A history of tithes

by Henry William Clarke

Lord John Russell, a member of Lord Melbourne’s Government which succeeded Sir Robert Peel’s, took up the subject of tithes by introducing a Bill on the 9th of February, 1836. “Tithe,” said his lordship, “was a discouragement to industry, a penalty on skill, a heavy mulct on those who expended the most capital and displayed the greatest skill in the cultivation of the land.” These were true words; and it gives one pleasure to observe that he had the courage to boldly express his opinions. But his boldest statement was that “tithes were the property of the nation.” This remark has again and again been quoted by the opponents of tithes, and it has as often been contradicted by the defenders of tithes.

Lord Russell rejected Lord Althorp’s plan which related to the establishment of a proportion between tithe and rent. He adopted the machinery and some other parts of Sir Robert Peel’s Bill. The principles contained in Lord Russell’s Bill were that the landowner or tenant might agree with the tithe-owner to commute the tithe, whether paid by modus or composition or otherwise, into a corn-rent payable in money and permanent in quantity, but fluctuating yearly in value, so that in future any improved value given to land would not increase the amount of the rent-charge. The corns were to be wheat, oats, and barley. The base of calculation was to be the average tithe paid for the seven years previous to Christmas, 1835. The arrangement was to be voluntary up to the 1st October, 1838, then compulsory. The Bill was at first but tentative, and was materially changed in its progress through the House.

The Commutation Act made a great change. The tithes were no longer to be paid on the produce or increase of the land, as stated in the Mosaic Law, upon which law the payment of tithes in the Christian Church was founded. Before the passing of the Act, the tithe-owner had to sue the tithe-payer for arrears, but after the Act was passed, he had the power to distrain on the land for arrears, and the Act further empowers the tithe-owner to go on any other land belonging to the same landowner which may be in the same parish to recover the arrears of rent-charge, should the land from which the tithe was due be unable to satisfy his claim and costs. The tithe-owner has a prior claim to the landlord’s.

The following statement will serve as an illustration of Lord Russell’s Act. A money payment was fixed by the Tithe Commissioners on an average of seven years’ payment of tithes. Let this be £100; the third of which, or £33 6s. 8d., is for wheat, a similar sum for barley, and oats. The average prices of the three corns per bushel for the seven years’ previous to 1835 was—for wheat, 7s. 0¼d.; for barley, 3s. 11½d.; for oats, 2s. 9d. The tithe-payer has to pay in respect of his £100 rent-charge the price of 94·95 bushels of wheat, 168·42 bushels of barley, and 242·42 bushels of oats. Early in January of every year a duly authorized advertisement is inserted in the London Gazette by order of the Comptroller of Corn, stating the average prices of wheat, barley, and oats for the seven years then next preceding. The serious objection to this plan is that the average prices of the three cereals are calculated on the prices sold to the millers, which included the cost of freight of one or more middlemen, instead of calculating on the prices sold by the farmers. This false system enhances the value of the rent-charge.

Supposing that for any year, say 1885, wheat was advertised in the London Gazette at 5s. 1¾d. per bushel; barley, 3s. 11¾d.; oats, 2s. 8¾d., what has the tithe-owner to receive for £100 tithe-rent charge?

He receives (94·95 × 61¾d. + 168·42 × 47¾d. + 242·42 × 32¼d.) = £90 10s. 3½d.

The 80th section of the Act says that “any tenant who shall pay any such rent-charge shall be entitled to deduct the amount thereof from the rent payable by him to his landlord, and shall be allowed the same in account with his landlord.” There are few instances in which the tenants deduct the tithes from their rents according to this section. The general practice is that the farmer, in his lease or agreement, agrees to pay the tithes himself to the tithe-owner, and the rent is computed accordingly. The tenant therefore pays the rent-charge for the landlord. If a tenant should take a farm without making any such agreement, then the 80th section comes into force. But in the other case the landlord contracts himself out of the 80th section. There is no doubt that the Legislature in 1836 intended that the landlords should pay the rent-charges, and thus prevent any friction which may occur in the collection between the clergyman and his parishioners. To remove this friction, the Government brought in a Bill in 1890.

In the Commutation Act, although the rent-charge is to be paid by the landlord, yet the tithe-owner cannot bring an action against him for any arrears, but is bound by the act to distrain on the land. The tenant has therefore two landlords. Hence we find in years of agricultural depression that tenants who receive a deduction in the half-year’s rents from their landlord, seek also for a deduction from their second landlord, the tithe-owner. These applications are generally made to parochial incumbents, who prefer making the deduction asked for than run the odium resulting from distraints on the lands of their parishioners. Other tithe-owners, such as the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, impropriators, colleges, schools, etc., will make no deduction whatever, but sternly carry out the provisions of the Act by making distraints on the lands. Similar conduct was pursued before the passing of the Commutation Act. The parochial clergy, in the most sympathetic manner, accepted very low tithes in years of agricultural depression, but the clerical appropriators and all the impropriators strictly exacted every part of their tithes.

When the Commutation Bill was passing through Parliament, it was urged that many landlords were often absent from the country for a considerable time, and therefore if the rent-charges were not paid, the tithe-owners would find it very difficult to get payment from absent landlords, who had no agents in the country. The law was therefore framed to enable the tithe-owners to distrain on the lands for arrears, just in the same manner as the landlords could distrain for arrears of rent. This was the origin of dual landlordism as it appears in the Act.

The rent-charges are liable to parliamentary, parochial, county, and other rates, charges, and assessments, to which the tithes were liable. The great injustice of tithe-rent charges is that they are levied only upon agricultural produce, thus leaving free of such charges the extensive city and town lands. The lands in the vicinity of large cities and towns, which produced a rental £3 per acre, and tithe, 10s., when converted to building purposes produce enormous ground-rents, besides a reversion of the house property at the expiration of the leases. In such cases the tithe-owner receives no tithe on the building value. Thus the value of the landlord’s acre is increased one hundredfold, but the tithe is not increased, and thus the growing value of the land leaves no part of it for the support of religion.