The Sun.
London, England, 1832-02-11 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF TIIE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

We yesterday alluded to a curious article in
the Standard of Thursday evening, on the sub-
ject of Church property.
" The Learned Member for Kerry (says our contelin-
porary), in presenting a petition from Waterford, de-
nounced Lord Grey's declaration. He was followed by
Mr. Sheil, in the same strain ; and by Mr. Henry Grat•
tan, who achieved the somewhat difficult exploit of talking
more violently and stupidly than the one or the other.
The changes were rung upon the old story of the fourfold
divisii.n of Church property, which Mr. O'Connell, for
the sake of sinking the Popes' and the Bishops' share, re-
duced to a threefold division. We feel that an apology is
due to nineteen-twentieths of our readers, for offering a
single word to expose this obsolete nonsense of the three-
fold or fourfold division. We write, however, to boys and
to girls, as well as to men—and to them it may he useful
as suggesting inquiry, but by no means as pretending to
satisfy it, to offer shortly a true state of the case. Theo-
rists and text-writers have, for their own convenience, and
for the sake of systematizing, propounded the theory of
the fourfold division of tithes. That no such fourfold divi-
sion was, however, ever made, in fact, we have abundant
proof both a priori and a posteriori. A priori, because
we know that no power existed to which the Church was
responsible, in ancient time., for the disposal of its wealth ;
and because we know also that, without such responsibility,
no body of men every yet disposed of the funds at their''
mercy, save in the manner most profitable and pleasant to
themselves. A posteriori, we find that as early as the
reign of Henry the Second, churches were built and re-
paired, not by the contribution of a fourth part of the
tithes, but by a rate upon the county ; and the manner in
which the poor were maintained at this time, when it is
asserted that a fourth part of the tithes of the country
were applied to their use, appears pretty plainly by the
horrid famines sweeping off fifties of thousands annually,
recorded by our ancient chroniclers as occurring about
every third year."
The notions of our contemporary on the sub-
ject of responsibility are as orthodox as could be
desired, and it is only surprising to us that one
who sees so clearly the danger of trusting Popish
priests with money without responsibility, should
not see the danger of trusting Protestant laymen
with the money of others without responsibility.
Popish priests, mo doubt, occasionally disre-
garded the original destination of Church pro-
perty in their distribution of it, just as the no-
minees of boroughmongers disregarded the in•
terests of the people whom they virtually repre-
sented, and Protestant priests evaded the pay-
ment of First Fruits, and violated the oaths by'
which they bound themselves to defray the ex-
pence of schools. But, whatever the practice
might be, there can be no doubt respecting the
rule. Originally the whole property of the
Church belonged to all the members, and the

Bishop or Presbyter was merely the distributor,
so that the poor had a right to the whole. To-
wards the fifth century, when the priests began
to collect the revenues of the Church at an ex-
pence of about ninety-five per cent. ; the four-
fold division seems to have been introduced into
the western churches as a remedy for abuses
which had crept into the Church. One-fourth
was given to the parson, one-fourth to the Bishop,
one-tourth to the support of the Church, and
one-fourth to the support of the poor. But this
quadripartite division did not apply to tithes
alone, but to all the revenues of the Church.
Thornassinus, in that part of his learned and la-
borious work on Discipline, which relates to
benefices, shows that the rule was never departed
from, though corruptions occasionally crept into
the Church. With respect to England, the
same distribution obtained, which prevailed
throughout the Western Church. With respect to
the application of the share for the repairs of the
Church, there are abundance of regulations on
the subject in the Provincial Constitutions. In
the Constitutions of Richard, Bishop of Salis-
bury, in 1217, it is declared, that on the death
of a parson who has neglected to keep the church
in repair, so much shall be deducted from his
goods as shall be necessary for that purpose.
There is the same provision in the Constitu-
tions of St. Edmund of Canterbury, in 1236,
and of the Synod of 'Worcester, in 1240. In
order that there might be no misapplication, the
care of keeping the church in repair was, by the
Synod of Exeter, in 1287, committed to laymen,
who became accountable to the parish priest and
the principal parishioners. This, which at first
was a security against the abuse of the clergy,
became the source of a burden on the laity, who
are now obliged to keep the churches in repair
out of their own estates. But then the Church
has been so strint, it seems, by the Reformation,
that the revenue is no longer adequate to the ne-
cessities of the clergy. But let us hear our con-
temporary—

