Mr. Edward Jeffries Esdaile and his successors are the owners by purchase, £20,000, of the tithes of the parish of S. Botolph without, Aldgate. Disputes arose after the Act of 1879 as to payments to be made to Mr. Esdaile in respect of tithes. An Act was therefore passed in 1881, called, “The City of London Tithes, S. Botolph without, Aldgate,” (42 & 43 Vict. c. cxcvii.) to commute the tithes.
By sec. 3 of this Act, the tithe-owner is to receive £6,500 a year in lieu of tithes, which was to be levied and collected by the churchwardens from the persons by law rateable to poor rates, and shall be assessed on the annual rateable value of the houses assessed for poor rates. The £6,500 a year was to be paid by the churchwardens to the tithe-owner after the 29th September, 1881, by two half-yearly payments. The cost of making and collecting the tithe-rates is to be paid by the ratepayers, and is to be exclusive of the £6,500. The owners of houses can redeem the tithes as if they were rent-charge under the Tithes Commutation Act of 1836.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE COMMUTATION ACT OF 1836[285].
Up to the time that this Act was passed, the tithe-owner claimed in kind the tenth part of the gross produce of the land, without contributing anything towards cultivation or improvement. In fact, the claim retarded both, and the object of the Act was to advance and not to keep back the cultivation and improvement of the land. The tithe was a tax upon labour and capital. The collection of tithes became both unpopular and obnoxious.
“Tithes are a tax,” says Archdeacon Paley, “not only upon industry, but upon that industry which feeds mankind. They operate as a bounty upon pasture. The burden of the whole tax falls upon tillage, that is, upon that precise mode of cultivation which it is the business of the State to relieve and remunerate in preference to every other.”[286]
“The tithe,” says Adam Smith, “is always a great discouragement both to the improvement of the landlords and to the cultivation of the farmers. The one cannot venture to make the most important, which are generally the most expensive, improvements, nor the other to raise the most valuable, which are generally, too, the most expensive, crops, when the Church, which lays out no part of the expense, is to share so very largely in the profit.”[287]
Agricultural depression, during the four years previous to 1836, and the growing discontent of agricultural tithe-payers, demanded a speedy solution of this problem. Statesmen tried to solve it before Lord Russell attempted the task. Lord Althorp tried it in 1833, and again in 1834, but failed on both occasions. His three principal propositions were: (1) To substitute a money payment in lieu of tithes in kind; (2) The rent-charge to bear a fixed proportion to the rent payable on the land; and (3) To redeem the tithe by twenty-five years’ purchase, or the creation of a rent-charge of equal value. The second proposition was the weakest. Any attempt to establish a proportion between the tithe and rent would end in failure, for the two had no similar foundation. Tithe was founded upon produce, but rent was not. Lord Althorp would make tithe to fluctuate with rent, retaining a fixed proportion of rent-charge. In principle it was a tax on capital, and therefore failed.
In 1835, Sir Robert Peel, when Prime Minister, introduced a Bill on the same subject. The principle contained in his Bill was that there should be a fixed money payment in the shape of a corn-rent in lieu of tithes, varying yearly according to the price of the three corns—wheat, barley, and oats; that it should be a voluntary arrangement between the tithe-owner and tithe-payer. The machinery to carry out this Bill was to appoint three Commissioners, viz., two by the Crown, and one by the Archbishop of Canterbury. These Commissioners should appoint Assistant Commissioners. Within a month after he had introduced this Bill, his Government went out of office, on the 8th of April, 1835.