170 PEOTECTION AND TITHES 



of a fund vested in the clergy to promote the spirit aal 

 interests of the nation, and are, as the law now stands, 

 inalienable, so long as religion is recognised to be a vital 

 element in the national welfare. But subject to this 

 life-interest of the Church, the nation claims the revenue 

 in reversion. It is the duty of the State to preserve intact 

 the corpus of the property. Upon this point Church and 

 State are united ; the present interests of the first, the 

 prospectively possible interests of the second are identical. 

 Sections of the community desire to divert the fund to 

 secular purposes ; but though those who seek to secularise 

 the charge are actuated by antagonistic motives, they are 

 agreed that the fund shall not be reduced. 



Doubtless the landed interests might benefit by the 

 appropriation of tithes to the relief of local taxation. But 

 so far as landlords and tenants have joined in the anti- 

 tithe agitation, they have demanded its reduction, not 

 its secularisation. They therefore ask the very thing 

 which the clergy, the secularists, and the Nonconformists, 

 and indeed the whole body of the nation, are interested 

 in refusing. No class benefit can be obtained except at 

 the expense of the community ; no relief can be extended 

 to landlords without a corresponding diminution of the 

 fund now dedicated to religious purposes, but under cer- 

 tain contingencies, available for education or similar 

 objects. It is the obvious interest both of the Church and 

 the State that whatever profits are derived from dealing 

 with the charge should be secured for national purposes. 

 If the four millions of money alienated from the Church 

 at the Reformation and in 1836 were still available for 

 national objects, the sting would be gone from the pre- 

 sent agitation against tithes. Till now each successive 

 change has impoverished the clergy and enriched the 



