the
cultivation of the land." The present mode of levying the tithes forced
the clergy to forbearance at the expense of what they deemed to be their
rights, or led them to enforce them at the expense of the influence
which they ought to possess with their parishioners, compelling them to
lose either their income by their indulgence, or their proper weight and
popularity in the parish by the exaction of what the law gave them for
"the support of themselves and their families." And this dilemma was
felt so keenly by the clergy themselves, that it had become a very
general feeling with them that, "if any sort of commutation could be
devised, they would be delighted to be delivered from this objectionable
mode of payment." Indeed, Sir Robert Peel, whose measure of the
preceding year had been chiefly directed to the encouragement of
voluntary commutations, had stated to the House that there were already
two thousand parishes in the kingdom in which a commutation between the
clergyman and his parishioners had been agreed upon, and established as
a durable settlement by separate acts of Parliament. Indeed,
arrangements of this kind existed very generally; the parishes in which
the tithe was taken in kind being comparatively few, and the plan
usually adopted being for the occupier of land to pay the incumbent a
fixed annual sum bearing a certain proportion to his rent. But
arrangements which were optional were, of course, liable to be
rescinded; and Peel desired to establish a system which should be
universal and permanent. And with this view he had designed the
appointment of a temporary commission, one member of which should be
nominated by the Primate, as the representative of the Church, under
whose supervision the tithes of every parish in the kingdom should be
commuted into a rent-charge, regulated partly by the composition which
had hitherto been paid, and partly by the average price of grain--wheat,
barley, and oats. It was no new idea, since as far back as 1791 Pitt had
proposed a general commutation of tithes for a corn rent, and had
submitted a plan with that object to the Primate, though circumstances
of which we have no accurate knowledge prevented him from proceeding
with it.[241] Objections[242] were taken to this last part of the
arrangement, chiefly because it would render perpetual the terms of
existing compositions, the extreme augmentation of them which was
provided for in the bill being only ten per cent., w