piles of sumptuous architecture, what trentals and obits, what copes and crucifixes, have we not lost by their inad-vertency!

It is a remark, however, that we cannot help making, that it is not within the scope of our recollection, to produce a single instance of such a proposition having been ever attempted to be propounded in support of any other tax than that particular one which is appropriated to the maintenance of the established clergy. It is an uncontroverted proposition, that the State is under a civil obligation to provide for the subsistence of its immediate servants,-to provide for the subsistence of its poor :we will suppose, (to place the defenders of Tithes upon the best, footing that we can,) that it is as uncontroverted a position, (which however is not the fact,) that the State is under a civil obligation to provide for the support of a religious establishment. Be it so. How are the advocates of Tithes the better for it? We do not recollect that in the innumerable discussions which have taken place on the subject, it was ever attempted to be asserted, that the State has not a right to re-model the provision which it has heretofore made for the support of its poor; or to exchange one mode of effecting that provision for another, if one mode should be found beneficial to the moral character of the poor, and consistent with the civil interests of the nation, and another destructive of them both. And yet the poor must no more be permitted to starve, than the clergy to beg. The one are as much entitled to a security for their subsistence, as the other for their competence, as a matter of civil obligation on the State. How comes it then, that we hear every day of new plans for securing the subsistence of the poor, varying in their complexions and principles with all the variations of human conceptions, and views, and prejudices, and not one word of inquiry drops as to the right of the State to tamper with their legal provision; while, as soon as the most cautious suggestion is made as to the propriety of re considering the legal provision of the clergy, it is immediately silenced with the jargon of irrevocable prescriptive right?

The clergy may perhaps say, that they are degraded by the parallel, and they may deny its applicableness. We reply, that nothing can be further from our thoughts than any abasing intention, and that the parallel itself is strictly accurate. For, learned as the clergy mostly are in the legal history of tithes, can they require to be told, that whether they claim under the sanction of the Apostolic ordinance, or under that of the legal establishment of tithes by the mandates of English kings and prelates, their claim extends no further, by either of those authorities, than to be tenants of those very contested tithes in common with the poor and necessitous? Need we remind them of the tripartite division of tithes, respecting which so much

has been written? How comes it then, we may fairly ask, that that very property in which the poor were jointly interested, by unity of title, should as to them be for ever extinguished, while, as to their co-sharers, it is irrevocable and indefeasible'? Is there no parallel here? Are the clergy degraded by having their substantial endowments named in contact with the scanty pittance of the worn-out labourer, the halt, the impotent, and the blind? Let them then first reproach their more humble predecessors for having submitted to accept a provision out of the same fund which had been provided for those ignoble purposes, and let them tell us how it came to pass, that when these needier partakers of the Church's goods were first robbed of what had been so long sanctified by law and by religion, by canon, and by custom,' they found no kind advocates to cry out, Woe unto them who withhold what God and the Church have given!'

Before we conclude these protracted remarks, into which we have been somewhat indignantly led by a series of perversions and absurdities almost unequalled in any modern controversy, we desire again to caution our readers most earnestly against any misconception of the object which we have had in view. What our views are of the real ground upon which tithes stand at this day, we have explicitly avowed at the close of our former Article; and to that statement we request our readers to turn. We have entered upon the preceding examination of the claims again asserted with respect to Tithes, not as the advocates of revolutionary measures, but because those claims, groundless as they are, are brought forward with all the confidence of uncontested certainty, to set at defiance propositions of the most important and beneficial nature, called for by the united voice of the nation. When Anthony Pearson published his "Great Case "of Tithes truly stated," in 1857, he expressed one of the motives to compiling that work to be, that such a collection might have this further service, that in time to come, it might prevent authors from advancing reasons and arguments for the Divine right of Tithes, as some had done very lately, which were fully answered and confuted so long ago.' But Anthony Pearson has long since been consigned to the undisturbed dust of the upper shelf, and the overweening assurance of the thoughtless and the half-informed, has again called for the trying drudgery of exposing the most inconsistent and absurd assertions. Here, however, our duty stops. Whatever jurisdiction we may claim in the commonwealth of letters, we presume not to dictate to those in whom the right of civil legislation is constitutionally vested. It is a subject of lamentation to all who are tremblingly alive to the interests of humanity, and who look forward to higher stages of the advancement of common-weal, that in radi

