agreements" openly they must do it covertly, a task they are quite equal to. Jus ancepo novi; causas defendere possum. Alas! we know quite enough of our slippery human nature to be aware that advantages are often taken even of the most righteous purposes, and where the views contemplated may not be remarkable for their integrity, the danger will, of course, be increased, I will not say their intendments, in certain instances, are not pure, but, if they are, let us endeavour to keep them so.

CLAUSE XIX.

Proportional Interest in Lands and Tithes, how to be estímated for the purposes of this Act.-Meetings may be adjourned.

It is best to clear our way before we begin our march. "Rome was not built in a day," but our whig legislators are for bringing forth a perfect birth without taking any of the requisite pains for it. Surely, it would have been better to have reformed the serious part of our grievances, before proceeding to consider what probably no one much cared about.

"It will be convenient (says the solicitor to the Bill) at every parochial meeting to have the poorrate books, and put the assessment of each person present opposite to his name in the minutes of the parochial meeting, and opposite his signature to the agreement, and to add a memorandum of the total amount of assessment of the tithe-owners and landowners subject to tithes." But would it not be as well to rectify these poor-rate books themselves before they make them their standard of determination? There is what may be strictly called a fair and impartial mode of rating in very few country parishes. * And rural mirth and manners," says the poet," are no more." Not so with this rural custom,

the custom of laying the clergyman as high again to the rates as they ought. It is generally found in these annual records of integrity that the little farmer never figures too low, nor the great farmer too high. Burn's Justice" is no guide for them; they are guided by a sort of simple instinct, which leads them to take care of number one, as the chief of their domestic lares.

The "Act for regulating Parochial Assessments" may be of service to us, but it still does not appear to meet the evil in such a manner as sufficiently to rectify it, nor perhaps is it intended to operate upon earlier rate-books to which the commissioners must have recourse. I have known the most unfair mode of rating to have been persisted in for years, all in the meanwhile grumbling and all paying, for we never much relish overturning an Established Government.

The assessment of the tithe should also carefully be seen to. All tithes, both great and small, are generally laid to the rates higher than they ought to be. And then there is the division of the rate between them, often a matter of injustice where the rectorial tithe is in lay hands, and always a matter of difficulty. The settling these points of mutual equity ought to be considered as preliminary to any sort of estimation, and it is to be hoped that the commissioners, while they are compelled to keep their right eye steadily on the land-owner's interest, will now and then, with their left, cast a glance on the sufferings of the clergy; on those sufferings which, though they are not the cause of, it is yet in their power in some degree to soften; and God knows in a very miserable degree.

CLAUSE XXI.

Form of Parochial Agreement.

This is an important Clause. It sets before us the form of a Parochial Agreement. I wish it may

turn out any thing beyond a form. "It is of consequence (Mr. White remarks) that all the requisites of this Clause are complied with." Now these requisites may much depend on our terriers and rate books. But terriers, which ought to be scrupulously exact, are, many of them, especially the later ones, among the most shameless and incorrect documents we have. They are, however, it seems, obliged to be received in the state in which they are presented, and with, I suspect, no material questions asked about their authenticity. Thus, with all their sins upon their heads, are they lodged as sacred and eternal evidence in our ecclesiastical archives. A sad misfortune this upon the church and her revenues, and, I fear, but ill compensated by the permission to the incumbent of returning his own terrier, with his own solitary name appended to it; for he may be quite certain, that though the whole parish know his rights, not one of them will join him in this document which has for its object to substantiate them.

Still, to give the devil his due, these parochial records, called terriers, are exceedingly exact and most perfectly to be depended upon in their description of all the minutiae of Church Property. If a parish, for example, possess an old dog-eared prayer book, of the reign of GEO. II., with its cover half off and half on, or a communion cloth not worth a crooked sixpence, or a ragged surplice washed annually at Christmas, (and not before it wants it) or any other items of the same valuable description, they are sure to cram these into the inventory as regularly as clock work, and with the most scrupulous fidelity. But as for "the weightier matters of the law," the lands no longer under modus compositions; the claims of every particular kind of tithe so set forth, that all the world may know what is legally due to rector or vicar, and from whence, or for why,

and how long they have been accustomed to receive them; in these points, and many more of the same nature, we, alas! look for fidelity in vain.

The inditers of such documents, adopting the arts of the rhetorician, too frequently put a part for the whole; and the terrier delivered into the office of the registrar as the act and deed of the parish at large, accompanied by their grave declarationnescit vox missa reverti-that it contains a full and perfect account of the glebes, tithes, portions of tithes, and all other rights belonging to the living, is often little better than a deliberate record of neglect, of fraud, and of falsehood!

And yet by these terriers, it may be, that the claims of the clergy will, in many cases, have to be determined upon on this occasion; for I make no doubt of their being reckoned among the most sacred evidences against the church and her clergy. The commissioners of the Commutation Act will be forbidden, most likely, to be over nice in their examination of especial points and omissions. And they may indeed very securely abstain from all such works of supererogation, for the pot and kettle will never dare to give hard names to each other. Arcades ambo-the act will be found every way worthy of the terriers, and the terriers worthy of the act.

I should be glad to know-reverting to the requisitions of this clause-whether it be imperative on the land-owners, in drawing up their form of parochial agreement, that all these requisitions should be complied with. If it be not imperative, I should doubt whether it will be done, and, if not done, whether the clergy will be justly dealt by. Among these requisites is mentioned "exemptions and particulars of lands exempt." If this alludes to exemptions and moduses, &c. it may turn out of some use to the clergy; for our grievance hitherto hath been that the opulent landholders have kept

the grounds of these exemptions a profound secret. Before it could be wormed out of them we have found ourselves reduced to an action at law, but, as few of us were able to maintain such action, things have generally gone on in their old course of uncertainty, the land-owners in the meanwhile reaping the benefit, and the fraud continuing safe in its obscurity.*

We are indeed referred by Mr. White to Clause XXIV, &c. where, for the benefit of the land-owner, the moduses and exemptions here alluded to are protected. But neither here nor elsewhere see we any decisive protection for the clergy; any light thrown on the origin of these exemptions; any shadow of a reference to the bold, barefaced injustice of them. This legislative enactment feeds and fattens up the land-owner at every turn, bidding him, with their est modus in rebus, to be wary look about him, but not a syllable says it in behalf of that Church which its framers, with an hypocrisy exceeded only by their resentment, affect-bless the mark-so faithfully to be attached to, and so sincerely to venerate! Wherever an opportunity occurs of softening down the injury done to her sacred property, it is generally neglected; and should they, by chance, blunder on a righteous regulation

and

* If my correspondent be correct in his opinion, our hope of advantage in this point is but small. "The agreement (says he) is apparently to state moduses, but need not state the grounds on which they rest.—-Of this you complain, and with reason-but it must be borne in mind, that such moduses only appear to be meant as Lord Tenterden's Act has already thrown overboard.—With regard to the greater part of presumed moduses, it little matters on what grounds, whether any or none, they rest-they are already among the things that are gone, and "going, going," as the auctioneer has it, may be said of all the rest-such only escape as are now actually sub judice.