Oppressiveness of the Tithe System.

Hardship and impoverishment result not less from the amount than the mode in which the ecclesiastical revenues are levied in Ireland. By the Tithe Composition Act, an attempt was made, without at all lessening the amount of the burthen, to avert the occurrence of those disgraceful scenes, which so frequently accompanied the collection of the tithe-tax. Under the authority of this statute, it has been seen, many parishes have compounded with the incumbent for tithe; but as these compositions can only be entered into for a limited term, and as the rate of them varies with the fluctuations in the value and quantity of produce, the whole kingdom may be still considered to labour under the curse of an impost, whose pressure increases with every increase of capital and industry. The expedient of compounding was early and readily adopted in the disturbed districts of Clare and Galway; and throughout the extensive districts of the dioceses of Clonfert, Kilmacduagh, and Killaloe, composition rent has continued to be promptly and willingly paid. But the measure has not been equally successful in other parts. In the county of Carlow, King’s County, Queen’s County, Kilkenny, and part of Tipperary; in fact, through the finest lands of the kingdom, composition has slowly and reluctantly advanced.

One circumstance especially deserving notice in the history of the tenth exaction; is, the abolition of tithes of agistment, which leaves tillage lands alone liable to the burthen. This selfish and partial enactment of the Irish parliament shows clearly enough how necessary it is that the different classes of society should be represented in the legislature; otherwise they are sure to be sacrificed, without regard to justice or humanity, to the exclusive advantage of the ruling power. The abolition of tithe of pasture causes the revenues of the clergy to be principally drawn from tithe of corn, and of the cattle, pigs, poultry, and potatoes of the cotter tenantry. While tithes of agistment were paid, the burden, in part, fell upon the opulent grazier,—the landed aristocracy of Ireland; but now the burden presses with disproportionate weight on the poorer cultivators of the soil. Owing to the increase in the numbers, skill, and industry of this class, the quantity of agricultural produce has been augmented a hundred fold, and in the same proportion has augmented the revenue of the church. While the Irish cultivator has been adding to his income by industry, and by the abridgment of the comforts and enjoyments of his family, he has been constrained, also, to add proportionately to the income of the Protestant priest, whose religion he does not profess, and whose intolerant dogmas long withheld from him his civil immunities.

The amount abstracted from the just rewards of industry is not the entire evil of the tithe oppression. Another class of evils results from the variety of ecclesiastical rights, and consequent variety of laws, and the interminable litigation which these laws incessantly occasion. The perplexities arising from this source are infinite, and it frequently happens the same ground is impoverished by the successive levies of the archbishop, bishop, dean and chapter, the rector and vicar. This is the case in most parts of the diocese of Clonfert, and to show the fleecing and harassing nature of the system we cannot do better than insert an extract from the letter of a clergyman and magistrate of Ireland, addressed to Mr. Secretary Stanley, and read by Lord Melbourne on the motion for the appointment of the Tithe Committee.

“The broken and irregular character of tithes, in the rust of its great antiquity, renders the variety and number of claims on the land both harassing and vexatious; the frequency of calls, and the uncertainty of receivers, are so varied and perplexing as to occasion much annoyance to the poor. There are a vast number of instances in my own parish, where one poor man, whose whole tithes annually do not amount to more than 1s. 8d. per acre and yet subject him to have his cow, sheep, pig, or horse, taken and driven to pound six times in the year for tithes, and liable, on each and every driving, to a charge of 2s. 6d. driver’s fees, besides expense of impounding, and waste of time from his labour in seeking the person duly authorised to give him a receipt. He is liable to be summoned, moreover, and decreed for vestry cess, once in the year, making annually seven calls, on account of the Church, to his little plot of ground; besides, his little holding is liable to two calls in the year for Grand Jury public money, and frequently two calls more for Crown and quit rent. Thus eleven calls are made upon his small holding in the year, besides his landlord’s rent, and for sums trifling in themselves, but perplexing and ruinous in the costs which attend them. Surely such are hardships that ought to be removed.