6

cal change of almost every kind, there is, and must be so long as human institutions continue to be governed by the uncontrollable laws of nature, essential and inseparable evil. In the beginnings of reformation, this evil is sensibly and severely experienced; while the benefits resulting from the change, are perceived only as they are slowly developed by the hand of time, and as the temporary inconveniences which obscured them, are subsiding into oblivion by the same process. It is owing to this, in a great degree, that in all measures of political economy, questions of right or wrong are unavoidably converted into questions of expediency; and that a mixed mode of reasoning has been insensibly appropriated to legislative discussion, very nearly to the exclusion of pure logic, and of abstract truth. It seems to have been irrevocably ordained, that the material world, in all its advances towards the limited boundary of sublunary excellence, should still remain at an immeasurable distance from the intelligent principle; and that while the advancement of the latter knows no obstacle but the finite power of human appre hension, and the lingering dominion of federal prejudices, improvements in the latter to be permanent, must be almost insensible, and growing out of the original systems, however imperfect they may have been.'*

We are fully aware that the force of this admission must apply to any radical alteration of the Tithe-system, existing as it has done through successive centuries, in actual co-operation, and connecting itself, in innumerable ramifications, with recognised rights and properties of the most multifarious descriptions. We are aware that in these times, any radical change of that system, would, as a consequence of its interference with the long established adjustments of meum and tuum, and to the extent of that interference, wear the character of a revolutionary measure; and in the re-adjustment of the rights and properties whose balances or relations had been disturbed by the change, would create difficulty and discussion of no trivial extent. Furthermore, we are aware that any radical change in the Tithesystem is not destined to be the spectacle of this generation; nor probably of that which is to succeed it; and even did we think that event more probable, or more desirable than we do, we do not believe that any lucubrations of ours would be very likely to accelerate it. Not one iota the less, however, has truth an imperative claim to be asserted, because it is armed with no power but its own; and if the advocates of a corrupt system, trembling, as such persons are apt to do, where no fear is, think it their duty to come forward to levy fresh contributions on the credulity of mankind, we think it our duty to tell them, that the

See our extracts from Armata, p. 145.

Bible is no longer a sealed book; and that there are those who do and will read it to better purpose than to pervert the word of God to the support of human traditions and usurpations.

We now gladly take our leave of the disputants for and against tithes. It has been remarked of indexes and abridgements by one whose powerful mind disdained the aid of them, that they are most profitable unto the makers thereof.' Of controversial writings, the exact reverse of the proposition is, we believe, in a great majority of cases, the truth. In the very nature of controversy, it generally happens that both parties are more or less in the wrong, for controversies are, in nine cases out of ten, the result of accident; and that species of half information which is the very parent of argument from the boldness of assertion and contradiction which it inspires, very naturally leads the parties to commit themselves in the outset. this, indeed, there could be no kind of harm, could controversy be divested of personal feeling; but here the unphilosophical repugnance to correction, and the haughty spirit of vindication, place themselves invincibly in the way, and induce a degree of wilful blindness which is almost more hopeless than the actual

cataract.

In

Far as the productions which daily come before us may be from flattering the idea, we are yet sometimes enthusiastic enough to indulge a hope, that a time may come when controversy shall be conducted on principles purely mathematical; when assertion shall no longer supply the place of proof; when adroitness of personal obliquity, and the cunning trickery of words, shall no more baffle the force of logical deduction; and when the refutation of an antagonist's position shall no longer rest upon a wilful perversion of his terms, or an artful misrepresentation of his reasoning.

In the mean time, however, the by-stander may profit. Hav ing no personal sensibilities to be compromised, he has the advantage over both parties; and unconcerned whether the laurels be ultimately borne off by A or by B, he has nothing to do but to avail himself of the individual exertions of both; exertions, as it often happens, which nothing but the vehemence of dispute would have excited.

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