I.: Origin and Tenure of Church Property.

A late dignitary of the church, the Rev. Dr. Cove, inclines to the idea that the consecration of a tenth part to the clergy was the consequence of “some unrecorded revelation made to Adam;” which, he says, is not only “a most rational, but the most probable solution” of the origin of tithes. To what parish church Adam paid his tithe, this zealous partizan of the establishment has left unascertained; if Adam paid tithe, he must have paid it to himself, or a very near relation,—a practice which, if tolerated in his descendants, would render them less averse from the impost, though it might be far from advantageous to the church establishment.

The only people who can pretend to place the right to tithe on divine authority are the Jews; but such a right, if it ever existed among them, certainly ceased with their theocracy. The Jews of this day pay no tithes for the support of their rabbis; nor, indeed, have any tithes been paid by this nation since the destruction of the Temple and consequent dispersion of the tribe of Levi.

It is so inconsistent with reason, that it may be almost affirmed to be an unquestionable fact, that there never was a religion, either Jew or Gentile, which could legally claim for its maintenance a tenth part of the yearly produce of land and labour. For the clergy to be entitled to a tenth, they ought to form one-tenth of the population; but there never was a mode of worship which required one-tenth of the people to be teachers and ministers. The tribe of Levi had a tenth, because they formed a tenth of the population, and had no other inheritance; but Aaron and his sons had only a tenth of that tenth; so that the clergy received no more than the hundredth part, the remainder being for other uses, for the rest of the Levites, for the poor, the stranger, the widow, the orphan, and the temple.

Christianity contains less authority for tithe than Judaism. Jesus Christ ordained no such burden; and in no part of his history is any compulsory provision for the maintenance of the clergy mentioned. Both our Saviour and his Apostles unceasingly taught poverty and humility to their followers, and contempt of worldly goods. Hear their exhortations: “Carry neither scrip nor shoes; into whatever house ye enter, say, Peace.” “Take no care of what ye shall eat, nor what ye shall drink, nor for your bodies what ye shall put on.” “Beware of covetousness; seek not what ye shall eat, but seek the kingdom of God.” “Give alms; provide yourselves with bags that wax not old, a treasure in Heaven that faileth not.” Again, “Distribute unto the poor, and seek treasures in Heaven.” And, again, “Take care that your hearts be not charged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and the cares of this life.”

In all this there is no authority for tithing, and the fathers of the Church were equally hostile to this species of extortion. The council of Antioch, in the fourth century, allowed the bishops to distribute the goods of the Church, but to have no part to themselves. “Have food and raiment, be therewith content,” says the canon. It was only as real Christianity declined, that tithing began. When the simple worship of Christ was corrupted by the adoption of Jewish and Pagan ceremonies; when the saints and martyrs were put in the room of the heathen deities; when the altars, the bishops, prebends, and other corruptions were introduced; then tithes commenced, to support the innovations on the primitive faith.

It is impossible to ascertain exactly the period when tithes were first introduced into this country. During the first ages of the Church, its ministers were supported by charity, by oblations, and voluntary gifts. According to Blackstone, the first mention of tithes in any written English law is in a constitutional decree made in a synod held A.D. 786, wherein the payment of tithes is generally enjoined. But this was no law, merely a general recommendation, and did not, at first, bind the laity. They are next mentioned in the Fœdus Edwardi et Guthurni, or treaty agreed upon between King Guthrun, the Dane, and Alfred and his son Edward the elder, successive kings of England, about the year 900. Guthrun being a Pagan, it was thought necessary to provide for the subsistence of the Christian clergy under his dominion; accordingly the payment of tithes was enjoined, and a penalty imposed for its non-observance; which law is countenanced by the laws of Athelstan, and this, according to the Commentator, is all that can be traced out with regard to their legal origin. In fact, this inquiry, like all others into the early constitutional history of the country, is involved in darkness and contradiction. We are not even satisfactorily informed of the origin of the civil divisions of the kingdom into counties, hundreds, and parishes. These have been commonly ascribed to Alfred; but the researches of late writers have traced them to a period of much earlier date.

One thing, however, is certain as regards tithes, namely, that in England, in France, and, probably, in all Christian countries, they were divided into four portions: one for the bishop, one for the poor, one for the repair of the church, and one for the priest. A late writer attempts to controvert the fourfold division of parochial tithes; but the fact rests upon such unquestionable authority, that it may be deemed a truth placed beyond dispute. Without digressing into any learned research, it may be observed that the quadrupartite division of tithes is still retained in many parishes in Ireland; a point which appears to have been overlooked by the reviewer. In the Diocesan Returns to Parliament in 1820, the bishop of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh and the bishop of Kildare remarked that in their dioceses is preserved the old episcopal establishment of the quarta pars; that is, a portion of the parochial tithes out of every parish is payable to the bishop.

