SECTION I The Payment of Tithes in Kind. Of all the obftacles to the improvement of agriculture in England, there is none that excites fuch univerfal difguft, that is confidered fo great a grievance, or that is productive of for many evil confequences either in a political or a religious view, as the payment of tithes in kind. This oppreffive and ruinous fyftem has, as will be found in the fequel, been long abolished in Scotland; and which, added to two or three other falutary regulations that were long fince established in that kingdom regarding landed property, and which will be afterwards taken notice of, has tended to excite that fuperior fpirit for undertaking agricultural improvements, which is fo evident beyond what is obfervable among the proprietors and farmers in England. The tithe (in Scotland teind) may be defined that proportion of our rents and goods which is due to the clergy for performing divine service, and exercising the other functions proper to their feveral offices. We are taught by natural as well as revealed religion, that a part of our fubftance is due for the fupport and maintenance of of the worship of God, and that those who serve at the altar ought to live by the altar; but whether a fpecial proportion of a tenth of our year. ly revenue is due to the clergy by divine and unalterable right, is a point that has been agitated with great heat *. It is well known, that under the Jewish government tithes were directed to be paid by divine appointment. "Under the Mofaic difpenfation (fays Bishop Butler), God himself affigned to the priests and Levites tithes and other poffeffions, and in these poffeffions they had a divine right; a property quite fuperior to all human laws, ecclefiaftical as well as civil. But every donation to the Chriftian church is a human donation, and no more; and therefore cannot give a divine right, but such a right only as must be subject, in common with all other property, to the regulation of human laws." Whether the claim to tithes on the principle of divine right remains ftill established in the Roman Catholic countries, the writer does not know; but this fort of claim to tithes has long fince ceased in this country. The conduct of Henry VIII. of England and of Charles I. of Scotland furnish indubitable proofs of their holding a different opinion; as these kings, on the abolition of Popery, in place of transferring P 2 * See Erfkine's Inftitutes of the Law of Scotland, the the tithes from the Roman Catholic clergy to their fucceffors in office, affumed the right of granting the greatest part of them to the nobili ty and great laymen of the time, and in Scot land, in particular, with the burden only of rea sonable stipends to the Proteftant clergy, The grants of tithes made by these kings and their fucceffors having been either directly or indirectly ratified by parliament, are now to all intents and purposes the property of the fucceffors of thefe original grantees. Tithes appear to have been common in all ages. The first Chriftian emperor Conftantine the Great was very liberal to the church; and, in the year 321, published an edit, granting his fubjects full liberty to bequeath any extent of property they chose to the clergy *. This, however, in place of proving that a tenth of the produce was payable to the clergy in the early ages of Christianity, proves the direct contrary; -that the clergy, in place of having any legal right to tithes, were fupported by charitable or gratuitous donations, and not by affeffments made either under divine or human laws. Montefquieu, in his Spirit of Laws, takes notice of the period when the payment of tithes was legally established. He fays, "No one questions *Gibbon's Hiftory of the Decline and Fall of the Ro man Empire, queftions but the clergy opened the Bible before Charlemagne's time, and preached the gifts and offerings of the Leviticus. But, I dare fay, before that prince's reign, though the tithes might have been preached up, they were never established." Gibbon, in his Hiftory of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, not only mentions the period when the payment of tithes was established by law, but also affigns the reafon in the following words: "The fynod of Frankfort, held under Charlemagne in the year 794, furnished a cogent motive to pay the tithes. A capitulary (ftatute) was made in that fynod; wherein it is faid, that in the last famine the ears of corn were found to contain no feed, the infernal fpirits having devoured it all; and that those spirits had been heard to reproach the people with not having paid tithes : in confequence of which it was ordained, that all those who were feifed of church-lands fhould pay the tithes; and the next confequence was, the obligation extended to all." Having thus ftated shortly the origin of tithes, let us next inquire to what ufes they were applied after the clergy acquired a legal right to demand them, and how far the clergy of the prefent day follow out in practice that principle upon which they were criginally made payable. But, previously to this inquiry, it may not be |