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ments of Dr. Dwight, and the rather because he was neither an Episcopalian nor an Englishman. From the same authority he cites the following fact:

"In Connecticut there was, when he wrote, a compulsatory tax under the authority of the government, for the support of religious worship, each individual being at liberty to select the ecclesiastical society which he chose to support, but each being compelled to contribute to some one society. In the states south of New England there was no provision by law for the establishment of public worship. And

what was the result? In these last states

there were 430 congregations, of which 160 were vacant; had the proportion been for the population the same as in Connecticut, the number of congregations, instead of 430, would have been 3344. Again: the number of ministers settled was 209; it ought by the same rule to have been 3024.

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"In this estimate,' proceeds Dr. Dwight, we have a fair specimen of the natural consequence of establishing, or neglecting to establish, the public worship of God by the law of the land. In Connecticut, every inhabitant who is not precluded by disease or inclination, may hear the Gospel, and celebrate the public worship of God every Sabbath. In the states specified it is not improbable that a number of people, several times as great as the census of Connecticut, have scarcely heard a sermon or a prayer in their lives.'

"Admirably, however, as this scheme of taxation seems to have answered its purposes, it is not precisely that system which, had we the liberty of choice, would be regarded as the best. So far as relates to the support of a Christian ministry, a more desirable plan would be one which either involves no tax, or is comparatively at least, without expense to the public. If it be possible that a country can be adequately supplied with ministers of religion, who, being invested with the sanction of the state, yet draw their means of support mainly or entirely from their own property, or, which amounts to the same thing, from property set apart for this very object; every individual in the land being also at liberty to provide himself, if he should wish it, with another teacher, and freely to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience :-we should scarcely hesitate to speak of that country as placed under circumstances far more favourable than were those of Connecticut." Dealtry, pp. 14, 15.

These preliminaries lead to the subject of tithes, which are now the chief subject of attack. Respecting incorporeal hereditaments," as the lawyers call them, Dr. Dealtry

these

states the following undeniable, but much-forgotten facts.

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"1. Tithes are among the earliest possessions of the church; and the claim to them is, beyond all comparison, the most ancient claim to property which now exists.'

"2. For many centuries all the estates in England and Wales, upon which tithes are now paid, have been subject to such payment: the estimated value of the tithes being doubtless, on every sale of landed property, deducted from the purchase-money.

"3. Tithes never were the property of the state in any other sense, than as all land may once have been the property of the state; and if the state had a right to give away the land, it had a right to give away the tithe.

"4. The tithes of our modern parishes were generally, if not universally, conferred upon them by the owners of estates, and, occasionally at least, with the concurrence of the eldest son. They are therefore to be considered as the accumulated amount of individual and private grants.' Hence it was that the bounds of the estate became the bounds of the parish; the patronage of the living usually remaining in the family of him who had

endowed it.

"5. The assertion, now frequently made, that one third of these parochial tithes was reserved for the poor, and one third for the fabric, is altogether destitute

of foundation.

"6. The chief tithes of several thousand parishes having been taken from them in Roman-Catholic times, and transferred to monastic institutions, were, on the dissolution of the monasteries, with the rest of the property of these establishments, bestowed principally upon laymen; and, as these lay-tithes amount to one third of all the tithes in the kingdom, a great number of benefices have

been left in almost hopeless poverty.

"7. The entire revenues of the clergy, derived from endowments, probably fall

short of two millions a-year.

"8. Finally, to adopt the words of Dr. Chalmers, It remains a truth, that neither are tithes nor church and college lands, a burden upon any man.

In virtue

of these, the property of our nation has come down to the present age, either more divided than it otherwise would have been, or so much of it in the possession of public functionaries, instead of being in the possession of men who, as simple proprietors, or nati consumere fruges, have had no function assigned to them. As it is, that property is owned by men, who, in return for it, do something: otherwise that property would have been owned by men, who, in return for it, did nothing. This is the real state of the alternative: and when so viewed, we may

fearlessly commit the question of our literary and ecclesiastical establishments to its trial.'" Dealtry, pp. 18-20.

In our estimate of the usefulness of Dr. Dealtry's pamphlet, we of course included the notes, which are longer than the charge itself, and consist chiefly of quotations from Dr. Chalmers, Dr. Dwight, and others, intermixed with statements by the author respecting various matters connected with ecclesiastical endowments.