The right of the poor to share in the tithe is established by the tenor of ancient statutes made to protect them from the consequences of the appropriation of parishes by spiritual corporations. After these appropriations had been effected, the religious houses were wont to depute one of their own body to perform divine service in those parishes of which the societies had become possessed of the tithes. This officiating minister was in reality no more than the curate or vicar of the appropriators, receiving from them an arbitrary stipend. Under this system the poor suffered so much, that the legislature was obliged to interpose, and, accordingly, the 15 Rich. II. c. 6 provides, that in all appropriations of churches the diocesan shall order a competent sum to be distributed among the poor parishioners annually; and that the vicar shall be sufficiently endowed. “It seems,” says Blackstone, “the parishes were frequently sufferers, not only by the want of divine service, but also by withholding those alms for which, among other purposes, the payment of tithes was originally imposed; and, therefore, in this act, a pension is directed to be distributed among the poor parochians as well as a sufficient stipend to the vicar.”

One or two facts well attested are better than a hundred ingenious deductions and learned conjectures. What we have advanced not only establishes the original fourfold division of parochial tithes, but also the right of the poor to a portion of them. It also incidentally establishes another fact deserving attention, in showing the falsity of those representations made, from time to time, of the charity and hospitality of the abbeys and monasteries. By masses and obits and other sanctimonious pretexts, the monks possessed themselves of a large number of the benefices in the kingdom; instead of applying the revenues of these to the purposes of religion and charity, they perverted them to the enriching of their own fraternities, and a compulsory act of the legislature was necessary to compel them to restore to the poor a portion of their rights, and allow a decent maintenance to the parish priest. The little charity of the religious houses might be inferred from the general principles of human nature without the aid of facts. It is notorious that they had become the abodes of luxury, indolence, and crime. Who would expect from societies so depraved, either charity or hospitality? The rich, the sensual, and vicious, rarely sympathise with indigence. For their own ease, and, as a motive to indifference, they are mostly prompt to calumniate the poor with unjust aspersions, and represent a lively zeal in their welfare, either as undeserved or mistaken benevolence.

The practice of appropriating livings was first introduced by the Normans; and within three hundred years after, the monks had become the proprietors of one-third of all the benefices in the kingdom, and these for the most part the richest. At the dissolution of the religious houses by the 27 and 31 Hen. VIII. these benefices, by the common law, would have been disappropriated, had not a clause been inserted in these statutes to give them to the King in as ample a manner as the abbots, &c. had held the same at the time of their dissolution. Having thus become the proprietor of one-third of the benefices as well as all the plate, revenues and wealth of the abbeys, the manner in which this monarch disposed of the treasure he had acquired accounts for the present state of ecclesiastical property. With a part of it he founded new bishoprics, colleges, and deaneries; large masses of it he gave to courtiers and noblemen; a portion he retained in his own hands, and the remainder applied to the maintenance of the reformed religion. Individuals, corporations, and colleges, who obtained grants from the Crown, obtained, also, all the rights annexed to them; and the present proprietors of the abbey-lands are proprietors of the tithes and benefices formerly attached to these lands. Hence it is so large a portion of the tithes are in the hands of laymen. It is calculated there are 3845 impropriations in England; that is, benefices, in the hands of persons not engaged in the service of religion, but who receive the great tithes, leaving only the vicarial tithes or other minor endowments for the maintenance of the incumbent,

