worth 201., hepays, it is
true, 21. tithe, but his • profit amounts to 171. 'los. and thus,
though his tithe increases as twenty to one, his profit increases
in a higher proportion than forty to one. take 'the fol-
lowing statement from the Antijacobin Review, vol. ii. p. 93:-
4 A man eceupiessen acres of impoverished land, which yields
only one quarter of wheat per acre, sold at 40s. the quarter,
this yields the tenant 181. and the tithe owner 21. exclusive of
straw : suppose the tenant spends 100/. in improving this
land, and gets the following year three quarters of an
"4 acre instead of one—no extraordinary increase, the tithe owner
4 gets 6/. but the tenant 541. or 361. per cent. exclusive of .the

' straw, and this the very year it was expended, without advert-
' ing to the advantages which will be felt for several years fol-
lowing. I am very well assured that it cannot be denied, upon
any fair argument, that if 9-10ths do not pay the occupier for
improving land already in tillage, the tithe.owner,who prevents
by his claim the attempt to improve, is not the enemy but the
' friend of the tenant :' and it is some what droll, when the country
is overstocked with arable land, and the market glutted with super-
fluous corn,to hold out as an advantage of this larcenous plan, that
the tenant, if unshackled by tithe, will put into tillage lands
" Which the fear of tithe keeps unimproved. •' when the fact is,
that in spite of the pretended impediment of tithes, more lands
have been put under tillagethan we know what to do with, arid
there is scarcely a common leftin the country for the cottager
to feed a goose upon. •
" Mr. Ricardo says, that the consumer pays the tithe. Now,
if he really does pay the full tenth, the farmer is unquestionably
a great gainer by the arrangement ; for he certainly does not
pay one-sixteenth to the Clergyman ; and I have no doubt but
that this. is in some measure the case ; I have no doubt but that
the farmer makes use of the tithe as a plea to demand either from,
the landlord or the consumer , more than he is entitled to, and
puts the surplus into his pocket. If the consumer pays this
surplus, both tenant and landlord are the gainers; if the land-
lord pays it, then the tenant alone ; and thus far tithes may be
a benefit instead of being art impediment to agriculture. Tithes,
'says Mr. Howlett, enable the lower class of tenants to better
their condition, because from, the course of things the Clergy
never receive the full value of their tithe, and therefore the dif-
ference between that full value and the actual receipt goes every
year to augment the capital of the farmer, and the food of the
labourer.
" What discouragement to' agriculture then ought tithes to
offer, and what, in tact, do they offer? Are the tenants on-the
ti..!e-free land better off than on those that pay tithe ? There
is a tithe-free estate close to my parish, which I believe is one
of the worst cultivated, and I know has; had more broken te-
nants upon it within the last eight years than any estate in the
hundred. The English peasant is as well off as the Scotch.—
England, where tithe is strict, is as well cultivated as Scotland,
Where there is none. The peasantry of the. Canton of Berne,
whose freedom from bigotry is quoted in the 44 Remarks" with
such pleasure, were always very wealthy, and yet before the
French Revolution they paid tithe, in its worst form, as a tax
to the State. Sicily was subject to a tithe, so regulated by the
Leges Gelonicre, that it was impossible for the farmer to with,
hold a grain, and yet Sicily' was the granary of Rome. The te=
nant, I believe, is the last person to sufter by the tithe : its in-
fluence is felt by the landlord, according to Adara Smith, and
by the consumer, according. to Rieardo. 4 Taxes on the pro-
duce of land,' says Dr. Smith, are in reality taxes upon rent ;
and though. they may be originally advanced by the farmer,
are finally. paid by the landlord." It appears,' say the Edin-
burgh Reviewers, that in every state of society, whether rents
are high or low, and whether they are paid in kind or in mo-
' ney, the charge of the tithes is defrayed entirely, by the con-
' sumers of raw produce;" vol. xxxiv. Which is right, or
.which is wrong, 1 have not skill to determine ; but 1 am sure
that none of them have a right to be exempted from the pay-
ment of a revenue which belongs to the church by the title co.-
eval with our existence as a nation."

THE FALMOUTH PACKETS.

(FROM THE CORNWALL, GAZETTE.)

The following letter from the Earl of LIVERi)OOL, ad.
dressed to the Members of this Bor'ough, hi answer to a Me-
morial from the Mayor, Burgesses, &c. forwarded to his
Lordship by Sir Hussey Vivian, has been' received by J. F.
Bennallack, Esq. Mayor, and is, we think, decisive as to the
non-removal of the Packets :

" Walmer Castle, Oct. 25, 1822.

" GENTLEMEN,-1 have this morning received the favour
of your letter, respecting the report of the intended removal of
the Packets from lalmouth to some other Port, and transmit-
ting a Memorial from the Mayor, Burgesses, and other Inha-
bitants of the Borongli,and Town of Truro, and parts adjacent,
on the same subject.
" It has been some time under the consideration of his Ma-
jesty's Government, whether it would not be expedient to
transfer the West India and Mediterranean Packets from the
Post Office to the Aduiiralty, and I believe this measure will
lie adopted.
" 1 am not aware how far the Admiralty will deem it expe-
dient to make any alteration in the station of the vessels which
will in such case sail with the mail : but I can assure you, that
no arrangement will be made, which does not rest exclusively
upon the advantage of the public 'service,- combined with a due
attention to economy.
" I have the honour to be, Gentlenten,
" Your very faithful humble servant,
" LIVERPOOL.
" To Sir Hussey Vivian, and Lieut.-Col. Gosset.'"