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of the kingdom, for many reasons purely secular; and that this last attempt for repealing the test did much more affect at present the temporal interest than the spiritual; yet the whole body of the lower clergy have, upon both those occasions, expressed equal gratitude to that honourable house for their justice and steadiness, as if the clergy alone were to receive the benefit.

It must needs be therefore a great addition to the clergy's grief, that such an assembly as the present house of commons, should now, with an expedition more than usual, agree to a bill for encouraging the linen manufacture, with a clause whereby the church is to lose two parts in three of the legal tithe in flax and hemp.

Some reasons why the clergy think such a law will be a great hardship upon them are, I conceive, those that follow. I shall venture to enumerate them, with all deference due to that honourable assembly.

First, the clergy suppose that they have not by any fault or demerit, incurred the displeasure of the nation's representatives: neither can the declared loyalty of the present set, from the highest prelate to the lowest vicar, be in the least disputed: because there are hardly ten clergymen through the whole kingdom, for more than nineteen years past, who have not been either preferred entirely upon account of their declared affection to the Hanover line, or higher promoted as the due reward of the same merit.

There is not a landlord in the whole kingdom residing some part of the year at his country seat, who is not in his own conscience fully convinced, that the tithes of his minister have gradually sunk for some years past one third, or at least one fourth, of their former value, exclusive of all nonsolvencies.

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The payment of tithes in this kingdom is subject to so many frauds, brangles, and other difficulties, not only from papists and dissenters, but even from those who profess themselves protestants; that, by the expense, the trouble, and vexation of collecting or bargaining for them, they are, of all other rents, the most precarious, uncertain, and ill paid.

The landlords in most parishes expect, as a compliment, that they shall pay little more than half the value of the tithes for the lands they hold in their own hands; which often consist of large domains: and it is the minister's interest to make them easy upon that article, when he considers what influence those gentlemen have upon their tenants.

The clergy cannot but think it extremely severe, that in a bill for encouraging the linen manufacture, they alone must be the sufferers, who can least afford it. If, as I am told, there be a tax of three thousand pounds a year paid by the publick, for a farther encouragement to the said manufacture, are not the clergy equal sharers in the charge with the rest of their fellow subjects? What satisfactory reason can be therefore given, why they alone should bear the whole additional weight, unless it will be alleged that their property is not upon an equal foot with the properties of other men? They acquire their own small pittance, by at least as honest means, as their neighbours the landlords possess their estates; and have been always supposed, except in rebellious or fanatical times, to have as good a title for no families now in being can show a more ancient. Indeed if it be true, that some persons (I hope they were not many) were seen to laugh when the rights of the clery were mentioned; in this case, an opinion may possibly

possibly be soon advanced, that they have no rights at all. And this is likely enough to gain ground, in proportion as the contempt of all religion shall increase, which is already in a very forward way.

It is said, there will be also added in this bill, a clause for diminishing the tithe of hops, in order to cultivate that useful plant among us: and here likewise the load is to lie entirely on the shoulders of the clergy, while the landlords reap all the benefit. It will not be easy to foresee where such proceedings are likely to stop; or whether by the same authority, in civil times, a parliament may not as justly challenge the same power in reducing all things titheable, not below the tenth part of the product (which is and ever will be the clergy's equitable right) but from a tenth part to a sixtieth or eightieth, and from thence to nothing.

I have heard it granted by skilful persons, that the practice of taxing the clergy by parliament, without their own consent, is a new thing, not much above the date of seventy years: before which period, in times of peace, they always taxed themselves. But things are extremely altered at present: it is not now sufficient to tax them in common with their fellow subjects, without imposing an additional tax upon them, from which, or from any thing equivalent, all their fellow subjects are exempt; and this in a country professing Christianity.

The greatest part of the clergy throughout this kingdom have been stripped of their glebes, by the confusion of times, by violence, fraud, oppression, and other unlawful means; all which glebes are now in the hands of the laity. So that they now are generally forced to lie at the mercy of landlords, for

a small

a small piece of ground in their parishes, at a most exorbitant rent, and usually for a short term of years, whereon to build a house, and enable them to reside. Yet, in spite of these disadvantages, I am a witness, that they are generally more constant residents, than their brethren in England; where the meanest vicar has a convenient dwelling, with a barn, a garden, and a field or two for his cattle; beside the certainty of his little income from honest farmers, able and willing not only to pay him his dues, but likewise to make him presents, according to their ability, for his better support. In all which circumstances the clergy of Ireland meet with a treatment directly contrary.

It is hoped the honourable house will consider, that it is impossible for the most ill minded, avaricious, or cunning clergyman, to do the least injustice to the meanest cottager in his parish, in any bargain for tithes, or other ecclesiastical dues. He can at the utmost only demand to have his tithes fairly laid out; and does not once in a hundred times obtain his demand. But every tenant, from the poorest cottager, . to the most substantial farmer, can, and generally does impose upon the minister, by fraud, by theft, by lies, by perjuries, by insolence, and sometimes by force; notwithstanding the utmost vigilance and skill of himself and his proctor; insomuch that it is allowed, that the clergy in general, receive little more than one half of their legal dues; not including the charges they are at in collecting or bargaining for

them.

The land rents of Ireland are computed to about two millions, whereof one tenth amounts to two hundred thousand pounds. The beneficed clergymen, excluding those of this city, are not reckoned to be

above five hundred; by which computation they should each of them possess two hundred pounds a year, if those tithes were equally divided, although in well cultivated corn countries it ought to be more; whereas they hardly receive one half of that sum, with great defalcations, and in very bad payments. There are indeed a few glebes in the north pretty considerable; but if these, and all the rest, were in like manner equally divided, they would not add five pounds a year to every clergyman. Therefore, whether the condition of the clergy in general among us be justly liable to envy, or able to bear a heavy burden, which neither the nobility, nor gentry, nor tradesmen, nor farmers, will touch with one of their fingers; this, I say, is submitted to the honourable house.

One terrible circumstance in this bill is, that of turning the tithe of flax and hemp, into what the lawyers call a modus, or a certain sum in lieu of a tenth part of the product. And by this practice of claiming a modus in many parishes by ancient custom, the clergy in both kingdoms have been almost incredible sufferers. Thus in the present case, the tithe of a tolerable acre of flax, which by a medium is worth twelve shillings, is by the present bill reduced to four shillings. Neither is this the worst part in a modus; every determinate sum must in process of time sink from a fourth to a four and twentieth part, or a great deal lower, by that necessary fall attending the value of money; which is now at least nine tenths lower all over Europe, than it was four hundred years ago, by a gradual decline; and even a third part at least, within our own memories, in purchasing almost every thing required for the necessities or convenienVOL. X.

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