Page:Tithes, a paper read at the Diocesan Conference at Rochester, May 31, 1883.djvu/16

 now complains of being shackled and fettered by it, it was he who wove the chains by which he is bound. I think that in principle the tithe-payer was right, and in many cases he has reaped the benefit of it. At the same time I do not think that it was in the minds of the commissioners that the extraordinary tithe would or ought to increase to an unlimited extent. This their intention to class it with ordinary tithe I think proves. That it has so increased in many places is due to the system devised by the tithe-payer; and although, perhaps, in strict justice, as we made our bed so ought we to lie in it, there are reasons which, I think, make it desirable that a limit should be put to its extension. It is undesirable in these days of active competition with foreign produce to restrict in any way the cultivation of the land, if it does so restrict it. A tax on a particular crop is not in accordance with modern and perhaps sound fiscal policy; and one would be glad by any equitable means to allay the heartburning and conflict which in many places arise out of it. Quot homines tot sententiæ; and many and various have been the schemes propounded—redemption calculated by the Farmers' Alliance at three years' purchase, and ranging from that to so sanguine a one as 31, propounded by a Rev. Canon belonging to this county. Perhaps the most original and thorough-going suggestion was made to the Commissioners by a Mr. Bryant, a gentleman living in my own neighbourhood, who has lately purchased his estate, who gave it as his opinion that extraordinary tithe should be abolished without any compensation whatever. He subsequently qualified it by suggesting that the nation should pay it; but to this I am afraid the Chancellor of the Exchequer would raise objections. The scheme which seems to find most favour, and which was strongly advocated by Sir Mordaunt Wells at a large meeting held lately at Tunbridge Wells, is to redeem the extraordinary tithe at a fixed composition, and to place it as a permanent change upon the ordinary tithe. To this I am decidedly opposed. The merit of the scheme devised in 1836 seems to me to be this—that instead of charging the tithes permanently with the proceeds of a crop which is acknowledged on all hands to be of a fluctuating character, the extra charge is only made when the particular crop is grown. I feel most strongly that in