The effect on society of this new disposition of ecclesiastical property has been differently represented by writers. Discontent is inseparable from the reform of every established practice and institution. Those who profit by abuses, and those who are benefited by their removal must view in different lights and hold forth different representations of measures by which they are oppositely affected. With the dissatisfaction of the monastic orders, there can be no surprise; their condition was that of drones forced from the hives in which they had devoured in idleness the fruits of others’ industry; but the dissatisfaction of other classes cannot be so readily explained. Mr. Hallam states that the summary abolition of the religious houses led to the great northern rebellion: it is certain from the popular ballads of the time, this important measure was a subject of regret to the lower orders; and old Harry Jenkins laments that “those days were over in which he used to be invited to the Lord Abbot’s chamber, to feast on a quarter of a yard of roast beef and wassail in a black jack.” Two reasons may be assigned for the existence of this feeling; either it may be ascribed to the cessation of the almsgiving and hospitality of the conventual bodies, or to the general ignorance of the people. The limited extent of the former has been already shown; if the populace could be conciliated by such miserable charity as we have adverted to, their fatuity may be likened to that of the multitude in more recent times, who are often blinded to their just claims by doles of soup or salt fish, or a bonus of 100 guineas out of an enormous civil list. The extreme ignorance of the people was, doubtless, the principal cause of their hostility to the reformation, and disqualified them from duly estimating the advantages likely to ensue from so great a revolution. While the people continue unenlightened, they must always be subject to their superiors, or those who possess influence enough to delude or direct them. The Forty-Shilling freeholders of Ireland were the alternate slaves of aristocratic landlords and fanatic priests, and in the votes they gave at the instigation of each, as well as in the tameness with which they submitted to be disfranchised, they have manifested a like rational view of their ultimate interests. The monks of the time of Henry VIII. were not less omnipotent over the multitude than the priests of Ireland, or those of Spain and Portugal; under the influence of the former the populace sung out whatever note they were directed; and, unquestionably, such views of the tendency of the reformation would be impressed upon them as best accorded with the interests of their spiritual guides.

To this cause we ascribe the popular feeling as regards the dissolution of monastic establishments. The same spirit opposed the opening of turnpike-roads, and the introduction of the cow-pox and machinery. But it is extremely erroneous to maintain that the Reformation was not a great blessing to the country, and tended, most essentially, to better the condition of the working classes. Had popery (such popery we mean as existed at that day) continued the established religion, the present condition of the people would have been no better than that of the degraded rabble who have restored Don Miguel and Don Ferdinand, and whose miseries, in spite of the almsgiving and hospitality of convents, are sufficiently acute to prevent an increase in their numbers. From the general poverty of the Peninsula, and the state of its agriculture, commerce, and population, fettered and oppressed by aristocratic, ecclesiastic, and corporate immunities, we may form an idea of what England would have been without the Reformation. Knowledge was incompatible with the power of the monks, whose influence was founded on the general belief of miracles, the sanctity of relics, and other pious frauds, to which popular illumination would have been fatal. Without, therefore, the excitement produced by their dispersion, and the freedom of discussion with which it was accompanied, the people would have remained intellectually debased; their ignorance was necessary to the ascendancy of those in whose hands they were, and of course they would have been kept in that state, and withheld from the only means by which their condition in society could be ameliorated. If more substantial benefits have not resulted from the Reformation, it may be easily traced to other causes. That great event certainly put the people in possession, by removing the mental incubus of a degrading superstition, of the most powerful instrument, by which they can be obtained.

It is to be regretted that, at the dissolution of the abbeys, the immense revenue at the disposal of the Crown was not appropriated in a manner more advantageous to the community. One of the great evils in our social economy is the unequal division of property—the vast masses in which it is accumulated by entails and rights of primogeniture in the hands of individuals. This evil was aggravated by transferring the endowments of the monks to the aristocracy, and thus was lost a favourable juncture for obtaining better security for the liberties of the people, by a more equal partition of proprietary influence. Instead of wasting the spoils of the church on rapacious courtiers, it might have been appropriated, as in Scotland, to the establishment of a system of parochial education; or, it might have been applied to sustain the dignity of the Crown, or defray the charges of government without burthening the people, or to other undertakings of general and permanent interest. Of the magnitude of the opportunity thrown away, we may form some idea from the almost incredible wealth of the monastic institutions.

Of the annual value of 388 religious houses, we have no estimate; but, computing the value of these in the same proportion, as of the 653 of which we have the returns, the total revenue of the 1041 houses in England and Wales was £273,106:—a prodigious sum in those days, if we consider the relative value of money, and the smallness of the national income. But incredible as this revenue is, it was only the reserved rents of manors and demesnes, without including the tithes of appropriations, fines, heriots, renewals, deodands, &c. which would probably have amounted to twice as much. Upon good authority it is stated the clergy were proprietors of seven-tenths of the whole kingdom; and, out of the three remaining tenths, thus kindly left to king, lords, and commons, were the four numerous orders of mendicants to be maintained, against whom no gate could be shut, to whom no provision could be denied, and from whom no secret could be concealed.

