The Sun.
London, England, 1812-06-25 00:00:00

at; MR. W. Pat.

the value of tithes is different entirely from- the
value of lands in their relative mode' of purchase.

IU this last year, •the value of tithes 1n Ireland

his in&nne. He would be remunerated in the first
instance by forcing him to commute his tithes,
and in the
.next place robbing him of above a
quarter of his,- property.: And he would beg the
House to look to the operatidn ofthis system as
it respected the Statute of Mortmain ; because by
this means free and unlimitted permission would
be given to the aggregation of lands in .11lortnilain,
in Ireland. These, he thought, were sonic of
the circumstances which would be produced by
the intended
,plan of his Honourable Friend,- if
carried into execution. Having said so mud!, he
really felt it was unnecessary for bilis to trouble
the House- any more at length on the present oc-
casion : but there were one or two other obscr-

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vation of the Honourable Gentleman, of ‘Vhich it

might be necessary to take some notice. His
Hon. Friend had challenged him, he thought,
with some feeling of rebuke, for the apparent in-
consistency of his conduct on this question—That
he (Mr. P.) had first stated that Abe, grievances
complained of by the Irish peasantry. arose froT.

[Concluded from our Vaper of Yesterday.]
To what extent Avonld the proposition
,of his
Honourable Erica. go ? Estimating therefore,
as he- did, that the, average profit of the Clergy
was one-thirtieth of the produce' of the land, to
what an alarming extent would the measure of
the HonOurable Gentleman go, if it were to be
adopted. Became, in making his pronosed esti-
mation, the clergyman must have the full value of
his tithe. He dust have a tenth of the, prodnce
of the .land. The first difficulty, therefore, that
presented itself would be, how the Honouiable
Gentleman could reconcile tle,se wfio have been.
accustomeg hitherto to pay only one-thirtieth
port of the produce:of their land, to pay in future
one-tenth. And this must be the necessary con-
sequence, if that was given which was by law.due
to the Clergy. But the Honourable Gentleman
set out upon.a false principle ; ,because be stated
that he wanted to do strict justice between the
parties ; but to do this, the Honourable Gentle-
man was not to; set. mkt, under the present cir-
cumstances of the case, to estimate by what the
people had a eight to pay, but by what they now
did pay., , And yet this was the Mode by which
the Honourable Gentleman Would remedy the evil
complained of, and alleviate• the distresses of the
Irish peasantry. This was the first proposition,
and the House would- judge of its, justice. ,The
next proposition which the Hoilourable Gentle-
man suggested was to tithe the value, Of every
acreable tithe, and this was to be done7:without
any reference at all to the value of land, or any
alteration in the value of money. The Comais-
sioners were, in the first instance, to look at the
value as he (Mr. P.) had stated it to be, on the
average, one-thirtieth ; and in order to remove
from the people of Ireland the burthen i)f tithes,
and in order to do justice to the Clergy,thiS objeet
was to be obtained by compelling 'the former to
pay one-tentheinstead of one-twentieth, or one-
thirtieth of the value of the produce of their lands.
But he would call the attention'olthe House to
what he-would term the injustice of
-this acreable
tax or tithe ; and that it, was unjust:-was to be in-
ferred from the circumstance of its having been
formerly tried, 'hut given up. The propOsition
was, to,--take the tithe, as it is called, from the
Clergy, and remunerate them by an acreable tax.
Now, he.would ask, in what a situation would a
large portion of Ireland be placed by the substitu-
tion %)f this system ? One quarter •of the whole
of,that country was completely exempted from
tithes ; and by the Act of Union it is declared
that those lands which were so exempt at the time
of the-passing of that Act, shouht be for ever
tithe free. " [Sir John Newport expressed soiree
_
surprisehere.] He would tell the Honourable
Baronet that what was law in Ireland ;11. 1800,
was,continued to be the law of that country by
the Act of Union. He must suppose, from the
surprise the Honourable Baronet evinced, that
this was information to him ; but .he was always
happy to contribute to the illumination of his
mind. (a laugh). • But the first operation of this
proposition was to remunerate the Clergyman,
after taking away his tithe by an acreable tax on
his parishioners. what,, he would ask, must; be
the effect of this ? He would suppose that one
quarter of the land of the parish was pasturable
land, and the other three quarters arable and mea-
dow lands. In the first place, this acreable tax
would he an act of the grossest injustice to every
man who held an acre of pasture land ; because,
by law, that sort of land was utterly free and ex-
empt from tithe : and, in the next place, it would
be just as unfair to make the man who has the
worst land in the parish, pay the same tax With
the man who had the best. The man who had the
finest field of wheat would pay no more than, the
man who had the worst field of barley. But this
was not all.. By this propositioh all the hay in
Ireland would be to pay this tax. Now one half
of Ireland by law pays no hay tithe to the Clergy.
In same parishes the tithe on hay was given on
very small proportion, and in others not at all.—
Therefore it was he said that the Honourable

Gentleman had grounded his argument up'on false
principles of justice because be would make those
Who were exempt by law from paying tith'es, p`ay,
a tax which in justice they ought not-to pay : and
again, he would make those pay large tithes who
were now subject only to pay very small ones.—
These, he confesied, were some of the difficulties
whiCh threw themselves in the way of this altera-
tion in the system. An Hon. Gent. who by the way
was rather irregular in his observations, suggested
the expediency of remunerating the clergy by
land. " Then;" said; the Honourable Gentle-

man, ‘f you.have it : this is the true way of re-
munerating them." ,But he would beg leave to
doubt that mode of remuneration also. He would

tell that Honourable Gentleman, that in Ire4nd

was at fourteen years purchase, and the value'of
land was at twenty. How, then, was the clergy-
man- to be remunerated. In the first place, he'
would be forced to sell his tithes at Totirteen years,
and to purchase land at twenty years :.and by
that means he would be robbed of near a third of