]830.] Lord Mountcashel and the Church. 615 



soil, which, under the convents, had been in general carefully cultivated, 

 and rendered productive by all the knowledge of the only Englishmen 

 who travelled or had any valuable intercourse with foreign countries ; 

 was, in a multitude of instances, left to the decay natural in the hands of 

 rude retainers, or giddy proprietors, to whom the court was the centre of 

 preferment and pleasure. 



Thus arose the " impropriate" livings, or parish benefices, given into 

 the hands of laymen, which are now actual estates. 



A comparatively small portion of the old livings were restored to the 

 church. But the right to those livings was not derived from the king, 

 nor from the legislature. It was the mere recurrence to the original title 

 given by the owners ; a title older than that of any other species of pro- 

 perty, acknowledged in every form by the ancient laws, given for a most 

 important purpose, and incapable of being alienated by any thing but 

 an act of the most palpable injustice. So stand the rights of the Church 

 of England. 



All the arguments commonly used against the church property are fal- 

 lacies. It has been said that the people are taxed to pay for the support 

 of the clergy. This is a fallacy. The people are no more taxed for the 

 support of the priest, than they are for the support of the Duke of 

 Devonshire. Both priest and duke being supported by property, not 

 taken from the people, but allotted by individuals to whom it belonged, 

 and who might have disposed of it in any way whatever. This answers 

 the outcry of all the sectaries, who complain that they are taxed for a 

 church in which they do not believe : they might as justly complain that 

 they are taxed for a duke in whom they do not believe. But, it is said, 

 that the tithes are a burthen upon the landholder. This is a fallacy. 

 If the landholder be a tenant, they can be no burthen on him ; for it is 

 notorious, that he takes the land the cheaper the more tithe it pays ; 

 and thus, that, at least, he does not pay for the clergy. If the landholder 

 be the proprietor of the estate, neither does he pay for the clergy. It 

 being obvious that whether he inherited or purchased the property, it 

 came to him with an allowance for the tithes ; the inheritance being 

 transmitted from an ancestor almost a thousand years back, if any living 

 family can claim such ancestor or the estate being sold to him with the 

 obvious reservation of the tithe ; for if the land had been tithe free, the 

 price would have been higher, and the only difference to the purchaser 

 being that instead of paying tl\e whole value of the land in one sum, 

 he divides it between two persons, the proprietor and the clergyman, 

 both of whom have a legal right, but the right of the latter being im- 

 measurably superior in antiquity. 



But, it is said, that if the tithe falls upon neither the farmer nor the 

 landlord, it falls upon the public in the shape of a tax of a tenth on pro- 

 visions. This is a fallacy. If the parson burned his tithe, or suffered 

 it to rot on the ground, there would be a public loss of a tenth. But 

 the parson sells it, or lives on it in his family. The produce exists and 

 is converted to the public use ; only with this difference, that instead of 

 the whole produce of the farm coming to market in the farmer's cart, 

 a part of it comes in the parson's. The amount in the market being, of 

 course, the same, and the price of provisions being neither raised nor 

 lowered by having two bundles instead of one. 



But, it is said, that tithes prevent agricultural improvement by ad- 

 vancing a claim on every new object of tillage. This is the only argu- 



