enefit.

It must needs be, therefore, a great addition to the Clergy's grief,
that such an assembly as the present House of Commons; should now, with
an expedition more than usual, agree to a bill for encouraging the linen
manufacture; with a clause, whereby the Church is to lose two parts in
three, of the legal tithe in flax and hemp.

Some reasons, why the Clergy think such a law will be a great hardship
upon them, are, I conceive, those that follow. I shall venture to
enumerate them with all deference due to that honourable assembly.

_First_; the Clergy suppose that they have not, by any fault or demerit,
incurred the displeasure of the nation's representatives: neither can
the declared loyalty of the present set, from the highest prelate to the
lowest vicar, be in the least disputed: because, there are hardly ten
clergymen, through the whole kingdom, for more than nineteen years past,
who have not been either preferred entirely upon account of their
declared affection to the Hanover line; or higher promoted as the due
reward of the same merit.

There is not a landlord in the whole kingdom, residing some part of the
year at his country-seat, who is not, in his own conscience, fully
convinced, that the tithes of his minister have gradually sunk, for some
years past, one-third, or at least one-fourth of their former value,
exclusive of all non-solvencies.

The payment of tithes in this kingdom, is subject to so many frauds,
brangles, and other difficulties, not only from Papists and Dissenters,
but even from those who profess themselves Protestants; that by the
expense, the trouble, and vexation of collecting, or bargaining for
them, they are, of all other rents, the most precarious, uncertain, and
ill paid.

The landlords in most parishes expect, as a compliment, that they shall
pay little more than half the value of their tithes for the lands they
hold in their own hands; which often consist of large domains: And it is
the minister's interest to make them easy upon that article, when he
considers what influence those gentlemen have upon their tenants.

The Clergy cannot but think it extremely severe, that in a bill for
encouraging the linen manufacture, they alone must be the sufferers, who
can least afford it: If, as I am told, there be a tax of three thousand
pounds a year, paid by the public, for a further encouragement to the
said manufacture; are not the Clergy equal sharers in the charge with
the rest