We extract the following account of church property, which Dr. Dealtry has taken from a sheet entitled "Awkward Facts." From this it appears, that if not only tithes, but glebe and other sources of ecclesiastical income, were included, and the total divided by the number of officiating clergymen in the kingdom, the average would be but a very moderate provision; as we may have occasion to shew when we go into the question of church reform. At present, we confine ourselves to a few extracts.

"I. Very little more than two thirds of the land in England and Wales is titheable.

"The whole amount of tithes in 1808,

when corn was 3. 19s. 2d. per quarter (higher than it is now) was 2,139,9421. 5s. 114d. This takes in the lay-tithe as well as the clerical.

"III. The whole income of parochial clergy, when corn was at the price stated above, was 1,694,991l. 6s. 73d. It now, therefore, does not probably exceed a million and a half. If divided, each clergyman would have about 150%. a year.

"IV. There are in England and Wales 4361 livings under 150. a year (nearly half of which are under 1007.)

"This is from a return made in 1815, when things were very high. It is allowed not to be complete, that is, there were a few more livings of each of these classes.

"VII. The incomes of the archbishops and bishops fall short of 165,000l.: that is, they average little if any thing more than 6000%. each. Of the bishoprics, only eleven pay their expenses. In three of them, besides private charities, the subscriptions, &c. are 3000/. a year each.

"IX. The whole income of the church is under 2,159,9911. This, if divided among the parochial clergy, would give to each barely 2001. a year.

"X. Mr. Leslie Foster, an Irish layman, and one of the most distinguished persons in Ireland, stated to the Parlia

mentary Committee in Ireland, that the incomes of the Irish bishops would not, if divided, amount to more than 5000. a year each." Dealtry, p. 53.

Dr. Dealtry alludes to the question whether tithes fall upon the landlord, the tenant, or the public; and he adjudges them, with sound political economy, to the first of these parties; though, after all, they do so only in the sense in which an incumbrance of so many pounds per annum falls upon a person who has an estate of many times that value left to him to pay it out of. It is a very good bait to hook the farmer, to tell him that the abolition of tithes would wonderfully benefit him; and it is an equally good thesis for an inflammatory speech to the public, to say that they fall on the consumer; but the landlord well knows that they are an entailed encumbrance upon his estate, a deduction from his rent, very unpleasant, perhaps, to him, whether paid by him directly in in person, or included in the rent for which he lets his property, but which he cannot equitably shake off any more than a marriage settlement or a mortgage. However, to save both Dr. Dealtry and ourselves, as well as our readers, all trouble in coming at this conclusion, we will quote a few lines from "The Theory of Rent," by the author of the "Catechism of the Corn Laws," which both Mr. Hume and Lord King have cited in parlianent as a model of sound argument. We wish that the Bishop of London, when he replied last year to Lord King's argument on this very point, had happened to have had in his hand this very identical Tu-Brute document.

"The real state of the charge against tithes is, first, that the tax, with the exception of a trifling re-action, is paid by the landlords instead of being paid by the consumers, as would have been the case if it had been levied on manufactures; and secondly, that there is a saving of more than nine tenths of the loss or prevention of production which would have taken place by the other mode. When tithes are asserted to be a peculiarly pernicious and impolitic mode of taxation, these facts are always kept out of sight.

The proof of the assertion falls to the ground upon examination, like the proof of many other popular outcries. As the woodpecker, the rook, and the goatsucker, have been persecuted time out of mind for imaginary injuries, so the ecclesiastical rook has been charged with collecting his subsistence in a manner peculiarly injurious to the public, through clear ignorance or concealment of the nature of the process. Some species of commutation might possibly be better still. But it is plain that the extended outcry has been made either through ignorance, or a desire to direct the hostility of the community to a particular quarter by misrepresenta

tion.

