best able to cope with, (for I fear I shall be found but a poor scribe in these matters) and have made such remarks on them as they seemed to call for. You will find these remarks at times casual, imperfect, misplaced; not sufficiently considered, not perhaps sufficiently understood. Be it your task, my brethren, to mature the thought I have merely started. As to my political excursions, I lay no stress upon their acceptance with you-read them, or omit them. They please me in the writing, but may perhaps please nobody in the reading of them. If I dare make the least apology for them it is this, that, wherever a whig production of any kind appears, it generally invites discussion, and inevitably ends in condemnation.

I had thought, at first, to have thrown all I had to say on the leading Clauses of the Act under one head, but that plan I have relinquished, and have followed it according to its arrangement. Repetitions therefore, are unavoidable, and, when found, must be pardoned. On travelling a new road, especially where it is indirect and winding, as most roads mackadamized by the Whigs are, we may be apt, now and then, to take a wrong turn. The field, however, will open upon us as we proceed.

A principal object with me throughout these pages has been, you will see, to persuade you, my clerical brethren, even at the eleventh hour, not to be in a hurry to enter into "voluntary agreements." -First, because, as the greater part of our compositions are much below value, the compulsory award (if it cast not aside all justice) will probably give us more than we are at present obtaining; and, secondly, because as we may reasonably consider this Act as of a sacrilegious nature, and derogatory to the dignity, and destructive of the revenues, of the Church, it is far more in character for the Commissioners to put such a palpable deed of

spoliation into execution than ourselves. I hope we shall consider again and again, before we submit to solicit these voluntary agreements, and thus serve the end our adversaries have in view.

I have made use on this occasion of MR.WHITE'S edition of the " Act for the Commutation of Tithes in England and Wales," both because it possesses the advantage of an Analysis, and because it is accompanied with several explanatory, and by no means unnecessary, Notes. Mr. White having been the solicitor attending on the Bill, and having thus "become acquainted with its details and purport," and having also had the advantage of "access to Mr. Drinkwater's papers," and of "submitting his work to the Rev. Professor Jones, since appointed one of the Tithe Commissioners," we are perhaps justified in considering it as, in a good measure, an official, and certainly a valuable document. I will take for granted that you have most of you this edition of the Act before you. I have merely transcribed the marginal heads of the Act. To have done more would have increased the size without adding to the value of these remarks.

I beg to say that I have, in certain parts of this work, made use of the suggestions (on several points) of an early friend and most valued correspondent, whose name, were I permitted to mention it, would do me honour. The reader will probably wish that these suggestions had been more numerous. They perhaps would have been so, had they been more palatable; but, to say truth, we do not always yoke our horses to the same car. As our thoughts thus run in rather different channels, I have taken care not to allow him too long a tether, lest he should eat up all the grass of the field," and leave me nothing but the refuse.

66

Having by this introduction somewhat paved my way, I will now begin and go through with the

various branches of this new " tree of knowledge," this vaunted crown of whig legislation, which, be it carefully remembered, professes to ascertain the real value of the Tithe in kind, and thus to do equal justice between man and man.

CLAUSE I.

Preamble-Appointment of Commissioners.

The beginning of this Clause runs thus:"Whereas it is expedient to amend the laws relating to Tithes in England and Wales, and to provide the means for an adequate compensation for tithes, and for the commutation thereof, &c." Now, I ask, how does this expedience of amendment appear ? All the arguments against the old Tithe System were ably disposed of as soon as started. They were proved to be, for the most part, fraudful or fallacious; and though men objected to that system, they yet knew, and will presently have reason to feel, that it was the very fountain of justice and lenity; of justice which was never abused; of lenity which was rarely forgotten.

I believe the only expedience of this measure consists in obliging those good friends to our Whig Administration, the Roman Catholics and the Dissenters; in purchasing the countenance of the infidel and radical part of our population; in procuring the favor of the landowner,* by first

* I beg to premise that I must be understood, in the following pages, to make many and splendid exceptions to the conduct of land-owners in general. There are among them men-and for the most part of conservative principles-who deserve the highest praise. The feelings of the great body of them, however, are much, I think, as I have represented them, with perhaps considerable shades of difference in their ecclesiastical tithe enmities. Where those tithes are in the hands of

reducing his tithes to half their value, and then suffering him to exonerate his estates from the burthen altogether; and, finally, in running the country to an enormous expence, and with no benefit accruing from it, save the enriching a set of commissioners, solicitors, surveyors, and land agents, at the expence of the Church, and taking. from her that which in no part of their commutation they give to her-her long and divinely established revenues; her opportunities for mercy in the use, and her perfect security in the possession, of them.

The preamble further states, that it is expedient. "to provide the means for an adequate compensation for tithes, and for the commutation thereof." But as we travel onward, my Reverend Brethren, it will be found, that instead of this adequate compensation, this doing justice between the land and the tithe owner, it grants every thing to the one and withholds everything from the other, ruining the latter, and, after all, not satisfying the former.

66

It is designated indeed by Mr. White, the solicitor to the Bill, as "the great and healing measure," brought forward by my LORD JOHN RUSSELL for the pacification of all parties. But I much mistake if, so far from deserving this character, we do not see confusion worse confounded," and more heart-burnings and bickerings, more misapprehensions, disputes, and expences under this new, than we ever experienced under the old Tithe System. If it had really been a "healing measure," if it had even intended to have been such, should not every clause have been formed on this sacred foundation? Should a single point that

laymen, these enmities are, somehow or other, softened down; though, in the former case, they get off for ten shillings, where, in the latter, they must pay a pound. What philosophy can solve this problem?

might by possibility be litigated have been left? But instead of this, we shall see, as we proceed, points without end, and almost as if they had been purposely thrown in the way.

On this subject the public mind requires to be disabused. The whig trumpet sounds aloud, that this" Act for the Commutation of Tithes in England and Wales" will for ever put an end to all dissentions between the clergy and their parishioners. It is, in one sense, not unlikely to do so; for by taking away a further large portion of our incomes, present and future, it will render us incapable of resistance even where resistance would be our duty. From the bearing of many of these clauses it will be found that grounds plenty for litigation are still left, and that if such litigation does not take place, it will be more owing to the lenity, the apprehensions, or the poverty of the Clergy, than to any considerate or pacific regulations of the Act.

Under this weak and false pretence, however, our Whig Ministers, co-operating with Papists and Dissenters, as Satan, we are told, did with sin when he begot death, have engendered this monster of a "Tithe Commutation Act" with a hundred Cerberian mouths, and all of them barking against us. Some reform in our Tithe System might perhaps have been needed, might, if prudently devised, have been beneficial; but we wanted not any excision of this sort. There were differences, I confess, in our parishes before, owing to the perverseness of tithe payers. An honest mind, however, could soon have settled the greater part of them. Now we may have the same differences, but where shall we find our places of refuge?" where our tithes in kind? where our barns and homestalls? where our remedies against the farmer and his landlord's injustice," which I must ever consider as a joint worker with whig chicanery in the production of this Commu