THE BARREN LANDS ACT 343 



No variety in forms of payment could entirely remove the reason- 

 able objection to a tithe of produce in kind. So long as farming 

 remained stagnant the grievance was imperceptible. It became 

 acute when progressive methods of agriculture were generally 

 adopted. Here and there tithe-owners recognised the altered con- 

 ditions by allowing deductions from their tithes to meet the cost of 

 all purchased manures. But the practice was by no means general. 

 The fair adjustment of compositions was in other ways extremely 

 difficult. Tithable crops were of greater value to farmers, who 

 could collect and market them at a small additional expense, than 

 they were to tithe-owners, whose necessary outlay diminished their 

 net profits by a half. The difference allowed a large margin for 

 dispute. Even when compositions were reasonable, they tithed 

 the increased produce of improved husbandry. Land, highly 

 cultivated, might be valued at 3s. 6d. an acre; soil of the same natural 

 quality, under slovenly management, might escape with Is. 6d. In 

 the case of wastes, the objection to tithes on produce was strongly 

 felt as an obstacle to improvement. When land, which at the best 

 had afforded only rough pasture, was reduced to cultivation, owners 

 and occupiers risked labour and money on a venture which might 

 succeed or fail. In either event tithe-owners were safe ; they 

 profited by the success, and lost nothing by the failure. The legis- 

 lature had endeavoured to meet the case. Under the Barren Lands 

 Act, 1 barren heaths and waste grounds were exempted from tithes 

 for seven years after they had been reduced for the first time to 

 cultivation. But the decisions of the law courts deprived improvers 

 of the benefits which they expected from the Act. Only land which 

 was so barren that it paid no tithe by reason of its barrenness was 

 held to be exempt. The initial cost of draining fen-lands, or grub- 

 bing and stubbing wood-lands, or of paring and burning moors and 

 heaths was not to be taken into consideration. Whatever the cost 

 at which the land had been fitted for cultivation, the only question 

 to be asked was whether, when ploughed and sown, it was so naturally 

 fertile as to produce a crop, or so naturally barren that it would yield 

 nothing without an extraordinary expenditure on liming, chalking, 

 marling, dunging, or manuring. Only in the latter case could the 

 seven years' exemption be legally claimed. 



The law of tithes needed complete revision. Its inadequacy to 

 meet changed conditions had long been felt. The necessity for a 

 1 2 and 3 Ed. VI. c. 13. 