"If a tax or tithe should be remitted on a certain portion of the land, the effect would be the removal of something approaching to a proportionate part of the consequences that resulted from the tax. For example, if the tithe in England, provided it were universal, would diminish the whole produce by the hundred-andtwelfth part, and if this would increase the price of corn by sixpence a quarter,--the effect of the remission of tithe on an average third of the land would be, that the produce of the country would be increased by something not far from a third of a hundred-and-twelfth part, and the price of corn fall by about twopence a quarter! And the value of the tax remitted, with the exéeption of the re-action produced by these petty alterations, would go into the pockets of the landlords. For it is evident that this would be the result if the land-owners held the land in their own hands. It could

make no difference in the prices in the market, whether corn was sold, there for the benefit of the tithe-owner or the grower. If the tithe-owner could eat all his corn himself, the case would be different; but as it is, the same quantity of corn must be brought to market, and consequently be sold for the same price. And of this price, the whole that is left after paying the necessary profits of the capital employed, would be rent." p. 27.

Thus, then, the upshot is, that if a sponge were applied to the tithe roll of my Lord King's estates, his lordship would get better rents, and be enabled to increase the splendour of his equipage; but neither would the farmer nor the public, neither the eater nor the grower of corn, be benefited, except indeed by an incidental trifling fraction of farthings, not worth carrying into the estimate.

The above remarks apply only to the question of spoliation, not to the question of commutation. The tithes, or the tithe's worth, be the CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 362.

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value little or much, belong to the church, and ought to be employed for the religious purposes of our national Protestant establishment; for which, in the aggregate, we fear they are insufficient, rather than over large; but alienation is robbery, and this point ought to be established as the basis of every scheme of improvement. The best way of administering them is another question: and this we must leave for our intended discussion; only premising, that however long or short the time during which the present system may struggle on in England, its termination seems now legislatively and popularly decreed in Ireland, as it was the century before last in Scotland. For many, many years, we have seen this evil day approaching in the sister island, and casting a distant shadow even nearer home; and Cassandra-like, we have urged our statesmen and prelates and clergy, for more than a quarter of a century, to foresee and avert the calamity by timely measures, and to secure a fair and peaceable commutation, either in land, or a corn rent on the estate, not the tenant, or in whatever other way seemed best, while the sun shone, and the heavens were bright, and landlords were rich, and farmers in good humour. And what did we get for our pains? We were called radicals and levellers. And now the day that every man with the least portion of foresight prognosticated has arrived, at least in Ireland; and the people refuse to pay tithes, and the government will not, or cannot, coerce them; and committees of both houses of parliament have decided that it is necessary to do in this hour of extremity, and when the time, we fear, has gone by for making an equitable bargain, what we were vituperated for proposing in the day of prosperity, when the church might have had her due, and all parties been pleased, and the pastor have been bound more closely to his flock, and religion not have suffered in the contest, or the dire

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ful prospect have been opened of the papal clergy, whom the unpopularity of our tithe system has raised to anarchical power, being paid and fostered by the state. But Cassandra did not tire of her office, nor will we; and therefore, leaving Ireland at present to the wisdom of the legislature, we once more put in a word for England. The last twelve, the last six, months have done the work of half a century, so far as regards the perpetuity of the present system of tithe management; and the mixed bands of dissent, infidelity, radicalism, honest scruple, and sordid interest, are rapidly gathering to the onset. Some of our public men see this, and fear it; others see it, and wish it; and a minority of our bishops and clergy (a numerical minority we mean) are anxious to meet the exigency: but others linger, from hope or hopelessness; from apprehension, from timidity, or from the unworthy feeling that" it will last my time;" or "my vested interests will not be invaded, and let posterity take care of itself." Thus no adequate measure has been devised and acted upon with fortitude and vigour; the church stands almost passive, to take what may fall of good or evil; and, instead of timely preventing the collection of fuel, will be obliged, we fear, before long, to be content with snatching what it can out of the flames; just as at this moment, in Ireland, we are gravely told by very grave persons, that the church cannot hope to keep what it might have secured a few years ago; that it must make the best bargain it can, and yield a little to pressing circumstances,-that is to say, to organized robbery, bloodshed, and rebellion, and be content if the highwayman lays down his pistol and throws back a respectable percentage of the stolen property. But Cassandra has done. It is not for the value of the loaves and fishes that we are pleading; and many of the warmest friends of the church can testify that as individuals they have had little enough of its grossly

exaggerated emoluments; but however much of justice there may be in the complaint of inequitable distribution, this is not the only question; those emoluments are necessary, in due moderation, for the support of a national church-establishment; and every clergyman or layman who loves Christianity and the church more than his own paltry selfish interest will be willing to listen to any well-devised plan, first, for securing ecclesiastical property on a solid and popular basis; and secondly, for allotting it with tolerable fairness to all who have a just claim upon it.