Throughout the diocese of Clonfert and Kilmacduagh, in which this parish is situated, the Bishop takes one-fourth of every titheable acre of land. The county is very much broken up amongst cotter tenantry, holding small plots of an acre each, with a cabin or cottage upon it. The whole diocese is compounded for at an average rate of about one shilling per acre.”—House of Lords, Dec. 15, 1831.

In England, where, in many parts, a man cannot cut a cabbage, pull a carrot, or gather a bunch of grapes, without giving notice to the parson, the system is sufficiently intolerable; but in Ireland, from the mode of collecting tithes, those evils are aggravated tenfold. The Irish clergy generally employ an agent, called a proctor, who, immediately before harvest, estimates the barrels of corn, tons of hay, or hundred weight of potatoes, he supposes are on the ground, and, charging the market price, ascertains the amount to be paid by the owner. This notable agent generally holds his session on Sunday, at a pot-house, where he meets the farmers. As the terms are seldom agreed upon at the first meeting, others follow, and the reckonings, on these occasions, are always paid by the farmers, which add not a little to their charges. The parson sometimes leases the tithes out to the proctor, at a fixed rent, like a farm; while the latter, who, in that case, is called the middle proctor, not unfrequently relets them to another. In the south, the tithe is set out and sold by public auction on the premises. And, in Connaught, it is customary to call a sale before the harvest, at which the tithe is sold to any person who chooses to collect it.

Under such a system, it is easy to conceive what the Irish must endure. Nothing escapes the vigilance of the spiritual locust, or his agent. No bog, however deep—no mountain, however high—nor heath, nor rock, whatever industry may have reclaimed, or capital fertilized—all is liable to the full penalty of having been made available to the uses of man. From the proctors and middle proctors, neither lenity nor indulgence can be expected. These men, to whom the odious office of reaping the fruits of the industry of others has been delegated, are, probably, strangers in the parish, without motive for cultivating the friendship of the people, and having farmed the tithe for a stipulated sum, it is to be expected they will collect it with the utmost rigour, in order to realize the greatest profit from their bargain. The most distressing scenes are sometimes witnessed from their relentless proceedings, and the tithes not unfrequently collected with the aid of a constabulary or military force. The half-famished cotter, surrounded by a wretched family, clamorous for food, frequently beholds the tenth part of the produce of his potatoe garden, carried off to fill the insatiable maw of clerical rapacity. “I have seen,” says Mr. Wakefield, “the cow, the favourite cow, driven away, accompanied by the sighs, the tears, and the imprecations of a whole family, who were paddling after, through wet and dirt, to take their last affectionate farewell of this their only benefactor at the pound gate. I have heard, with emotions which I can scarcely describe, deep curses repeated from village to village, as the cavalcade proceeded. I have witnessed the group pass the domain walls of the opulent grazier, whose numerous herds were cropping the most luxuriant pastures, whilst he was secure from any demand for the tithe of their food, looking on with the utmost indifference.”—Statistical Account of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 466.

To spare the rich and plunder the poor is certainly not Christianity; it is more like Church of Englandism, which, by the union of church and state, has perverted the pure and charitable faith of Christ into a tremendous engine of political guilt and spiritual extortion. There is, we are assured, plenty of law in Ireland, as well as in this country, to punish injustice: there is no wrong, we are told, without a remedy; the courts of justice are open, as the hypocrites say in England, for the punishment of either magisterial or clerical delinquents. All this sounds wells on paper, or in the bloated harangues of an attorney-general; but it is mere mockery and insult when offered to the victims of oppression. Law, in both countries, is for those who can pay for it—the rich, not the poor. The poor cotter, oppressed or defrauded by the exaction of the tithe-proctor, to the value of £10, cannot buy a chance of redress in the lottery of the law for less than £60. By victory or defeat he is equally and irremediably ruined. What resource, then, have men whose possessions probably do not amount to half that sum? None. The way to courts of justice, through the impassable barrier of attorneys’ and lawyers’ fees, is over a bridge of gold; and to point out these tribunals for redress, either to English or Irish poor, or even to those moderately endowed with wealth, is, in other words, to point out to a man the shortest way by which he may bring himself to the jail and his family to the workhouse.