A CHARGE,

&c.

MY REVEREND BRETHREN,

On the occasion of our last meeting, I expressed to you my regret, that the circumstances of the times compelled me to confine my remarks, almost exclusively, to points connected with the external condition and Civil Establishment of the Church. I am again obliged to express the same regret. Measures have, within the last three years, received the sanction of the Legislature, materially affecting, not only the temporal interests of the Clergy, but also the relation in which they have hitherto stood to the community at large. Glad, therefore, as I should be to escape from the discussion of secular points, to matters tending more directly to spiritual edification, I feel it incumbent upon me to call your attention to those measures, and to point out certain consequences likely, in my opinion, to result from them.

B

In the Session of 1836, an Act was passed for the Commutation of Tithe. Provisions for the Commutation of Tithe, either into a corn-rent or for land, had been introduced into most of the numerous Enclosure Acts sanctioned by the Legislature in the course of the last forty years. So far, therefore, the Act of 1836 only gave a general application to a principle which had before been recognized in many particular instances. There is, however, this important distinction between that Act and the Acts under which the Tithes in particular parishes had been commuted. In the latter, the previous consent of the Tithe-owner had always been obtained; whereas, by the Act of 1836, a period of two years is allowed to the Tithe-owner and Tithe-payers in which they may come to a voluntary agreement; but if they permit that period to elapse without coming to such agreement, the commutation is then to be effected without their consent, under the direction of certain Commissioners, invested with power to carry the provisions of the Act into execution. As the measure applies equally to Lay and Ecclesiastical Tithe, the Clergy have no particular ground for complaining of its compulsory character. But it may not be amiss for those, who have been most urgent in their demands for such a measure, to consider, whether the total extinction, from mere con

siderations of expediency, of a species of property which has existed in this country for more than eleven centuries, does not establish a precedent, capable of extensive and mischievous application.

Among the objections urged against Tithes, the advocates for their abolition insisted chiefly on two; one, common both to Lay and Ecclesiastical Tithes, that they operated as a discouragement of agricultural improvements. No sooner, it was said, had the cultivator, by an increased outlay or a more judicious application of capital, augmented the produce of the land, than the Tithe-owner stepped in to "reap where he had not sown," and claimed for himself a tenth part of the fruits of the skill and industry of another. The poorer too the soil, the greater the hardship upon the cultivator; because a greater outlay was necessary to obtain the same amount of produce. The other objection applied exclusively to Tithes in the hands of the Clergy:they placed, it was said, the interests of the Clergy in direct opposition to those of many of the members of their flocks, and thus gave occasion to jealousies and heart burnings, altogether destructive of the mutual harmony and good will which ought to exist between the Minister of Religion and the people committed to his care; and on the existence of which the

efficacy of his labours for their spiritual good must, in a great measure, depend. How, it was asked, could they be expected to listen with profit to his exhortations on the Lord's Day, when, in the course of the preceding week, they had perhaps been engaged in an angry dispute with him about the amount of his temporal dues? If the ingenuity of man had been set to work to invent a plan for lowering the Ministerial character and injuring the cause of religion, a more effectual mode, it was contended, could scarcely have been devised than one which thus rendered the Clergy continually liable to be brought into collision with their Parishioners about their pecuniary interests. These were the two objections to the Tithe system chiefly insisted upon by its opponents. In both instances I believe the magnitude of the evil to have been greatly exaggerated. I believe that, in consequence of the general moderation of the Clergy in claiming their legal rights, the cases in which they have failed in coming to an amicable arrangement with the Tithe-payer, or in which the slightest impediment has been thrown in the way of agricultural improvement, have been very rare. Be this, however, as it may, both grounds of objection have been removed by the Act of 1836. To whatever extent the produce of the land may hereafter be increased by improved modes of cultivation,