CH. IX.] TAXES AND TITHES. 115 



alone to furnish, in the eleventh and twelfth cen- 

 turies, founders of religious orders for France and 

 Germany. 



The Cistercian and Benedictine orders, and 

 that of St. Bernard, had many more establish- 

 ments in England and in Ireland than in the rest 

 of Europe ; and it was these orders that founded 

 successively all the livings in places where a cer- 

 tain number of cottages were clustered together. 



The inhabitants helped to support these esta- 

 blishments, by paying a tithe of their harvests ; and 

 they experienced in fact a great advantage, as the 

 Order which founded the living, erected a church 

 and a parsonage, and gave them a pastor, who 

 spared them long journeys to perform their religi- 

 ous duties, who instructed their children in reli- 

 gion, who was the physician in times of sickness, 

 arbiter in their disputes, and who, above all, being 

 in correspondence with those orders who were the 

 most skilful agriculturists in Europe, instructed 

 them in the art of agriculture, till then unknown. 

 At that period were imported into England, as well 

 as Ireland, cattle, trees and plants which had 

 never before been known in those countries. The 

 fact deserves attention, that this tithe formed a 

 kind of link between the ignorant and the 

 learned, the poor and the rich, and that the 

 richest countries were those in which there were 



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