The Trials of a Country Parson

by Augustus Jessopp

1. The governing body should not be too large, nor should it ever be chosen from the inhabitants of the parish exclusively.

2. It should be a representative body.

3. Its meetings should not be held too frequently.

4. Its proceedings should be duly chronicled, and a record kept which might be produced and referred to when necessary.

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1. Not too large, because experience proves that any administrative body is in danger of becoming a speechifying body, and liable to be influenced by pressure from without, almost exactly in proportion to the increase of its numbers. Nor should this body be chosen exclusively from the inhabitants of the parish. In the case of small parishes, it would be quite impossible to find persons qualified to exercise the powers to be conferred, or fitted by education and intelligence to occupy the independent and important position of governor.

2. It will be necessary that the governing body should in all cases be a representative body. In such a body what interests should be represented?

(i) First the owners of the land on which tithes are paid. Observe, I do not say the tithe-payers; for, of all the objectionable practices which have sprung up among us affecting the tenure of the land, and the burdens it has to bear, none appears to me more mischievous or indefensible, none has done more to make the tillers of the soil discontented, or led them more passionately to set themselves against their best friends, than the practice sanctioned by the Legislature of calling upon the tenant to pay the tithe in addition to the rent of his land. As long as this goes on, so long will both tenant and landlord be tempted to make common cause with one another in hopes of getting rid of the tithe. You might just as well call upon the tenant to pay the landlord’s mortgage interest, or the jointures and annuities with which the estate is charged, or the premiums upon his policies of insurance, as call upon him to pay the tithe. A landlord holds his lands subject to certain charges, which are antecedent to any profits that may remain to him after they are discharged.

The land-tax, the county-rates, the tithe, are all on the same level; so are the jointures, annuities, and interest of money borrowed. Of course the landlord would gladly throw them all upon the tenant if he could, and does throw upon him all he can. In permitting him to follow this course, you tempt the tenant to cry out, “Away with this payment, and away with that!” and you tempt the landlord to cry, “Amen! So be it, as long as my rent is assured me!” Worried by the annual recurrence of extra payments, for which he has to provide at all sorts of inconvenient times, the tenant is ready enough to demand relief from these burdens, never reflecting that he is playing the landlord’s game, directly or indirectly robbing somebody else to enrich the owner of the soil. “Down with the rates!” means “Throw them upon the Consolidated Fund and let the taxpayer relieve the landlord.” “Down with the jointures!” would mean “Rob the dowagers and let the landlord be the richer for the pillage.” “Down with the mortgage interest!” would mean “Up with the debtor at the expense of the creditor;” and “Down with the tithe!” would mean the extinction of the parson, but with the gain of not a shilling ultimately to the tenant, though with a very considerable gain to the owner of the land. It must be, and it is, demoralizing to allow the payment of the tithe to be regarded as an extra with which the tenant is chargeable. The obligation to pay the tithe is a condition antecedent to the owner of the soil enjoying the very possession of his land. The tithe is a rent-charge upon the land, exactly as an annuity or jointure is—or, if you choose to call it a tax because the term tax is an odious word, and therefore serviceable when you want to make those you hate odious—it is a landlord’s tax, and no tenant should be allowed to pay it without having the right under all circumstances of deducting it from his rent.

Moreover, without yielding to the temptation of straying into an historical argument, yet remembering that in the past there was a very close connection between the landlord whose estate supplied the tithe from which the parson was supported and the patron of the living to which the parson was instituted, I think there are good reasons why the owners of the soil liable to pay tithe should be represented in the proposed governing body of a benefice. Where the parish was a close parish—i.e., owned by a single landlord—he would naturally and very properly be the only person eligible, or at any rate capable of nominating the tithe-owner’s representative. Where there were many landlords, they could elect their representatives—one or more, as the case might be—in the ordinary way.