lergyman, one Archdeacon Neal;
and although the cause was removed to King's Bench in England, the
previous judgment was confirmed. In spite of this decision, however, the
tithe continued to be a subject of litigation, and the landed
proprietors even formed themselves into associations for the purpose of
resisting the clergy's claim. In 1734 the House of Commons aggravated
matters by passing resolutions against the claims, many of which were
then the subject of legal actions, and prevented decisions being come to
while it had the matter under its consideration. From the pamphlets
written at the time it may easily be seen that this interference on the
part of the lower House was both unseemly and unjust. Its conduct so
roused Swift that his indignation found expression in one of his
bitterest and most terrible poetical satires--"The Legion Club"--a
satire so bitter and so scathing that reading it now, after the lapse of
more than a century and a half, one shudders at its invective--"a
blasting flood of filth and vitriol, out of some hellish fountain," Mr.
Churton Collins calls it. We are told that its composition brought on a
violent attack of vertigo, and it remained unfinished.

The text here given is that of the first edition collated with those
given by Faulkner, Hawkesworth, and Scott.

[T.S.]

SOME
REASONS
AGAINST THE
Bill for settling the Tyth of _Hemp, Flax,_ &c. by a _Modus_.

MDCCXXIV.

The Clergy did little expect to have any cause of complaint against the
present House of Commons; who in the last sessions, were pleased to
throw out a Bill[1] sent them from the Lords, which that reverend body
apprehended would be very injurious to them, if it passed into a law;
and who, in the present sessions, defeated the arts and endeavours of
schismatics to repeal the Sacramental Test.

[Footnote 1: For the bishops to divide livings. See the two preceding
Tracts. [T. S.]]

For, although it hath been allowed on all hands, that the former of
those Bills might, by its necessary consequences, be very displeasing to
the lay gentlemen of the kingdom, for many reasons purely secular; and,
that this last attempt for repealing the Test, did much more affect, at
present, the temporal interest than the spiritual; yet the whole body of
the lower Clergy have, upon both these occasions, expressed equal
gratitude to that honourable House, for their justice and steadiness, as
if the clergy alone were to receive the b