Mr. Cobbett often amuses his readers by exclamations of astonishment, in contemplating the splendid cathedrals of Lincoln, Ely, Canterbury, and Winchester; considering them incontestable evidence of the great wealth and population of the country at the period of their erection. But it would be quite as correct for future generations to refer to Windsor Castle or Buckingham Palace as evidence of the general contentment and prosperity of the kingdom under the government of the Boroughmongers. The fact is, it was not necessary either the population or general wealth of the community should be very great to enable the Catholic priesthood to erect those magnificent, but comparatively useless, structures. Pious souls! they had possessed themselves of nearly the whole land and labour of the community, and would have grasped the remainder, had it not been for the interference of the legislature. Such have been the religious propensities of the English, at all times, that the fervour of their piety has oftener required checking than encouraging by their rulers. It was with this view the Mortmain Act was passed, in the reign of Henry VII. which, by prohibiting the bequest of property to the ecclesiastical bodies, prevented the patrimony of almost every family in the kingdom from being engulphed by the cunning and insatiable monks. Had the vast amount of landed property acquired by spiritual corporations, previously to the passing of this statute, remained tied up in their hands, it must have formed an insuperable obstacle to the development of the productive powers of the country, and under such a system neither the riches nor numbers of the people could have greatly augmented.

The statements of church property before the Reformation would appear exaggerated, had we not illustrative proof in the present state of Ireland and other countries. The mere remnant of the estates of the church, now held by the Irish Protestant Establishment, is calculated at two elevenths of the entire soil of the kingdom. In Tuscany, before the French Revolution had partially regenerated the dukedom, the priesthood was found, from inquiries instituted by the grand duke, to enjoy seventeen parts in twenty of the land. In Spain and Portugal, and in France, the monopoly of the church was nearly as great.

But we shall now leave the subject. We could not treat on the origin of church property in this country, without adverting to the changes effected by the Reformation. We shall next advert to the tenure on which the property of the church devolved, and continues to be holden by our Protestant Establishment.

It seems almost a work of supererogation to set about proving that the property of the established church is public property, the bare terms of the proposition apparently involving the demonstration. What can be understood by an established church, but a church endowed by the state, and, if so endowed, subordinate to the state, and for the benefit thereof? This principle has been recognized in every country in Europe. Wherever church property has been interfered with, (and we know none where it has not been interfered with,) it never appears to have been surmised that the state had not only the power but the right to give a new disposition to ecclesiastical endowments, either by appropriating them to the maintenance of a different religion, or to the necessities of the community. In England this power has been distinctly admitted, as appears from the measures adopted at the Reformation: at that period a commission was appointed to investigate the abuses of the church; a return was made of the value of all monasteries and religious houses, of parochial livings, episcopal and cathedral dignities, and every other species of ecclesiastical revenue, and the whole entered in a book, called Liber Regalis, or the King’s Book. This important document has been recently reprinted by the Commissioners of Public Records; it is the only authentic survey of the revenues of the church; and the result was, as before described, an entire new disposition of ecclesiastical property. No claim appears to have been set up that the property was sacred, and in every succeeding period it has been treated in a similar manner. It has been always considered public property, and the government, for the time being, whether a monarchy under a Tudor, or a commonwealth under Cromwell, has always exercised the right of applying it to secular uses, or to the maintenance of whatever form of faith might be in vogue, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Presbyterian.

Down to our own time the same principle has been constantly acted upon by parliament. In the numerous acts of parliament, passed within the last thirty years, for regulating the sale and exchange of parsonage-houses and glebe-lands, of mortgages in cases of buildings and repairs, church property is invariably treated as public property, the ownership of which is vested in the State. Were it not so, the legislature could have no more right to interfere in the disposal of the property of the church than of the property of private individuals. It could have no right to pass the act for prohibiting the sale of spiritual preferment, by making it penal to present to any benefice for money, gift, or reward. It could have no right to pass the act, by which an incumbent is compelled to pay to his curate the whole, or a proportionate part of the income of his benefice. It could have no right to pass the Church-Building Acts, authorizing the division of parishes, glebes, and tithes; nor the various statutes for regulating the discipline of the clergy, by compelling them to reside on their benefices, or refrain from exercising any trade, or taking any farm of more than eighty acres of land. It is never attempted by such legislative interference, to control the conduct and possessions of laymen. The possessor of an estate can sell it to another in his lifetime, or, after his death, bequeath it to posterity; but the clergy have no such power over their possessions. They have at most only a life-interest; and even of that they may be disinherited at the pleasure of their diocesan. The tenure of their property is similar to that by which any public servant holds the office of Secretary of State, or the Chancellorship of the Exchequer.

