10. Now you will ask, how shall that be done, or how may we know how to adjust our Nursery to our Orchard? To which I answer, that if there be twelve thousand Church-livings in England, Dignitaries included, then that about four hundred being sent forth per ann. into the Vineyard, may keep it well served, without luxuriency; for according to the Mortality-Bill-observation, about that number will dye yearly out of twelve thousand Adult-persons, such as Ministers are as to age, and ought to be as well as to speculative knowledge, as practical experience, both of themselves and others.
11. But I have digressed, my main scope being to explain the nature of the Tax of Tythes; nevertheless since the end of such explanation is but to perswade men to bear quietly so much Tax as is necessary, and not to kick against the pricks; and since the end of that again, and the end of all else we are to do, is but to preserve the publick Peace, I think I have not been impertinent in inserting this little Advertisement, making so much for the Peace of our Jerusalem.
12. But to return to Tythes as a Tax or Levy, I say that in England it is none, whatsoever it might be or seem to be in the first Age of its Institution; nor will the Kings Quit-rents in Ireland as they are properly none now, seem any in the next Age, when every man will proportion his Expence to the remainder of his own Rent after the King is paid his; for ’tis surprize and the suddenness of the Charge, which a Tax supervenient to a mans other expences and issues makes, that renders it a burthen, and that intolerable to such as will not understand it, making men even to take up Arms to withstand it; that is, leap out of the Frying-pan upon earth into the fire even of hell, which is War and the consequences thereof.
13. Now Tythes being no Tax, I speak of it but as the modus or pattern of a Tax, affirming it to be next to one, the most equal and indifferent which can be appointed in order to defray the publick Charge of the whole Nation as well as that of the Church; for hereby is collected a proportion of all the Corn, Cattle, Fish, Fowl, Fruit, Wool, Honey, Wax, Oyl, Hemp, and Flax of the Nation, as a result of the Lands, Art, Labour, and Stock which produced them; onely it is scarce regular in respect of Housing, Cloth, Drinks, Leather, Feathers, and the several Manufactures of them; insomuch, as if the difference of Tythes which the Countrey payes in proportion to the City, were now de novo to be established, I do not see what in likelihood would sooner cause a grand sedition about it.
14. The payment of an aliquot part to the King out of the same things as now pay Tythes, in specie, would have an inconvenience, because the Kings Rents would be like the Dividend in Colledges, viz. higher or lower according to the prices of those Commodities, unless the said inequality in Colledges happen by reason of the fewness of particulars, according to the market rates whereof, their Rents are paid in money; whereas the whole of all the particulars might well enough ballance each other, a dear or plentiful year being but an appellation secundum quid, viz. with reference as to Corn onely, as the chief food of the multitude; whereas ’tis likely, that the same causes which makes Corn scarce may make other things in plenty of no less use to the King; as repairing in one thing what he wants in another.
15. Another inconvenience would be that which was observed in Ireland, when the Ministery were paid by Sallary, and the Tythes in kinde paid to the State; who because they could not actually receive them in specie, let them at farm to the most bidder; in the Transaction whereof was much juggling, combination, and collusion, which perhaps might have been remedied, had not that course been used but as a sudden temporary shift, without intention of continuing it.
16. The third inconvenience is, that abovementioned, viz. the necessity of another way of Tax, to take in the Manufactures of those Commodities which pay the Tax of Tythes; whereas possibly there is a way of Tax equal in its own nature, and which needs not to be pieced up by any other; so as the Officers about that may have a full employment, and none others wanted, whose wide intervals of leasure shall make them seem Drones, as they are also the Caterpillers of any State.
[CHAP. XIII.]
Of several smaller wayes of levying Money.
When the people are weary of any one sort of Tax, presently some Projector propounds another, and gets himself audience, by affirming he can propound a way how all the publick charge may be born without the way that is. As for example, if a Land-tax be the present distasted way, and the people weary of it, then he offers to do the business without such a Land-tax, and propound either a Poll-money, Excize, or the institution of some new Office or Monopoly, and hereby draws some or other to hearken to him; which is readily enough done by those who are not in the places of profit relating to the way of Levies in use, but hope to make themselves Offices in the new Institution.