PREFACE. 



— * — 



At the close of last year I accepted an offer from the Editor 

 of the Guardian to inquire into the effects on clerical incomes 

 of the prolonged agricultural depression. The results of my 

 inquiry are contained in the following five letters. 



These so-called letters are really articles. The abstract form 

 and want of local colour are due, partly to the difficulty of 

 investigating the private liabilities of men in the rank of the 

 rural clergy, partly to the necessity, when information of this 

 character was obtained, of avoiding the identification of the 

 informant. The ground on which the pledge of secrecy was 

 in one case exacted was significant enough in its latent 

 meaning — " If names were divulged it might injure my credit." 



It is not suggested that all clergymen have in an equal 

 degree suffered from the agricultural depression. The inquiry 

 was mainly confined to the counties of Northampton, 

 Huntingdon, and Essex, and the borders of Nottingham, 

 Leicester, Lincoln, North Warwick, and Buckingham, the 

 districts in which the prolonged depression was known to have 

 produced its most disastrous results. 



Even in these counties only general statements are possible, 

 owing to the vaiying circumstances of different benefices and 

 different localities. 



Clergymen who are titheowners only, in counties unaffected 

 by anti-tithe agitation, have, at the worst, passed from the 

 enjoyment of ease to the practice of economy ; they have lost 

 their margin of comfort. 



Clergymen who are titheowners in counties upon which the 

 anti-tithe agitation has taken a firm hold have been compelled 

 to make remissions vaiyiug from 10 to 25 per cent, upon the 

 existing value (90 per cent.) of the tithe rent-charge. Their 

 income has already dropped from the 112 of twelve years since : 

 it is also reduced by arrears. But in case they refuse to make 

 abatements they lose their incomes altogether. 



Clergymen whose income is derived partly from tithes and 

 partly from glebe, and whose benefices are situated in a 

 county into which the anti-tithe agitation has spread, are still 

 worse off. They sustain a doixble loss. Their tithe is reduced", 