" In the first place, the Church had all the tithes of
the kingdom of England, undiminished by lay impropria-
tions. In the second place, the Church had more than
one-third of the land of the kingdom—that is to say, that
at a time when the produce of laud constituted all the ma-
terials of income in the country, the clergy held two-fifths
of the produce of the land. In addition to this, the
Church of Rome levied a capitation tax upon the whole
people for masses, confessions, indulgencies, penances, be-
nedictions, offerings, great and small, and the whole of
the tarif of Popish exaction Amounted, as we remember, to
?83 articles. The case grows so strong upon us, that we
are really ashamed to hazard a calculation as to the actual
amount of this capitation tax. Let the reader calculate for
himself, and add whatever sum he pleases on this head, be
it much or be it little, to the two-fifths of the income of
the country, of the possession of which, by the unreformed
Church, there cannot be the slightest doto.t Now what
is the relative income of the existing Church of England
(and the relative income of the existing Church of Ireland is
still less), from the fourth part of which the clergy are to he
required to maintain the poor, thus undergoing a burden
which err tainly was undergone by the unreorrned
clergy, though possessing two-fifths of the income of the
country, plus the uneilculated and the incaleulable capi-
tation tax and death tillage, in the shape of legacies, which
the Church of Rome always wrings from her dupes ?
Does the Church of England possess two-fifths of the in •
come of the country ? Does it possess one-fifth—one-
twentieth 7 Let our ports, and docks, and manufactories,
And crowded cities—those workshops of wealth, which
yield nothing to the Church, hut bring in a vast share of
the income of the country—let our annual dividends upon
the public debt, its share of which dividends the Church
must pay, though they are wholly unproductive of eccle-
siastical revenue—let our vast colonial fortunes, thrown
into our markets to raise prices impartially upon church-
men and laymen—let all these be remembered, and then
let the question be answered,—what proportion does the
present income of the Church bear to the present income
of the country ? We fearlessly assert not one fiftieth ;
and we are ashamed of writing a figure so much below the
mirk. And yet we are told that the clergy are to main-
thin the poor out of the fourth part of their income; that
is to say, that the poor are to be maintained out of less
than the two hundredth-part of the income of the country !"
In Catholic times there were great religious
communities, who possessed large estates. The
Reformation put an end to the communities,
and their estates came into the hands of laymen.
But the share of the wealth of the country pos-
sessed in those times by the secular clergy bore
no proportion to what is now possessed by
them. The tithes in those days were levied ac-
cording to the moderate rule now observed in
Catholic countries. In Italy itself, before the
French revolution, Arthur Young found the
tithe a trifling amount of the produce. Through-
out Piedmont, he says, " Tithe is an object of
no account. I made inquiries concerning it
everywhere : the greater
part of the lands pay
none ; and upon the rest it is so light, as not to
amount to more than from a twentieth to a fif-
tieth of the produce." In the Milanese, from
Milan to Pavia, " no tithe of any kind." At
Mozzatta, " the tithes, as everywhere else, are
so low 38 to he no object ; grain pays, but not

on all land ; it is confined to the lands anciently
in culture. The titheable lands, or small districts,
are near to the villages which have been in cul-
tivation many centuries." "At Codogno, and
through most of the Lodizan, tithe is so very
inconsiderable, that it is not worth mentioning."
In the State of Venice, " wheat one-twelfth in
some places, in others less ; maize, millet, &c.,
from one-fifteenth to one-thirtieth ; but for
forage only they pay none. In the district of
Vicenza, tithe varies from the one-tenth to the
forty-first." Ecclesiastical State—" Tithes are
so low throughout all the Bolognese, that I
could get no satisfactory account of the very
small payments that are yet made to the Church."
In the Duchy of Modena no tithe. In the
Duchy of Parma no real tithe, but small pay-
ments in lieu. " All I conversed with in Italy
(says Young) on the subject of tithes, ex-
pressed amazement at the tithes we are subject
to ; and scarcely believed that there was a people
left in Europe who paid so much ; observing that
nothing like it was to be found in Spain itself." In
the Letter from Italyby Mr. Stewart Rose, there is
an excellent account of the Italian tithe system,
from which it appears that the Church can hardly
be considered a burthen in Italy. In all Ca-
tholic countries the parish clergy, both cures and
vicaires (rectors and vicars), enjoy moderate in-
comes. The idea of a parish priest enjoying
from tithes an income of 6,0001. or 7,0001.
a-year would seem monstrous. But since the
improvements in agriculture, the small tithes
alone, formerly of little value, have become often
as valuable as the great tithes. It is the exten-
sion of tithe that has made it such a nuisance
both in England and Ireland. But what has
rendered tithe so peculiar an evil in England and
Ireland is, that, under the authority of the Court
of Exchequer, the Church and Lay Impropriators
benefiting by the rates in favour of the Church,
have been suffered to commit great robberies. All
the ordinary rules for the protection of property
are reversed when the Church is a party.

