Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 5.djvu/291

Rh by the statutes for commons, being not half sufficient, by the fall of money, to afford necessary sustenance. But the passing of such a bill must put an end to all ecclesiastical beneficence for the time to come; and whether this will be supplied by those who are to reap the benefit, better than it has been done by grantees of impropriate tithes, who received them upon the old church conditions of keeping hospitality, it will be easy to conjecture.

To allege, that passing such a bill would be a good encouragement to improve bishops lands, is a great errour. Is it not the general method of landlords to wait the expiration of a lease, and then cant their lands to the highest bidder? and what should hinder the same course to be taken in church leases, when the limitation is removed of paying half the real value to the bishop? In riding through the country, how few improvements do we see upon the estates of laymen, farther than about their own domains? To say the truth, it is a great misfortune, as well to the publick, as to the bishops themselves, that their lands are generally let to lords and great squires, who, in reason, were never designed to be tenants; and therefore may naturally murmur at the payment of rent, as a subserviency they were not born to. If the tenants to the church were honest farmers, they would pay their fines and rents with cheerfulness, improve their lands, and thank God they were to give but a moderate half value for what they held. I have heard a man of a thousand pound a year talk with great contempt of bishops leases, as being on a worse foot than the rest of his estate; and he had certainly reason: my answer was, that such leases were