Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/265

Rh above five hundred; by which computation they should each of them possess two hundred pounds a year, if those tithes were equally divided, although in well cultivated corn countries it ought to be more; whereas they hardly receive one half of that sum, with great defalcations, and in very bad payments. There are indeed a few glebes in the north pretty considerable; but if these, and all the rest, were in like manner equally divided, they would not add five pounds a year to every clergyman. Therefore, whether the condition of the clergy in general among us be justly liable to envy, or able to bear a heavy burden, which neither the nobility, nor gentry, nor tradesmen, nor farmers, will touch with one of their fingers; this, I say, is submitted to the honourable house.

One terrible circumstance in this bill is, that of turning the tithe of flax and hemp, into what the lawyers call a modus, or a certain sum in lieu of a tenth part of the product. And by this practice of claiming a modus in many parishes by ancient custom, the clergy in both kingdoms have been almost incredible sufferers. Thus in the present case, the tithe of a tolerable acre of flax, which by a medium is worth twelve shillings, is by the present bill reduced to four shillings. Neither is this the worst part in a modus; every determinate sum must in process of time sink from a fourth to a four and twentieth part, or a great deal lower, by that necessary fall attending the value of money; which is now at least nine tenths lower all over Europe, than it was four hundred years ago, by a gradual decline; and even a third part at least, within our own memories, in purchasing almost every thing required for the necessities or. X.