PEOTECTION AND TITHES 171 



landlords ; but while the Church is weakened, no portion 

 of the sum has hitherto been set aside to meet the cry- 

 that there are other national purposes besides those of 

 religion. Is this fatal course to be again pursued at the 

 present crisis ? Is it at all likely that a handful of the 

 community can repeat their financial triumphs at the 

 Reformation and in 1836, in opposition not only to the 

 life interests of the clergy but the reversionary interests 

 of the nation ? If landlords or farmers agitate against 

 tithe in the hope that it will be reduced, they will be 

 inevitably disappointed. They are in fact only the stalk- 

 ing-horses of those who desire to appropriate the funds 

 to secular objects. 



Some change in the charge is doubtless imminent. 

 The first proposal leaves the incidence where it now rests, 

 but alters the calculation. Thus the septennial averages 

 give the tithe-owner for every lOOL of tithe rent-charge 

 87Z. 8s. lOd.; the prices of the year 1886 would have 

 given him only 75Z. Is. b^d. If the charge were computed 

 in 1888 according to the preceding six years, and that for 

 1889 according to a quinquennial average, the charge of 

 1893, if the length of the averages were thus annually 

 reduced, would be the prices of 1892. But there is no 

 reason to suppose that so slight a change would reconcile 

 tenants to the continuance of their liability ; and if the 

 concession is only the first of a series, there is absolutely 

 no ground for thus mulcting the clergy. 



A second proposal changes the incidence and does not 

 alter the calculation. It makes tithe rent-charge altogether 

 a landlord's outgoing, and insists that all land shall be rented 

 tithe free. But the proposed change hardly pretends to 

 be final ; the spiritual interests of the nation will still be 

 prejudiced, though the clergyman becomes the tithe proc- 



