ISO 



TUCKER, JOSIAH, D.D. 



TULL, JETHRO. 



190 



work evinces much acuteness and learning, but is of a somewhat 

 desultory character. His opinions were decidedly adverse to any 

 extension of popular representation, and he even proposed to raise the 

 qualification of electors and of the members of the House of Commons. 

 He had printed the greater portion of this work some years before, 

 for private circulation amongst his friends, and it was actually quoted 

 and attacked before it was published. 



The devotion of his talents with eo much ardour to political and 

 commercial inquiries laid him open to many sarcastic imputations of 

 neglecting his spiritual duties. His bishop especially, Dr. Warburton, 

 between whom and the dean there seems to have been much want of 

 cordiality, was alleged to have said that "his trade was his religion, 

 and his religion a trade." The dean took many opportunities of 

 refuting these calumnies, and exposing the injustice of the prejudice 

 with which his labours were regarded. On one occasion he thus ex- 

 pressed himself: " The bishop affects to consider me with contempt : 

 to which I pay nothing. He has sometimes spoken coarsely of me : to 

 which I replied nothing. He has said .that religion is my trade, and 

 trade is my religion. Commerce and its connections have, it is true, 

 been favourite objects of my attention ; and where is the crime ? And 

 as for religion, I have carefully attended to the duties of my parish, 

 nor have I neglected my cathedral. The world knows something of 

 me as a writer (on religious subjects ; and I will add (which the world 

 does not know), that I have written near three hundred sermons, and 

 preached them all, again and again. .My heart is at ease on that 

 score ; and my conscience, thank God ! does not accuse me." In the 

 preface to ' Reflections on the Expediency of a Law for the Naturali- 

 zation of Foreign Protestants/ he complains that he had "undergone 

 some censures for engaging in inquiries seemingly beside his pro- 

 fession ;" and " he begs leave to' offer some reasons for his interfering 

 in those matters, and at the same time to vindicate himself from the 

 supposition of having deserved the ill-treatment he has met with." He 

 states that " in his parish, though large and populous, he performs 

 all the offices of his function himself, according to the best of his 

 abilities;" and therefore "flatters himself that as long as he follows 

 these studies without neglecting his other engagements, and delivers 

 his opinions in an inoffensive manner, he shall be excused in the judg- 

 ment of all candid persons, though the warmth of party zeal, or the 

 resentment of those whose interest clashes with that of the public, 

 may excite them to vilify and insult him." Three years later, he 

 writes, "Another bill brought against me is that I am extremely 

 ignorant in my peculiar profession as a divine; and that having dedi- 

 cated too much of my time to the study of commerce, I have shamefully 

 neglected to cultivate those sciences which more immediately belong 

 to my clerical profession. To these charjres I stand mute ; and as my 

 Apology for the Church of England, my Six Sermons, and my Letters 

 to the Rev. Dr. Kippis, are now before the public, let the impartial 

 judge as they please." 



It is not surprising that the political works of so able a writer 

 should have attracted more public notice than his ministrations in the 

 church, or even his published sermons and religious treatises ; but it 

 would be doing gross injustice to his memory not to mention with 

 praise the zeal and learning displayed by him in the cause of religion. 

 In none of his political writings did he show more ability than in his 

 ' Apology for the present Church of England,' and his 'Lettirs to Dr. 

 Kippis.' In these he maintained the right and duty of the church to 

 regulate the behaviour of >its own members in such things as relate to 

 the ends of its own institution ; and thus he supported the practice of 

 enforcing subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles on the part of the 

 clergy. But at the same time he claimed the fullest indulgence for 

 dissenters, and showed the mistaken policy of penal laws against 

 ecclesiastical nonconformity. He published another valuable tract 

 upon the same subject in 1774, entitled ' Religious Intolerance no 

 Part of the General Plan either of the Mosaic or Christian Dispensa- 

 tion.' At about the same time he published ' Seventeen Sermons on 

 some of the most important Points of Natural and Revealed Religion.' 

 He proposed also to revise the Book of Common Prayer, to retrench 

 its redundancies and repetitions, and to reduce its length ; but he 

 does not appear to have proceeded with this design. 



As a political writer Dr. Tucker proved himself a man of uncommon 

 sagacity, judgment, and foresight, with a mind little tainted by pre- 

 judice, and very far in advance of his age. As a divine he would 

 unquestionably have enjoyed a higher reputation, if his religious 

 writings had not been eclipsed by the greater celebrity and interest of 

 his political works. His style is clear, simple, and forcible ; and his 

 mode of treating a question rather popular than scientific. His 

 principles and maxims, indeed, are always expressed in a concise and 

 logical form, and the arrangement of his subject is methodical ; but 

 the freedom of his style and the familiarity of his illustrations impress 

 his writings with a character essentially popular. 



His numerous publications have never been collected, and are now 

 extremely scarce. Many of them passed through several editions, and 

 attracted a large share of public interest, both in this country and on 

 the Continent. Their celebrity would most probably have continued 

 until this day with greater lustre, had not Adam Smith since raised a 

 beacon to political economists in his 'Wealth of Nations,' by which all 

 direct their course, and beyond which none care to explore. 

