Iii.—: Tenure of Church Property.

The power of truth has been singularly evinced in the progress of opinion on the tenure of ecclesiastical property. The first position taken up in favour of the Church was that the clergy hold their possessions by the same inviolate right that an individual holds his estate. This assumption was speedily disproved. It was negatived by the practice of all the continental states and of our own country at the Reformation; it was negatived by the palpable fact that the clergy have only a life interest in their benefices, over which they could not, neither by will, sale, nor other species of alienation, exercise any of those powers ordinarily annexed to the idea of property; and, lastly, it was negatived by the recorded proceedings of the British parliament itself, which had repeatedly interfered with the property of the church by passing acts regulating the sale, exchange, and mortgage of parsonage houses and glebe lands, and acts actually making a new appropriation of the incomes of incumbents for the benefit of curates: all which would have been indefensible had the clergy held their revenues under the same immutable conditions that individuals hold their incomes; or had they been considered other than stipendiaries of the state, with whose office and emoluments, like those of the army, navy, or civil servants of the crown, the legislature had always a right to deal according to the exigences of the public service.

The second position taken up was that though the estates of the church might not be held in absolute property like those of individuals, yet there was no example of the property of the church being alienated for other than ecclesiastical purposes.

Here again it might have been sufficient to refer to the precedent of the Protestant Reformation, in which the examples were numerous of the possessions of spiritual persons alienated to laymen, or appropriated to the endowment of educational foundations. But this might be objected to as a period when right was compelled to succumb to mere arbitrary violence. Then reference was made to more recent and orderly periods, to the reigns of William III. and the Georges. Here were found examples of acts of parliament, by which masses of property were severed from the church, and appropriated to objects of an entirely secular character.

In 1797, when the cathedral of Lichfield was about being repaired, an act of parliament was obtained to defray the expense by sequestrating the revenues of two vacant prebends. Applying a portion of the clerical income to the maintenance of the fabric of the church was clearly giving it a new direction, as distinct as if applied to the maintenance of the poor. But more recently an act was obtained to appropriate part of the revenues of the see of Durham to the founding of a college for education. In both these instances it may indeed be urged that the purpose was in some degree ecclesiastical. Well, then, here is another example in which church property was severed merely for a commercial purpose. In the reign of William III. the legislature was desirous of encouraging the growth of hemp, when an act passed declaring that, in lieu of a tenth of the produce, no parson, vicar, or impropriator should be entitled to more than 5s. for every acre of hemp and flax grown in England. This act is made perpetual by 1 Geo. I. st. 2, c. 26, s. 2, and upon which it may be observed that if parliament could legally exempt hemp from tithe, why not corn, or grass, or hops? If it could make a new appropriation of a portion of the church estates for an object of secular and national advantage, why not the whole? This clearly establishes under the precedent of an act of parliament itself the legislative right to appropriate to other than ecclesiastical purposes the estates of the church.

The interested misrepresentations of the clergy have caused a great deal of misapprehension of the true nature of tithe property. It is something or nothing, as the cultivator pleases. It may not only be legally and conscientiously diminished, but annihilated; it is not then even a right, for no right can be taken away. If I do not grow corn where is the tithe? If I do grow it, but do not sever it, but let it rot on the ground, the tithe-owner has no redress; in short, it is an uncertain interest that depends on the will of the landlord.

It is a monstrous error to consider tithe as a tenth part of the produce of the earth. Dr. Burn says (3 Ecclesiastical Law, 377) that “tithes of common right are only to be paid for such things as do yield a yearly increase by the act of God.”—“I conceive,” continues the same great authority, “the act of God to mean the natural and spontaneous produce of the earth, and not the act of man, arising from artificial cultivation.”

Now there is no such thing in nature as corn, any more than there is a ship or a cotton mill; it is a creation of human industry; it does not grow as other vegetables, by the power of God, but like the tulip (which Paley says we should never have had without the gardener), hyacinth, the ranunculus, and many others; it is no where to be found only in a state of artificial culture; it is therefore the product of man, and no more the act of God than a watch or a mill; though God gave the materials, as he gave the sun and air, it is the labour of man that has given the value.

The time was when a corn-mill was considered a predial tithe, and paid the tenth dish of the corn ground, but by the case of Newls and Chamberlain, and afterwards by the case of Carlton and Brightwell, without any legislative act the tithe of a mill was changed from a predial tithe, where no expenses of working the mill were allowed, but full tithe paid to a personal tithe where all expenses of such working were allowed: which reduced the tithe of a corn-mill to a tithe of the profit. Why did the House of Lords make this distinction? Obviously because the working of a mill is the effect of personal labour. Is no then the working of a farm equally an effect of personal labour and extensive outlay: and why, if both be the result of labour, should not both be subject to deduction for expenses?

It follows that, strictly, tithe is only a tenth of the produce after deducting the profit of capital and wages; it is what the landowners of Devon and Kent contend, a tenth of the rent or net profit of land: a distinction of great importance, and which we trust our readers will bear in remembrance on the approaching valuation and settlement of the claims of the Church.