On this page

• Text (1)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    Even when the leases expire , the tithe will not merge in the rent hy operation of law , but only at the option of the landlord . Unless there be a stipulation to the contrary in the new lease , the tithe ( or land-tax , as it is to be called ) will still be kept separate from the rent ; and any landlord , whose purposes , either political or persona ) , it may happen to answer , may still force the Catholic peasant to Individualise the ; tithe j to distinguish it from his other payments ; to be distinctly conscious an ea £ h occasion how much exactly he is paying to a Chafch which he detest * .

    Since the above observations Were written , the Bill has been pfiftted ; and we perceive that it does not even free the fithe from the chief objection which lies against it as tithe—its perpetual increase . By an Act passed in 1832 , the tithes of every parish in Ireland are already compounded for ; and the landtax now to be imposed in lieu of tithe , is to be of the same amount as the composition . The composition , however , under the Act of 1832 , is not

    fixed , but variable every seven years , according to the price of corn . As , in the progress of population and cultivation , the price of corn tends always to a rise , the new land-tax , instead of being a fixed charge , will be augmented every seven years , and the memory of tithe will be kept alive for ever , by the periodical readjustment of the amount . This is an error in principle , of the first magnitude : but its practical consequences will merge in the general failure of the measure ; which certainly will not last unaltered for seven years .

    22 a February . The Debate on Agricultural Distress . —The landowners of England are remarkable for being always in distress . Upon no portion of the sons of men does the common destiny of our race seem to press so heavily . This speaks but ill for their own wisdom ; for they have wielded during one hundred and forty-five years previous to 1832 , the entire powers of the British Legislature , and still compose the whole of one House of Parliament , and a majority of the other : they have done their best indeed to possess the whole of that too , as they compel every man , before he becomes a member

    of it , to make oath that he is one of their body . Persons thus circumstanced must be either very unskilful or remarkably conscientious , if they do not contrive to make some other people distressed instead of themselves . If the landlords have not effected this , it has not been for want of trying . All that laws could do they have done to foree other people to buy from them every description of the produce of the soil at their own price . All that laws could do they have done to secure to themselves , as borrowers , at the expense of the lenders , the advantage of a low rate of interest . They have

    exempted their land from several of the taxes . Of their local burthens they have reserved to themselves the entire controul ; for the county rates are voted by themselves in quarter sessions , and the administration of the poor laws is entirely in their hands . The army , the nary , and the civil patronage of the State , belong to them almost exclusively . The lay-tithes are theirs for their own use , the ecclesiastical tithes for the use of their younger children . When new land has been inclosed , it has usually been distributed , not arnon ^ the poor , but among the landlords .

    Being thus accustomed to have every thing their own way , it may appear extraordinary that they should be always complaining of distress . But is not that the very reason ? A spoiled child is always dissatisfied . No spoiled child has all that it asks for , and the more is bestowed , the more it » indignant that anything should be withheld . If it meet with no resistance from human will , it is angry that the laws of nature are not equally compliant ; and so are the landlords . Let it wot be irtftgined that we contest the fact of the distress . Distressed they are , far they twvet have so much money as they would like to have . Most of them have not even so much as they

    spend . This th ? y feel , quite sincerely , ns a grievous hardship and wrong ; and consider themselves injured men if something is not done to relieve them frorn it . Really , since they compel us to say it , there is no olasa whom , as a elass

    Untitled Article

    234 Notes on the Newspapers .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1834, page 234, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2632/page/2/