452 History of the English Landed Interest. 



by means of extraneous manures, the loss lie had incurred by 

 the abstraction of the home suppl3^" 



Popular though the agitation against the tithe system had 

 grown by the beginning of the nineteenth century, very few 

 advocated so unjust a remedy as the entire abolition of the 

 charge. Even those who saw that in many instances the 

 tithes had become ahenated from those particular purposes to 

 which they had been originally dedicated, also recognised that 

 the very alienations had been confirmed and rendered subject 

 to the rights of property b}^ subsequent legislation, and that 

 therefore in law, justice and equity, both clergy and la}''- 

 impropriators were entitled to an equivalent in the event of 

 their abolition. Many remedies were suggested, but not even 

 that finally adopted met the just exigencies of the case as 

 altered by the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1848. A free trade 

 in grain upset the entire economy of the market for cereals, 

 and a short inquiry will enable us to see that it would have 

 been better for both paj'er and payee had a tenth of the land 

 been substituted in 1836 for a tenth of the value of its pro- 

 duce. The recipient of tithes was as much damaged by the 

 decrease in the value of grain, consequent on the repeal of 

 the Corn Laws, as the payer. The former ceded advantages 

 by his acceptance of the Tithe Commutation Act, without in 

 the least expecting that the basis of settlement was about to 

 be, from his point of view, seriously damaged little more than 

 ten years later. The latter, by leaving himself liable to a 

 money loss, equivalent in value to one-tenth of his produce, 

 entered on the struggle with the foreign wheat competitor 

 under unfair and, as it has since been proved, impossible con- 

 ditions. We have frequently advocated in these pages a State 

 policy which leaves .the Landed Interest entirely free from 

 artificial restrictions ; but as long as the soil of Great Britain 

 is chargeable with tithe and poor rates, its cultivators are 

 unfairly handicapped in their competition with the foreign 

 producer. The idea, however, of substituting a portion of the 

 land itself for a portion of its produce was not absent from the 

 statesman's mind at the time of the Commutation Act; but 

 the fear of widening the sphere of that pernicious economy 