" In many cases," says Baron Wood, " the Courts de-
cide against moduses (which are allowed to be mutters of
fact) without any evidence at all, upon an idea of rank-
ness; viz., that they are so large that they cannot have
existed from time immemorial. I know it is frequently
said, Juries will always decide against the Church, and
therefore we will not send a modus to be tried by them.'
It is unwarrantable to act upon such a principle, or to
make such a supposition, when Juries are the constituted
and legal tribunal. by which matters of fact, as to cus-
toms and prescriptions at least, are and ought to be tried.
The decisions upon this head of tithe-law appear to me to
depart very much from the fundamental principles of our
Constitution, and to require the aid of the Legislature to
bring them back to their legitimate standard--the common
law and trial by Jury. There is another rule, which is a
little extraordinary—viz., that a rector is allowed at all
times, and however strong the case may be against hint, to
have an issue to try a modus by a Jury as a matter of right;
whereas a landholder never is but by the grace and favour
of the Court."

After alluding to the injustice of considering
moduses lost in case of alteration of farms and
fields for the sake of improvements, and of
holding moduses not to be sufficient where lands,
or the pasturage and produce of lands, have in
ancient times been allotted to the rector or vicar
in lieu of tithes or other lands, because no
owners of the land given in lieu can be ascer-
tained at this day, Sir George notices the case
of real compositions—

" There is uo doubt (he says) but many compositions of
this sort were made before the restraining statute of Eli-
zabeth, the deeds or instruments of which in the lapse of
?.40 years, and more since the making of that statute, have
by time and accident been lost and destroyed, and no traces
of such deeds are to be found ; but to ground a presump-
tion that such deeds or instruments did once exist, there is
uninterrupted usage so far back as any memory can go,
from which in all other cases, and even against the Crown,
a legal origin by grant or deed would be presumed. Yet,
in case of tithes, if you have lost your deed or instrument
of composition, you have lost your right."
But one of the recent deviations from justice
is in the mode of compositions made by parson,
patron, and ordinary, as well as other deeds of
the same sort between the parson and pa-
rishioners not having the consent of the ordinary,
but which have been confirmed by decrees in
Chancery, in inclosures of common fields, and
the drainage and improvement of fens, &c. Great
improvements have been made upon the faith of
these arrangements, which were considered to be
legal and binding till 1765, when the Lord
Chancellor, in a case " The Attorney-General
and Blair v. Cholmeley and others," deter-
mined all such compositions, though sanc-
tioned by a decree in Chancery, to be void,
and his decree was confirmed upon an
appeal to the House of Lords. " Since these
decisions (says Baron Wood), suits have been
brought by Rectors and Vicars, to set aside
such compositions, which had been considered as
valued, and the lands enjoyed accordingly for
100 or 150 years, and more ; and they have
succeeded in setting them aside, and in conse-
quence have got not only tithes in kind, but
the land also which was given in lieu of those
tithes, on account of the impossibility of ascer-
tains to vt hom the lands now belong, so that
the Court ►night restore them to their rightful
owners at this day." Lay Impropriators have
all the rights of the spiritual persons whom they
represent. Since the reign of Henry VIII.
many persons purchased their tithes from Lay
Impropriators, but have lost their tithes, though
there is no doubt as to the fact of the exemption
as far back as living memory can go. "In
all other temporal inheritances grants will be
presumed from usage or enjoyment, or the
Statute of Limitations will be a bar ; but
on this, though a temporal inheritance, they will
not." " '('he consequence (adds Baron Wood) of
the doctrines I have mentioned has been that Rec.

tors, Vicars, and Lay Impropriators have been
encouraged to institute suits in Chancery and the
Exchequer, but mostly in the latter, for the pur-
pose of setting aside moduses, real compositions,
and exemptions, merely upon the expectation
of succeeding by defects in the defendants' title,
from loss of deeds, and do very frequently suc-
ceed." After dwelling on the numberless and
tedious litigations from these sources, and the
mischievous consequences to which they lead,
Sir George Wood concludes with the remark,
that " this grievance arises principally from the
nature of the property itself; and can never be
entirely eradicated till the property itself is ex-
tinguished, which, in every point of view, would
be a great blessing to the people, and to the
clergy themselves, upon full and adequate com-
pensation." Thank God, it is no longerin the
power of any set of men to uphold tithes ni
Ireland. Abuses have been retained till the
patience of the people is exhausted. The idea
that in Ireland the whole of the tithes, par-
sonage,
in that
because there are few im-
propriations that country, and above a million
of acres of fertile land, are not sufficient for a
sinecure clergy, is supremely ridiculous. In
Scotland there is a respectable clergy, who do
not receive a tenth part of the tithe, and yet are
well paid.—Morning Chronicle.

Parliamentary motions, as well as Parlia-
mentary men, must not always be judged by
their first appearance. Mr. Courtenay's, on the
affairs of Portugal, was of innoxious aspect