fi.30 



TITHES. 



After the church had enjoyed tithes without dis- 

 turbance for two or three centuries, the laity, in 

 the eighth century, obtained possession of part of 

 the tithes, and appropriated them to their own uses. 

 Some time afterward* they restored them, or ap- 

 plied them to the founding of monasteries or chap- 

 In 1179, the third council of Lateran com- 

 manded tin 1 laymen to restore to the church all the 

 tithes which they yet held. Upon the first intro- 

 duction of tithes, though every man was obliged 

 to pay tithes in general, yet he might give them to 

 what priests he pleased, which were called arbitrary 

 consecrations of tithes ; or he might pay them into 

 the hands of the bishop, who distributed among 

 his diocesan clergy the revenues of the church, 

 which were then in common. But when dioceses 

 were divided into parishes, the tithes of each parish 

 were allotted to its own particular minister ; first 

 by common consent, or the appointments of lords 

 of the manors, and afterwards by the written law 

 of the land. However, arbitrary consecrations of 

 tithes took place again afterwards, and became com- 

 mon in England till the time of king John. This 

 was probably owing to the intrigues of the regular 

 clergy, or monks of the Benedictine and other rules, 

 and will account for the number and riches of the 

 monasteries and religious houses which were founded 

 in those days, and which were frequently endowed 

 with tithes. But, in process of years, the income 

 of the laborious parish-priests being scandalously 

 reduced by these arbitrary consecrations of tithes, 

 it was remedied in England by pope Innocent III., 

 r/bout the year 1200, in a decretal epistle, sent to 

 the archbishop of Canterbury, which enjoined the 

 payment of tithes to the parsons of the respective 

 parishes, where every man dwelt, agreeably to what 

 was afterwards directed by the same pope in other 

 countries. This put an effectual stop to all the 

 arbitrary consecrations of tithes, except some 

 traces which still continue in those portions of 

 tithes, which the parson of one parish has, though 

 rarely, a right to claim in another ; for it is now 

 universally held that tithes are due, of common 

 right, to the parson of the parish, unless there be 

 a special exemption. This parson of the parish 

 may be either the actual incumbent, or else the ap- 

 propriator of the benefice ; appropriations being a 

 method of endowing monasteries, which seems to 

 have been devised by the regular clergy, by way of 

 substitution to arbitrary consecrations of tithes. 

 See the article Impropriations. 



Adam Smith observes (Nature and Causes of 

 the Wealth of Nations, vol. iii.), that tithes, as 

 well as other similar taxes on the produce of the 

 land, are, in reality, taxes upon the rent, and, under 

 the appearance of equality, are very unequal taxes; 

 a certain portion of the produce being, in different 

 situations, equivalent to a very different portion of 

 the rent. In some very rich lands, the produce is 

 so great, that the one half of it is fully sufficient 

 to replace to the farmer his capital employed in 

 cultivation, together with the ordinary profits of 

 farming-stock in the neighbourhood. The other 

 half, or, what comes to the same thing, the value 

 of the other half, he could afford to pay as rent to 

 the landlord, if there was no tithe. But, if a 

 tenth of the produce is taken from him in the way 

 of tithe, he must require an abatement of the fifth 

 part of -his rent, otherwise he cannot get back his 

 capital with the ordinary profit. In this case, the 

 rent of the landlord, instead of amounting to a 

 half, or five tenths, of the whole produce, will 



amount only to four tenths of it. In poorer lands 

 on the contrary, the produce is sometimes so small, 

 and the expense of cultivation so great, that it re- 

 quires four fifths of the whole produce to replace. 

 to the farmer his capital, with the ordinary profit. 

 In this case, though there was no tithe, the rent of 

 the landlord could amount to no more than one 

 fifth, or two tenths, of the whole produce. But if 

 the farmer pays one tenth of the produce in the 

 way of tithe, he must require an equal abatement 

 of the rent of the landlord, which will thus be re- 

 duced to one tenth only of the whole produce. 

 I j>oii the rent of rich lands, the tithe may some- 

 times be a tax of no more than one fifth part, or 

 four shillings in the pound; whereas, upon that of 

 poorer lands, it may sometimes be a tax of one 

 half, or of ten shillings in the pound. It is a 

 great discouragement to the improvement of land, 

 that a tenth part of the clear produce, without any 

 deducement for the advanced expense of raising 

 that produce, should be alienated from the cultiva- 

 tor of the land to any other person whatever. The 

 improvements of the landlord and the cultivation 

 of the farmer are both checked by this unequal tax 

 upon the rent. The one cannot venture to make 

 the most important, which are generally the most 

 expensive improvements, nor the other to raise the 

 most valuable, which are generally the most ex- 

 pensive crops, when the church, which contributes 

 no part of the expense, is to share so very largely 

 in ihe profit. When, instead either of a certain 

 portion of the produce of land, or of the price of 

 a certain portion, a certain sum of money is to be 

 paid in full compensation for all tax or tithe, the 

 tax becomes, in this case, exactly of the same na- 

 ture with the land tax of England. It neither rises 

 nor falls with the rent of the land. It neither en- 

 courages nor discourages improvement. The tithe, 

 in the greater part of those parishes which pay 

 what is called a modus, in lieu of all other tithes, 

 is a tax of this kind. It is well known, and has 

 often been lamented, even by the clergy themselves, 

 that this method of raising a revenue for their sub- 

 sistence, is a continual source of dispute between 

 the clergy and their parishioners, and contributes 

 to obstruct the usefulness of their ministry. In 

 Holland, and some other Protestant countries, the 

 civil magistrates have adopted what some would 

 have thought a better plan, by allowing their minis- 

 ters a fixed stipend, paid out of the public funds. 



The custom of paying tithes, or of offering a 

 tenth of what a man enjoys, has not only been prac- 

 tised under the old and the new law, but we also 

 find something like it among the heathens. Xeno- 

 phon, in the fifth book of the expedition of Cyrus, 

 gives us an inscription upon a column, near the 

 temple of Diana, by which the people were warned 

 to offer the tenth part of their revenues every year 

 to that goddess. The Babylonians and Egyptians 

 gave their kings a tenth of their revenues. (See 

 Aristotle, in his (Economics, lib. ii., Diodorus Si- 

 culus, lib. v., and Strabo, lib. xv.) Afterwards 

 the Romans exacted of the Sicilians a tenth of the 

 corn they reaped ; and Appian tells us, that those 

 who broke up, or tilled, any new grounds, were 

 obliged to carry a tenth of their produce to the 

 treasury. The Romans offered a tenth of all they 

 took from their enemies to the gods; whence the 

 name of Jupiter Prcedator : the Gauls, in like man- 

 ner, gave a tenth to their god Mars, as we learn in 

 the Commentaries of Caesar. Authors have been 

 perplexed to find the origin of a custom established 



