1832.] Tithes versus Rent. 20& 



enabled the tithe-champion to get his second wind. He's on his own 

 pins again odds are on the tithe-man. Look out there, seconds, 

 bottle-holders, ring-keepers ; there's a blustering, bullying-looking 

 fellow there, just behind the titheman, that looks as if he meant foul 

 play I'll be hang'd if he isn't like a Westminster reviewer ! Who 

 knows but he's a knife in his sleeve, and is watching his opportunity to 

 stick tithy under the fifth rib. Keep an eye on him, and rap him hard 

 over the shins if he breaks the ring. Now for the last round : the 

 renter's sadly distressed, and all but settled. Step into him, tithy, and 

 finish him offhand. 



Tithe has completely answered its original intention. Legal tithe 

 was instituted, when voluntary tithe was discontinued. The portion of 

 voluntary tithe which was expended on the poor, was never otherwise 

 than a most miserably insufficient provision for them. 



Legal tithe was instituted to support a vigorous and pretty nearly 

 incessant system of preaching and praying. It has not been owing to 

 parsons ; but to the improved taste of society acting upon parsons, that 

 daily genuflexions, and chauntings, and responses at matins and vespers 

 in cold chapels and churches, have been discontinued. Parsons have 

 furnished society with all that was contemplated by the original insti- 

 tution of church property ; they have always been ready to supply as 

 much preaching and praying as there has at any given time been a 

 demand for. This is an unanswerable vindication of the parsons' moral 

 right to the property they at present possess ; since the moral right 

 to property, held upon the performance of stipulated observances, 

 depends upon nothing else than the due attention to those observances. 

 The legal right to tithe is unquestionable. The rational right must 

 endure, until after rent has been quashed j it is still found prejudicial 

 to the good of the country, to charge the land with the deduction from 

 its produce of even a tenth. Then, and not till then, will a consistent 

 and patriotic radical reformer lift up his voice against the payment of 

 tithe. 



It would be just as reasonable to give the hideous new palace to the 

 Duke of Devonshire, instead of converting it to a public purpose suited 

 to its capabilities (supposing it to be condemned as a kingly residence), 

 as it would be to let the landowners get hold of the tithes, merely 

 because the present proprietors of them are not more useful than ever they 

 were intended to be. 



As in the natural and moral worlds, the mass of that which is good 

 and useful is of a retiring and unobtrusive character, so also in the poli- 

 tical world, the good and useful work in comparative secrecy. The 

 benefits which the lower orders especially, and through them, of course, 

 all others, derive from the essential parts of institutions, which exagger- 

 ated radicalism condemns in the lump, because it is not painstaking 

 enough to try to find out good as well as evil, nor candid enough to 

 notice good when it chances to meet with it ; these benefits are so real, 

 and so many, that it behoves every man who can make himself clearly 

 understood by the public, to try 'to save the public from doing itself 

 irreparable injury by utterly abolishing such institutions. All intelligent 

 and candid reformers must exert themselves, especially just now, to help 

 disabuse their less intelligent brethren of the bitter, unmitigated, 

 unchristian, unmanly hatred which exaggerated radicalism induces them 

 to entertain towards institutions, from which, in the midst of their mani- 

 fold abuses, a great deal of daily, noiseless, unpretending good is derived 