The church is now as anxious to disown connexion with the state as it formerly was to claim its alliance and protection. With this view ingenious theories, for they are nothing more, have been put forth to prove that ecclesiastical property has not been derived from any public grant or concession. It has been alleged, for instance, that tithes and other profits of ecclesiastical benefices were not derived from the state, but from the bounty of private individuals, by whom such benefices were founded and endowed. This assumption has been refuted by Mr. Eagle in his admirable Legal Argument on Tithes: he has proved by the most incontestable authorities, that parochial tithes formed no part of the original endowment of benefices; that the dowry of churches at the time of their foundation consisted of house and glebe only, and that tithes were subsequently assigned to incumbents by the state. But were it otherwise, and could it be shewn that the gifts of individuals formed part of the endowments of benefices, still the public nature of the purposes to which they were appropriated has made them the property of the public to the exclusion of all other claimants.

Others again attempt to defend the claims of the clergy, upon the principle that they possess corporate rights, and hence contend that though the existing race of bishops, deans, prebendaries, rectors, and vicars might compromise their interests with the state, they could have no power to enter into any arrangement for the future, by which their successors might be deprived of the reversion of church property.

To this it has been answered, that bodies politic and corporate are civil institutions created by the law, and what the law has power to create it has power to abrogate. Therefore if the legislature, in the exercise of its undoubted right to dissolve by the law that which was created by the law, should think fit to put an end to the corporate capacity of the clergy, their right to the tithes and other profits of their benefices would necessarily cease. For they could not claim as individuals that which they had held and enjoyed in their corporate capacity only. Their possessions would revert to the state, from which they had been derived, to be disposed of in the manner best calculated to promote the welfare of the nation.

But it is useless to contend with mere legal fictions, shadows, and assumptions. The entire argument on church tithes may be comprised in a very small compass, and rests on recent and indubitable authority. The tenure of ecclesiastical property was prescribed by the Statutes of Dissolution at the time of the Reformation. The legislature of that day made a new disposition of the possessions of the church, and reserved to itself, and has constantly exercised the power of altering that disposition in future. Any title or claim of the clergy antecedent to these acts is superseded on the well-known principle that posterior abrogate prior laws. If the acts of Henry VIII. be invalid, if the parliament of the sixteenth century be deemed to have exceeded its powers, what would be the consequences? Why precisely those which have been forcibly pointed out by Mr. Eagle. All the grantees, lay and ecclesiastical, of the lands and tithes of the dissolved monasteries would not have a shadow of a legal title, and therefore the Duke of Bedford and every other descendant of the grantees would be liable to be called to account for the past rents and profits accruing from their possessions.

To conclude, the established clergy are a great body of public stipendiaries, engaged for the discharge of specific duties; and their rights and constitution resemble more those of our military establishment than any other department of the national service. Like the army, the clergy have their own laws, and may be tried by their own courts. A regular subordination exists from the lowest to the highest; from the curates, who are privates in the ecclesiastical corps, to the rectors and vicars, who are regimental officers; from thence to the bishops and archbishops, who are generals and field-marshals: there are, also, district generals, inspectors, and quarter-masters-general under the names of archdeacons, deans, and prebendaries. The bishops have their regular staff of commissaries, chaplains, secretaries, and apothecaries. No clergyman can be absent without leave, and is liable to be broken or cashiered for neglect of duty. The king is the supreme head of the Church and the Army; he appoints to all the principal commissions, and in both a plurality of commissions may be holden. Supplies are voted by the parliament for both branches of service; either may be augmented or diminished, or entirely discontinued, as circumstances require. Lastly, the military have the same property in their muskets, barracks, and accoutrements, that the clergy have in their pulpits, tithes, and cathedrals; both may be transferred from the present possessors to others, or sold for the benefit of the community.

Such being the tenure of ecclesiastical immunities, it is mere sophistry to contend that the property of the church is as sacred as any other property. No analogy exists betwixt the rights of individuals, or even of corporations, and the rights of the church, and this view of the subject is confirmed by the history of the church itself, and the example of every European government. If the church ever had an indefeasible claim, it could only have appertained to the catholic church, to which the ecclesiastical revenues were originally granted. But whatever corporate or other rights the catholic church might claim, they were annihilated at the Reformation, and the legislators of that period plainly dealt with the possessions of the clergy, as neither perpetually attached to any particular class of persons, nor to any particular form of worship. They evidently treated church endowments as a sort of waif or estray; and, in assigning them pro tempore to the protestant establishment, they only assigned them on the terms of a tenancy-at-will, subject to such conditions of occupancy, ejectment, forcible entry, &c. as the parliamentary landlords might think expedient from time to time to promulgate.