We earnestly wish that some clergyman fully qualified for the task, would devote his mind to the whole of the details of a plan of adequate church-reform, such as might become the basis of an act of parliament. Our prelates have little leisure for so laborious an undertaking; but many of them, we feel assured, with not a few of the clergy, and most of the best disposed part of the laity, would gladly hail the result. We know of no individual to whom we should rather commit such an investigation than the much respected Chancellor of Winchester. This excellent and judicious clergyman early distinguished himself at Cambridge by his scientific attainments, and both there and at Haileybury, as a tutor, a professor, an author, a friend, and a divine, he was held in the highest esteem. As a parochial minister, he is still more loved and valued; and his extensive parish of Clapham has for years been looked to by his clerical brethren as a model for its schools, its charities, its harmonious vestries, the attention paid to the sick and poor, and the whole detail of parochial arrangement. Of his theological attainments, and religious principles, his publications, especially his sermons,

are

an ample guarantee. By his gentle bearing he has conciliated friends in very different quarters; and though the well-known and tried advocate of our modern Bible,

missionary, and similar institutions, he has not lost the influence due to his talents and exertions in the cause of the older societies. How it has happened that the powerful claims of such a man, and the numerous honourable suffrages of his country. men, have been so long overlooked by the dispensers of mitres, it is not for us to decide: one thing, however, we know, that Dr. Dealtry is not either a political priest or a clerical merry-Andrew; and when all the samples of both these classes of divines are duly raised to the bench, such men as Dr. Dealtry may come in for a share of cabinet favour. Among the changes of this mutable world, we may some years hence chance to have a government that can spare both reform votes and Edinburgh-Review suffrages, and then from Chichester to St. Paul's the way will be open to clergymen of other schools than those which approve themselves to place-hunting or place-retaining cabinets, of whatever grade of politics. Worldly wise men are often the most short-sighted of men, even in their own matters; they often, in hunting after popularity, lose it where they might have had it on the cheap terms of doing what is right instead of what is wrong. We say this whether as regards the Tory and pseudo-high. church list of Lord Eldon and Archbishop Sutton, or the Whig and lowchurch or no-church list of Earl Grey and Lord Brougham. What our remarks have to do with Dr. Dealtry (to whom we owe an apology for the casual juxtaposition), we cannot ourselves clearly divine, except that when we thought upon the history of our church for the last quarter of a century, and ran over in our minds the names of many of those clergymen who have been publicly known with honour or dishonour in their generation, we followed out our reminiscences to certain reflections more true than pleasing.

But we must conclude, only again repeating, that an established church, however useful, scriptural, or neces

sary, is but a means to an end, and not, as many make it, the end itself. The clergy should diligently disabuse their parishioners, both by their arguments and their conduct, of so fatal a notion. It is to little purpose that men profess to be members of a church, whether established or unestablished, if their religion be but a name and form without the power. We would follow up the argument to the heart and conscience; we would have the clergy address their parishioners privately, and from house to house upon it; as for instance :You admit that an established communion is not unlawful or unscriptural, and that the Church of England is a truly apostolical branch of Christ's holy catholic church. But this is little, and, as regards your eternal welfare, nothing; you must remain in its fellowship and to that end you must study its doctrines, practise its precepts, and adorn its communion. For these doctrines and precepts are founded on the authority of the word of God, to which alone the church refers as her standard of faith and practice. She exhibits to you matters of infinite importance. She tells you, from the Divine word, of your fallen and guilty condition as a sinner against God-of your need of that Saviour who gave himself as a sacrifice for the transgressions of the world, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life-and of the renewing, enlightening, and purifying influences of his Holy Spirit. She exhibits to you in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper-the pledges of this love of God in Christ, for your adoption into his familyyour sanctification by his Spiritand the strengthening and comforting of your soul by the remembrance of his body broken and his blood shed for the remission of your sins. She exhorts you to the reading of the Scriptures; she affords you a manual of prayer and praise; she offers you pastoral instruction: in short, what is there that can conduce

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