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Untitled Article
not therefore a tax in which the public at large is interested . The produce to be obtained from the soil depends quite as much upon the manner in which it shall be worked , or the amount of capital applied to it in labour and manure ,, as upon its own native capabilities . Take two farms of equal extent and fertility ; suppose them both let at the same rent to different individuals , one having at his command a large capital , the other little or none , it is obvious that the produce of the one farm will often double that of the other . It was but the other day I crossed a field which a few years back produced four quarters of wheat to the acre , but which in the hands of the present occupier produces nothing but thistles and a coarse pasture . The same process , however , which would double the amount of produce would double the amount of tithes , and hence it will be seen that the tithe system is a tax upon capital employed on land , a tax upon industry by rendering it unprofitable to employ more than a minimum , of labourers , and a tax upon bread by limiting the quantity of corn grown . If then it be asked , why , when capital is so abundant that the rate of interest is but two-and a-half per cent , on good bills , more capital is not applied to land ? The answer is , that the capital so applied could not be expected to yield more than a profit of ten per cent ., and that ten per cent , would be claimed by the clergyman for tithes .
It is high time that the abomination of the present system should cease . In the neighbourhood in which I am at present resident , the rector has for many years taken his tithes in kind , aad being a wealthy landowner , farming several hundred acres on his own account , it is to him attended with uo inconvenience . This at least is a case in which we see none of that liberality which as we sometimes read , inTory prints , is evinced by tithe-receivers . I have known our worthy rector send for two shillings from a pauper of the parish , as the tithe of a solitary apple tree growing in his cottage garden , the produce of which was sold in the market for
one pound . In taking the tithe of lambs , should there be , for example , but twenty-five instead of the more litheable number of thirty , the farmers here are compelled to kill one of the lambs , and to give the half to the rector , that he may not lose even a fraction of the exact proportion to which he is by law entitled . In my walks I am constantly meeting a boy with donkey and panniers , whose office it is to collect the tithe of milk from every
farm-house . This is done every tenth day ; a day of fasting and moaning to the calves whose unhappy lot it is to be born in this part of the country : and yet the greater part of the milk thus obtained only serves to make a wash for the pigs kept by our worthy rector , to which purpose it ia literally applied . I mention these facts not to raise your indignation against an individual , whose name 1 therefore forbear to mention , but that you may judge
Untitled Article
On Tithes . 527
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 2, 1833, page 527, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2620/page/15/
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