Tithes were originally paid in kind, that is, the tenth wheat-sheaf, the tenth lamb or pig, as the case might be, be longed to the parson of the parish as his tithe. The inconvenience and vexation of such a mode of payment are obvious, but no attempt had been made in this country, till very recently, to introduce a general improvement in the mode of collection. The inconvenience of paying tithes in kind must long since have been felt, and certain modes of obviating it were occasionally practised. Sometimes the owner of land would enter into a composition with the parson or vicar, with the consent of the ordinary and the patron of the living, by which certain land should be altogether discharged from tithes, on conveying other land for the use of the church, or making compensation. In other words, the owner of the land pur chased an exemption from tithes. Such arrangements between landowners and the church were recognised by law ; but it was found that they were often injurious to the church by reason of an insufficient value being given for the tithes. The acts 1 Eli zabeth, c. 19, and 13 Elizabeth, c. 10, were accordingly passed, which disabled arch bishops, bishops, colleges, deans, chapters, hospitals, parsons, and vicars, from mak ing any alienation of their property for a longer term than twenty-one years or three lives. In order to establish an ex emption from tithes on the ground of a real composition, it is therefore necessary to show that such composition had been entered into before the statutes of Eliza beth. Since that time compositions have rarely been made, except under the au thority of private acts of parliament.
Another method of avoiding the pay ment of tithes in kind was by a modus decimandi, commonly called a modus. This consists of any custom in a parti cular place, by which the ordinary mode of collecting tithes has been super seded by some special manner of tithing. In some parishes the custom has pre vailed, time out of mind, of paying a cer tain sum of money annually for every acre of land, in lieu of tithes. In others, a smaller quantity of produce is given, and the residue is made up in labour, as every 12th sheaf of wheat instead of the 10th, but to be housed or threshed by the tithe-payer.
A. large portion of the land of Eng land and Wales is tithe-free from various causes. Some has been exempted under real composition, as already explained, and some by prescription, which sup poses a composition to have been for merly made. The most frequent ground of exemption is that the land once be longed to a religious house, and was there fore discharged in following manner :—All abbots, priors, and other heads of religious houses, originally paid tithes from the lands belonging to them, until Pope Paschal II. exempted all spiritual persons from paying tithes of lands which were in their own bands. This general dis charge continued till the time of King Henry II., when Pope Adrian IV. re strained it to the three religious orders of Cistercians, Tempters, and Hospitalers, to whom Pope Innocent III. added the Prannonstratenses. These four orders, on account of their exemption, were commonly called the privileged orders. The Council of Lateran, in 1215, further restrained this exemption to lands in the occupation of those religious orders of which they were in possession before that council. Bulls were, however, obtained for discharging particular monasteries from the payment of tithes, which would not otherwise have been exempt ; by which means much land has been ever since tithe-free. Another mode by which lands belonging to religious houses be came not liable to the payment of tithes was that of unity of possession; as where the lands and the rectory belonged to the same establishment, which would not, of course, pay tithes to itself. Yet
the lands were not absolutely discharged by this unity of possession, for, upon any disunion, the payment of tithes was re vived; so that the union only suspended the payment. The act 31 Hen. VIII. c. 13, which dissolved several of the reli gious houses, continued the discharge of their lands from tithes, though in the possession of the king or any other per son by grant from the crown ; and, in consequence of this, the lands of many laymen which were granted by the crown are tithe-free, and the right to tithe and the property in many rectories are vested in laymen. Many monas teries had previously been dissolved by act of parliament, but as no such clause as that contained in the 31 Hen. VIII. had been introduced into other acts, the lands of the monasteries dissolved by them became chargeable with tithes.
We have stated enough concerning the nature of tithes and the various circum stances affecting them, to show how com plicated must be the laws, and how en tangled the interests of different parties who had to pay or to receive them. The payment of tithes in kind has been a cause of constant dispute between cler gymen and their parishioners. With the best intentions on both sides, the very nature of tithes is such, that doubts and difficulties must arise between them,; and even where there is no doubt, the form and principle of payment are odious and dis couraging. The hardships and injustice of tithes upon the agriculturist are well described by Dr. Paley :—" Agriculture is discouraged by every constitution of landed property which lets in those who have no concern in the improvement to a participation of the profit ; of all institu tions which are in this way adverse to cultivation and improvement, none is so noxious as that of tithes. A claimant here enters into the produce who con tributed no assistance whatever to the production. When years perhaps of care and toil have matured an improvement; when the husbandman sees new crops ripening to his skill and industry ; the moment he is ready to put his sickle to the grain, he finds himself compelled to divide his harvest with a stranger." (Moral and Political Philosophy, chapter xii.) If tithes then be in principle an inju rious and restrictive tax upon agriculture, and if the mode of collection be vexations, it became the duty of a legislature to provide a remedy for these evils. But tithes are unlike any other tax, which being found injurious to the state, may be removed on providing others. They are not the property of the state : they are payable not only to spiritual persons, but to lay impropriators; they have been the subject of innume"able private bargains; land has been sold at a higher price on account of its exemption from tithe ; the value of the patronage of the greater portion of the livings of this country is dependent upon the existing liability of land to tithes; in short, the various rela tions of society have been for centuries so closely connected with the receipt and payment of tithes, that to have abolished them would have been injustice to many, and no advantage to the community ; for the whole profit would immediately have been enjoyed by those whose lands were discharged from payments to which they had always been liable, and subject to which they had most probably been pur chased.