was the best part of it. So much with respect to an amendment, which, if carried, must be greatly extended, for it must go not only to the four counties named, but to the whole province of Munster, part of Leinster, and part of Connaught; so much for an amendment, which, if pressed and insisted in, I shall vote for; though I see no reason for a division among gentlemen on the subject, or pressing it any further. But though the amendment should be given up, I shall vote for the clause without it. I think the times require something of this kind. The debate to-night has shown it, and the state of the country calls for it. Better, perhaps, restrain the extent of a measure of coercion; but, at all events, a measure of coercion is necessary.

The question was then put on the amendment of Mr. O'Neill, and the committee divided; - Ayes 43, Noes 176; Majority against the amendment 33.

TITHES.

MR. GRATTAN PROPOSES HIS RESOLUTION RESPECTING TITHES.

March 13. 1787.

MR R. GRATTAN had given notice, on a preceding day, that he intended to propose to the House a question regarding tithes; and on this day he brought forward his promised motion, and spoke nearly as follows:

Sir, In this session, we have, on the subject of tumults made some progress, though we have not made much. It has been admitted, that such a thing does exist, among the lower orders of people, as distress; we have condemned their violence, we have made provision for its punishment, but we have admitted also, that the peasantry are ground to the earth; we have admitted the fact of distress.

We have gone farther, we have acknowledged that this distress should make some part of our Parliamentary enquiry,

we have thought proper, indeed, to postpone the day, but we are agreed, notwithstanding, in two things, the existence of a present distress, and the necessity of a future remedy.

A multitude of particulars would be tedious, but there are some features so very striking and prominent, we cannot avoid the sight of them. Our present system of supporting the

clergy is liable to radical objections; in the south, it goes against the first principle of human existence; in the south, you tithe potatoes; would any man believe it? the peasant pays, I am informed, often 77. an acre for land, gets 6d. aday for his labour, and pays from eight to twelve shillings for his tithe; if the whole case was comprised in this fact, this fact is sufficient to call for your interference; it attacks cultivation in its cradle, and tithes the lowest, the most general, and the most compassionate subsistence of human life; the more severely felt is this, because it is chiefly confined to the south, one of the great regions of poverty; in Connaught potatoes do not pay tithe, in the north a moderate modus takes place when they do pay, but in the south they do pay a great tithe, and in the south you have perpetual disturbances. That the tithe of potatoes is not the only distress I am not now to be informed; 6. or 77. an acre for land, and 6d. a-day for labour, are also causes of misery; but the addition of eight, ten, or twelve shillings tithe, to the two other causes, is, and must be, a very great aggravation of that misery; and as you cannot well interfere in regulating the rent of land or price of labour, I do not see that you therefore should not interfere where you can regulate and relieve; I do not see why you should suffer a most heavy tithe to be added to the high price of rent and the low price of labour; neither am I sensible of the force of that supposition, which conceives a diminution of the tithe of potatoes would be only an augmentation of the rent, for I do not find that rent is higher in counties where potatoes are not tithed, nor can I see how an existing lease can be cancelled and the rent increased by the diminishing or taking off the tithe; neither do I see that similitude between tithe and rent which should justify the comparison; rent is payment for land, tithe is payment for capital and labour expended on land; the proportion of rent diminishes with the proportion of the produce, that is, of the industry; the proportion of tithe increases with the industry; rent, therefore, even a high rent, may be a compulsion on labour, and tithe a penalty: the cottier does pay tithe, and the grazier does not; the rich grazier, with a very beneficial lease, and without any system of husbandry, is exempted, and throws the parson on labour and poverty, the plough and the poor do not bear a proportion of the maintenance of the clergy, but are loaded with the whole weight; thus you tax industry and prohibit improvement, while you encourage idleness and grazing, which waste the land. As this is against the first principle of husbandry, so another regulation is against the first principle of manufacture; you tithe flax, rape, and hemp,

the rudiments of manufacture. Hence, in the north, you have no flax farmer, though there are many who cultivate flax; you give a premium for the growth of flax, a premium for the land-carriage and export of corn, and you give the parson the tithe of the land, labour, and cultivation occupied therein contrary to the prosperity of either; as far as you have settled you are wrong, and wrong where you have left unsettled. What is the tithe, is one question; what is titheable is another. Claims have been made to the tithe of turf, the tithe of roots, moduses have been disputed, litigation has been added to oppression, the business has been ever shamefully neglected by Parliament, and has been left to be regulated, more or less, by the dexterity of the tithe-proctor and the violence of the parish, so that distress has not been confined to the people, it has extended to the parson; your system is not only against the first principle of human existence; against the first principle of good husbandry; against the first principle of manufacture; against the principle of public quiet; it goes also against the security and dignity of the clergy. Their case has been reduced to two propositions, that they are not supported by the real tithe or the tenths, and that they are supported by a degrading annual contract; the real tithe or tenth is, therefore, unnecessary for their support, for they have done without it, and the annual contract is improper by their own admission, and the interference of Parliament proper therefore. Certainly the annual contract is below the dignity of a clergyman.

