this day.

The present bishops will, indeed be no sufferers by such a bill;
because, their ages considered, they cannot expect to see any great
decrease in the value of money; or, at worst, they can make it up in the
fines, which will probably be greater than usual, upon the change of
leases into fee-farms, or lives; or without the power of obliging their
tenants to a real half value. And, as I cannot well blame them for
taking such advantages, (considering the nature of human kind) when the
question is only, whether the money shall be put into their own or
another man's pocket: So they will be never excusable before God or man,
if they do not to the death oppose, declare, and protest against any
such bill, as must in its consequences complete the ruin of the Church,
and of their own order in this kingdom.

If the fortune of a private person be diminished by the weakness, or
inadvertency of his ancestors, in letting leases for ever at low rents,
the world lies open to his industry for purchasing of more; but the
Church is barred by a _dead hand_; or if it were otherwise, yet the
custom of making bequests to it, hath been out of practice for almost
two hundred years, and a great deal directly contrary hath been its
fortune.

I have been assured by a person of some consequence, to whom I am
likewise obliged for the account of some other facts already related,
that the late Bishop of Salisbury,[2] (the greatest Whig of that bench
in his days) confessed to him, that the liberty which bishops in England
have of letting leases for lives, would, in his opinion, be one day the
ruin of Episcopacy there; and thought the Church in this kingdom happy
by the limitation act.

[Footnote 2: Dr. Barnet.]

And have we not already found the effect of this different proceeding in
both kingdoms? Have not two English prelates quitted their peerage and
seats in Parliament, in a nation of freedom, for the sake of a more
ample revenue, even in this unhappy kingdom, rather than lie under the
mortification of living below their dignity at home? For which, however,
they cannot be justly censured. I know indeed, some persons, who offer,
as an argument for repealing the limiting bill, that it may in future
ages prevent the practice of providing this kingdom with bishops from
England, when the only temptation will be removed. And they allege,
that, as things have gone for some years past, gentlemen will grow
discouraged from sending their sons