 In private life Dr. Tucker was an amiable and pioua man. In hia 



own parish he was deservedly loved and respected. Hia income was 

 never large, but his wants were few, and he dispensed his charities with 

 a liberal hand. An anecdote is related of him which reflects great 

 credit upon his heart. His curate at St. Stephen's, Bristol, was much 

 esteemed by Dr. Tucker, and had a large family to support with very 

 limited means. The dean conceived the project of resigning the 

 rectory in his favour, and after much solicitatiou and interest, he per- 

 suaded the chancellor, in whose gift it was, to accept his resignation, 

 and bestow the living upon his friend. He then resided almost 

 entirely at the deanery in Gloucester. Late in life he married Mrs. 

 Crowe, his housekeeper. He died on the 4th of November 1799, at 

 the advanced age of eighty-eight, and was interred in the south tran- 

 sept of the cathedral at Gloucester. (Gentleman's Magazine, 1799, 

 vol. Ixix.; Seward, Anecdotes; Tucker's various tracts and treatises.) 



TUDELA, BENJAMIN OF. [BENJAMIN OF TUDELA.] 



TUDOR. [HENRY VII.] 



TUDWAY, THOMAS, Doctor in Music, a name well known iu 

 musical history, but more on account of his connection with the lord 

 high treasurer Harley and of his conversational talents, than for any 

 productions of his pen that have survived him. He was educated in 

 the King's Chapel, under Dr. Blow, and was a fellow-pupil of Purcell. 

 In 1671 he became organist of King's College, Cambridge, and in 1705 

 was honoured by a Doctor's degree in that university, and also 

 appointed the professor of music, after which Queen Anne named 

 him as her organist and composer extraordinary. He was now much 

 patronised by the Oxford family; and the valuable scores of English 

 church music, in many volumes, in the British Museum, were collected 

 by him for Lord Oxford, and form part of the Harleian collection, 

 No. 7337, et seq. There is a tradition that, with Prior, Sir James 

 Thornhill, and other eminent persons, "he formed a weekly society at 

 the house of the lord high treasurer. Thornhill drew all their par- 

 traits in pencil, and Prior wrote humorous verses under each. These 

 passed into the possession of Mr. West, formerly president of the 

 Royal Society." A portrait of Dr. Tudway is in the music-school at 

 Oxford. Ho composed anthems and a few other works ; but except 

 one of the former, published in Dr. Arnold's ' Collection of Cathedral 

 Music,' we have not met with any one of his productions. 



TULL, JETHRO, was born about the year 1680. A gentleman of 

 moderate fortune, he zealou&ly devoted a great part of his life 

 to the improvement of agriculture. He possessed a small estate 

 near Hungerford, on the borders of Oxfordshire and Berkshire, 

 and has generally been considered as the father of the drill and horse- 

 hoeing husbandry. Having observed the good effects of the cultiva- 

 tion of many plants in regular rows, and of frequently stirring the 

 intervals between them, as has been done from time immemorial by 

 gardeners, he attempted to introduce this system into the field, and 

 invented many ingenious implements for diminishing the labour of 

 hand-drilling and hoeing. The success which attended his first expe- 

 riments, on a good deep loam, confirmed his expectations, and led 

 him to a theory, which was the cause of his own ultimate ruin, and 

 threw discredit on the whole system, which in other respects was 

 founded on sound principles. Observing that, by means of assiduous 

 cultivation and stirring of the soil around the roots of growing plants, 

 he produced a greater luxuriance of growth than by the common 

 methods, without any addition of manure for several years, he con- 

 cluded rashly that the earths very finely divided, together with 

 moisture, constituted the whole of the food of plants, and that, con- 

 sequently, stirring and pulverising the soil was a complete substitute 

 for manuring. Having fully established this erroneous principle in 

 his own mind, he exerted all his ingenuity to effect the most complete 

 pulverisation of the soil. In the first place all the seeds were to ba 

 sown in rows at such a distance that a plough or other stirring-instru- 

 ment drawn by a horse might conveniently be used in the intervals. 

 From this circumstance his system was called the horse-hoeing 

 husbandry. The immense advantage which would arise from the 

 cultivation of waste lands in distant parts of the kingdom, if the 

 increased labour of men and horses were a perfect substitute for 

 manure, where it could not well be procured, made many clever men 

 look upon Tull's system as a most wonderful discovery; and the first 

 f rials appeared to be so successful, that the 'new husbandry,' as it was 

 called, was strongly recommended for general adoption. 



The great reluctance with which any new system is adopted by the 

 mass of practical farmers prevented the new husbandry from becoming 

 universal ; and only some men of a theoretical turn fully adopted the 

 notions of Jethro Tull. All those who persevered in the practice of 

 it, neglecting to recruit their lands by a judicious addition of manure, 

 found to their cost that, however good crops they might have for a 

 time, by continually stirring and pulverising the soil, it became 

 totally exhausted at last, so as to produce a barrenness, which required 

 a long course of expensive manuring to remove, and was the cause of 

 serious ultimate loss. Tull himself, who adhered to his principles to 

 the last, like most original inventors, and expended large sums in 

 experiments, and in the construction of a variety of new and inge- 

 nious implements, became so embarrassed that he lost all his property, 

 and, it is said, died in prison, where he had been put by some merci- 

 less creditor. (' British Husbandry,' ' Farmer's Series of the Library 

 of Useful Knowledge,' published by the Society for the Diffusion of 

 Useful Knowledge.) He died in January 1740. 



