1832.] Tithes versus Rent. 205 



that account. We are quite as much bound to adhere to the spirit of 

 their bequests, though we cannot to the letter. We are bound, by 

 humanity and reason bound, to apply the funds they set apart for a 

 religious purpose to a religious purpose, as long as those funds can be, 

 by dint of our contrivance, efficaciously so applied. 



Now, no fair man, in his senses, will suspect even, much less assert, 

 that to give up any portion of the tithe to the landlowners would be to 

 convert it to a religious purpose. Such a purpose would be absolutely 

 diabolical. 



We all know how injurious over-feeding is to the lower animals; how 

 it makes them dull, and slothful, and useless, and positively mischievous, 

 as consumers of what might else be usefully bestowed. The application 

 of this simile to the overloaded man of wealth is obvious. We must 

 not then be so far beguiled by the solemn, oracular coxcombry of a 

 Westminster reviewer, as to aid in the wicked work of increasing the 

 religious disadvantages which nearly now overwhelm our land- 

 owning brethren. They have long been so full as to be in constant 

 imminent danger of forgetting God, of denying him, and, in pride 

 and self dependence of heart, exclaiming, " Who is the Lord ?" 

 If we would, with the property bequeathed by our ancestors for 

 God's service, promote the views and objects of the devil, let us 

 give the tithe, or a portion of it, to the landowners. They can 

 then escape the arch fiend's fangs by nothing short of a miracle. If, 

 on the contrary, we will act as humane and reasonable men, and 

 regard, as much as possible, the intentions of our ancestors ; if we will 

 resist the temptation to return evil for evil, let us snatch the aristocratic 

 brand out of the fire ; let us save and try to convert to use what remains 

 of it, charred and disfigured though it be. Let us, to drop figurative 

 language, rather insist on the landowner's refunding every shilling of 

 which he has ever cheated the public by defrauding the public officer 

 the parson. Let us not suffer him to escape the necessity of surrender- 

 ing to the public at present, towards an improved method of cultivating 

 Christianity by the philosophy and general ability, rather than the lungs 

 and sanctified demeanour of parsons, every shilling of profit, or by com- 

 putation, every square inch of land, for which neither himself or ances- 

 tors ever gave a shilling of purchase money. 



Though rent were quashed, or all but quashed, or only paid in such 

 proportion of surplus produce as a cultivator, chosen by a proprietor, 

 eould afford to assign him after full employment and full payment of 

 labourers, still would land be well worth buying. 



A trading speculator does not scruple to forego the interest of money 

 for years in order to insure a profit at last. Such profit would be the 

 possession of an imperishable property conveyable to children's children, 

 or relatives or friends. Is it not plain that, in the course of a hundred 

 years, the family of one who had thus laid out his gains in lucrative busi- 

 ness, would have more of those gains to shew than if he, the original 

 accumulator, had continued speculating with and risking his gains, in 

 order to accumulate still more ? 



Where is there a wealthy mercantile concern which dates the origin 

 of its mercantile wealth so far back as a hundred years ? There is none 

 such to be found. The mercantile families, who have not insured them- 

 selves against chance and change by investments in land, are very short- 

 lived families indeed. Their gains, and along with them their names, 

 soon perish. 



