their incapacity for civil and military employments may be wholly taken off, for the very fame reasons (befides others more cogent) that are now offered by their brethren the dissenters.

And your petitioners, as in duty bound, shall ever pray, &c.

Dublin,

Nov. 1733.

In this controverfy the author was again victorious, for the teft was not repealed.

SOME

The BILL for fettling the Tithe of Hemp, Flax, &c. by a Modus [b].

TH

HE clergy did little expect to have any caufe of complaint against the prefent houfe of commons; who, in the last feffion, were pleafed to throw out a bill [c] fent them from the lords, which that reverend body apprehended would be very injurious to them, if it paffed into a law and who, in the prefent feffion, defeated the arts and endeavours of fchifmaticks to repeal the facramental teft.

For although it hath been allowed on all hands, that the former of those bills might, by its neceffary confequences, be very difpleafing to the lay gentlemen of the kingdom, for many reasons purely fecular; and that this laft attempt for repealing

[b] Many eminent clergymen, who opposed this scheme, applied to Dr. Swift to write against it, which he readily consented to upon their giving him some hints, and, two days after, the following reafons were prefented to several members of parliament, which had fo good an effect, that the bill was dropped.

[c] For the bishops to divide livings.

REASONS AGAINST SETTLING, &c.

335 the test did much more affect, at present, the temporal intereft, than the fpiritual; yet the whole body of the lower clergy have, upon both those occafions, expreffed equal gratitude to that honourable house for their juftice and steadiness, as if the clergy alone were to receive the benefit.

It must needs be therefore a great addition to the clergy's grief, that fuch an assembly, as the prefent house of commons, fhould now, with an expedition more than ufual, agree to a bill for encouraging the linen manufacture with a clause, whereby the church is to lose two parts in three of the legal tithe in flax and hemp.

Some reasons why the clergy think such a law will be a great hardship upon them are, I conceive, those that follow. I fhall venture to enumerate them with all deference due to that honourable affembly.

First, the clergy suppose that they have not, by any fault or demerit, incurred the displeasure of the nation's representatives: neither can the declared loyalty of the prefent fett, from the highest prelate to the lowest vicar, be in the least disputed: because there are hardly ten clergymen through the whole kingdom, for more than nineteen years paft, who have not been either preferred entirely upon account of their declared affection to the Hanover line, or higher promoted as the due reward of the fame merit.

There is not a landlord, in the whole kingdom, refiding fome part of the year at his country seat,

who

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who is not, in his own confcience, fully convinced, that the tithes of his minifter have gradually funk, for fome years paft, one third, or at least one fourth of their former value, exclufive of all non-folvencies.

The payment of tithes, in this kingdom, is fubject to fo many frauds, brangles, and other difficulties, not only from papists and diffenters, but even from those who profefs themselves proteftants; that, by the expence, the trouble, and vexation of collecting, or bargaining for them, they are, of all other rents, the most precarious, uncertain, and ill paid.

The landlords, in moft parishes, expect, as a compliment, that they fhall pay little more than half the value of the tithes for the lands they hold in their own hands; which often confift of large domains: and it is the minister's interest to make them ealy upon that article, when he confiders what influence thofe gentlemen have upon their

tenants.

The clergy cannot but think it extremely fevere, that, in a bill for encouraging the linen manufacture, they alone must be the fufferers, who can leaft afford it. If, as I am told, there be a tax of three thousand pounds a year paid by the publick, for a farther encouragement to the faid manufacture, are not the clergy equal sharers in the charge with the rest of their fellow-fubjects? What fatisfactory reafon can be therefore given, why they alone should bear the whole additional weight, unlefst

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less it will be alledged that their property is not upon an equal foot with the properties of other men. They acquire their own small pittance by at leaft as honeft means as their neighbours, the landlords, poffefs their eftates; and have been always fuppofed, except in rebellious or fanatical times, to have as good a title: for no families now in being can fhew a more ancient. Indeed, if it be true, that fome perfons (I hope they were not many) were seen to laugh when the rights of the clergy were mentioned; in this cafe an opinion may poffibly be foon advanced, that they have no rights at all. And this is likely enough to gain ground, in proportion as the contempt of all religion fhall increase, which is already in a very for ward way.

It is faid, there will be alfo added, in this bill, a clause for diminishing the tithe of hops, in order to cultivate that useful plant among us: and here likewise the load is to lie entirely on the shoulders of the clergy, while the landlords reap all the benefit. It will not be easy to forefee where fuck proceedings are like to ftop: or whether, by the fame authority, in civil times, a parliament may not as juftly challenge the fame power in reducing all things titheable, not below the tenth part of the product (which is, and ever will be, the clergy's equitable right), but from a tenth part to a fixtieth or eightieth, and from thence to nothing.

I have heard it granted, by skilful persons, that the practice of taxing the clergy, by parliament, VOL. IX. without

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