Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/262

254 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 the 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 publick, for a farther encouragement to the said manufacture, are not the clergy equal sharers in the charge with the rest of their fellow subjects? What satisfactory reason can be therefore given, why they alone should bear the whole additional weight, unless it will be alleged that their property is not upon an equal foot with the properties of other men? They acquire their own small pittance, by at least as honest means, as their neighbours the landlords possess their estates; and have been always supposed, except in rebellious or fanatical times, to have as good a title: for no families now in being can show a more ancient. Indeed if it be true, that some persons (I hope they were not many) were seen to laugh when the rights of the clery were mentioned; in this case, an opinion may possibly