The minds of the clergy in general are too honourable for such an employment; accordingly, advantage is taken by the illiberal; he is to make a bargain with the 'squire, the farmer, and the peasant, on a subject which they do, and he does not understand; the more his humanity and his erudition, the less his income; it is a situation where the parson's property falls with his virtues, and rises with his bad qualities. Just so the parishioner; he loses by being ingenuous, and he saves by dishonesty. The pastor of the people is made a spy on the husbandman; he is reduced to become the annual teazing contractor and litigant with a flock among whom he is to extend religion by his personal popularity; an agent becomes necessary for him, it relieves him in this situation, and this agent or proctor involves him in new odium and new disputes; the 'squire not seldom defrauds him, and he is obliged to submit in repose and protection, and to reprize on the cottier, so that it often happens that the clergyman shall not receive the thirtieth, and the peasant shall pay more than the tenth; the natural result this of a system which makes the parson de

pendent on the rich for his repose, and on the poor for his subsistence; lenity to the rich and severity to the poor, his preaching must be peace, while his practice must be strife and this not from any fault in him, but in the law. I am sure the spirit of many clergymen, and the justice of many country gentlemen, resist such an evil in many cases; but the evil is laid in the law, which it is our duty and interest to regulate. From a situation so ungracious, from the disgrace and loss of making in his own person a little bargain with 'squires, farmers and peasants, of each and every description, and from non-residence, the parson is obliged to take refuge in the assistance of a character, by name a tithe-farmer, and by profession an extortioner; this extortioner becomes a part of the establishment of the church; by interest and situation there are two descriptions of men he is sure to defraud, the one is the parson and the other the people; he collects sometimes at 50 per cent. he gives the clergymen less than he ought to receive, and takes from the peasants more than they should pay; he is not an agent who is to collect a certain rent, he is an adventurer, who gives a certain rate for the privilege of making a bad use of an unsettled claim; this claim over the powers of collection, and what is teazing or provoking in the law, are in his hand an instrument not of justice but of usury; he sometimes sets the tithe to a second tithe-farmer, so that the land becomes a prey to a subordination of vultures.

In arbitrary countries the revenue is collected by men who farm it, and it is a mode of oppression the most severe in the most arbitrary country; the farming the revenue is given to the Jews; we introduce this practice in the collection of tithe, and the tithe-farmer frequently calls in aid of Christianity the arts of the synagogue; obnoxious on account of all this, the unoffending clergyman, thrown off the rich upon the poor, cheated most exceedingly by his tithe-farmer, and afterwards involved in his odium, becomes an object of outrage; his property and person are both attacked, and in both the religion and laws of your country, scandalized and disgraced. The same cause which produces a violent attack on the clergyman among the lowest order of the community, produces among some of the higher orders a langour and neutrality in defending him. Thus outraged and forsaken he comes to Parliament; we abhor the barbarity, we punish the tumult, we acknowledge the injury, but we are afraid of administering any radical or effectual relief, because we are afraid of the claims of the church; they claim the tenth of whatever by capital, industry, or premium, is produced

from land. One thousand men claim this; and they claim this without any stipulation for the support of the poor, the repair of the church, or even the residence of the preacher. Alarmed at the extent of such a claim, we conceive that the difficulty of collection, is our security, and fear to give powers which may be necessary for the collection of customary tithes lest the clergy should use those powers for the enforcing of a long catalogue of dangerous pretensions. We have reason for this apprehension; the last clause in the riot act has prompted a clergyman in the south to demand the tithe of agistment, and to attempt to renew a confusion which your act intended to compose. The present state of the clergyman is, that he cannot collect his customary tithe without the interference of Parliament, and Parliament cannot interfere without making a general regulation, lest any assistance now given, should be applied to the enforcement of dormant claims, ambitious and unlimited.

Thus I submit to this House the situation of the clergy as well as of the people; call on you to take up at large the subject of the tithe. You have two grounds for such an investigation; the distress of the clergy, and the distress of the people.

Against your interference three arguments are objected, two of which are fictitious, and one only is sincere. The sincere, but erroneous objection, is, that we ought not to affect in any degree the rights of the church; to which I answer briefly, that if, by the rights of the church, the customary tithes only are intended, we ought to interfere to give and secure the full profit of them; and if, by the rights of the church are meant those dormant claims I alluded to, we ought to interfere to prevent their operation.

Of the two arguments, that one on petitions relies on the impossibility of making any commutation; but this argument rather fears the change than the difficulty. This argument is surely erroneous, in supposing that the whole wit of man, in Parliament assembled, cannot, with all its ingenuity, find a method of providing for 900 persons. We who provide for so large a civil list, military list, pension list, revenue list, cannot provide for the church. What! is the discovery of the present income of the church an impenetrable inystery? Or is it an impossibility to give the same income but arising from a different regulation, fixing some standard in the price of grain; or if commutation be out of the power of human capacity, is this establishment of a modus impossible, different, perhaps, in the different countries, but practicable in all? or if not practicable, how comes it that there should be a modus