strong proof of the wisdom and sound policy of the framers of those laws; exhibiting beyond a possibility of doubt, that the evils they were intended to correct existed, and pointed out the necessity of keeping a cautious and jealous eye upon all those, who under any pretext, would endeavour to alter the tenure, by which the ecclesiastical polity was maintained. Innovations attempted upon ancient establishments, furnished at all times good ground of alarm, and if no other argument could be adduced in support of it, the conduct and caution of our ancestors held out an example worthy of modern imitation.

His lordship, after having given a most able account of the formation of the ecclesiastical polity of this country, and of the various changes it underwent, as to the different modes adopted, but in which he contended the principle in a single instance had never been departed from, next turned his attention to the mode in which private bills were permitted to make their way through both Houses, and that in matters in which property was concerned, to the great injury of many, if not the total ruin of some private families; many proofs of this evil had come to his knowledge as a member of the other House, not a few in his professional character, before he had the honour of a seat in that House, nor had he been a total stranger to such evils since he was called upon to preside in another place. He did not recollect the twentieth part of them, but he could not forbear stating a few, which had recently challenged his recollection. Through the latter channel he had learned, that there was a family of the name of Gardiner, in Wales, which had been stripped of its whole property by the compendious and certain operation of a private bill. This, surely, must have proceeded from the most criminal inattention, for he could not attribute it to a criminal intention to ruin the unfortunate and distressed; indeed, he believed he might point out with certainty one source of the evil, he meant the facility, or rather rapidity with which private bills were hurried through the committees of the other House, where it was not unfrequent to decide upon the merits of a bill, which would affect the property and interests of persons inhabiting a district of several miles in extent, in a less time than it took him to determine upon the propriety of issuing an order for a few pounds, by

which no man's property could be injured. He begged leave, while he was on this part of his subject, to state a particular fact, which was reported to him upon an authority which no person who heard him would, he believed, question, after he mentioned the voucher's name; a man, he would be bold to say, one of the most upright and honest in either House of Parliament, whether those epithets were applied to him in his public or private character; the gentleman he alluded to was sir George Savile; the circumstance was this: in a committee on a private Bill, a man habited rather meanly attended the committee, and seemed to be more anxious and interested in the business going on than what generally happens in the case of a by-stander, whom mere curiosity might have drawn thither. The Bill took up some time before the members agreed to a report, yet the stranger was not absent scarcely an instant; at length, when the committee had finished, the stran ger betrayed visible emotions and an ap parent distress of mind. The worthy baronet interrogated the man upon the cause of his seeming embarrassment, who informed him, that a particular clause in the Bill which had just passed the committee, would involve him and his family in certain ruin; that when he heard such a Bill had been introduced into the House, he was aware of what he had been just then a witness to; that having no means of conveyance, he was necessitated to walk up to London on foot, and not having money was not able to fee counsel to defend his rights. The worthy baronet made farther inquiries, and finding the poor man's story to be well founded, removed all the impediments that stood in his way, by which means an innocent, indigent man and his family were rescued from destruction.

His lordship adduced one or two other instances of a similar tendency, and proceeded to make several observations on the Bill: he first examined the preamble, which described the property intended to be divided, containing in the whole fiftytwo yard lands; containing likewise a recital of the names of the parties, namely, the lord of the manor, the patron of the living, and the incumbent or rector. The Bill then states the names of five persons, who have a right to the com mon fields in commonable land, to be inclosed, which fields are to be divided among the said proprietors. He observed,

mention a singular one which came within his own knowledge. It was in the parish of Turringdon, in the Isle of Ely: this parish was insulated, and surrounded by high ditches and deep dykes. The living, if the tythe was fairly collected or commuted for money or land, would, he believed, produce 2,000l. per ann. yet, out of this property, he was persuaded, that the rector procured from it but a mere pittance. He made one attempt to do himself justice, but it miscarried. He in tended to take his tythes in kind, but the farmers constructed bridges across the dykes, in order to remove their crops, leaving the tythe for the clergyman; which, when they effected, they demolished the temporary bridges, and then left the clergyman to get his property out as well as he could. It was with no small degree of embarrassment he ventured to differ from the learned lord on the woolsack; nor should he have risen, had he not been invited, as it were, to give an opinion on the subject, by the manner the learned lord had treated it. The learned lord, from his habits of life, had not an opportunity of being acquainted with several circumstances necessary for a clear and perfect understanding of the receiving tythes in kind, and commuting for them in land or money; and he thought it incumbent to make this observation, the rather because, he was sure, if the learned lord was in possession of those circumstances and facts so necessary to form a judgment of what was fit to be done, the learned lord's feelings would have led him to give his warmest support to the Bill.-The learned lord, in his zeal for what he conceived to be the rights of the clergy, treated the supposed differences arising between the incumbent and his parishioners as so many weak and childish apprehensions. He would not enter into a discussion how far those bickerings and disputes were always well founded; but this he was free to say, that many persons, and some of them able, well-informed, and instructed by the most unerring authority, that of experience and ocular demonstration, would be apt to consider arguments founded in alarm and apprehension for the rights of the church, full as weak and unfounded, if not more weak and childish, than any which had been suggested to show the sound policy of adopting every measure, consistent with the rights of the respective parties, which might promise to remove all causes of discontent and parish

controversy.-He had mentioned one in stance of a case which came within hi own knowledge, in which it would be the happiest circumstance imaginable, if the incumbent had had his share carved out for him in land; and he was sure, that were he to consult his memory, he could quote many similar proofs. In his neighbourhood, which had been an open country, but was now happily enclosed, (he would say happily for all the parties) instead of the parsons and farmers being perpetually quarrelling and going to law, all was har mony and good neighbourhood. The revenues of the church, in point of actual receipt, were considerably increased, the landed property was much augmented in its annual value, and the farmers grew rich. He had himself, he was free to confess, profited considerably as a land-owner, and was anxious to extend those benefits to other parts of the kingdom, though he had no prospect of being a partaker; nor could he help repeating, that he saw no inducement there could be to obstruct enclosure bills, unless it were from a wish to breed discontent, and create animosity between those who, from every motive of common interest and natural connexion, were bound to each other by the strongest ties. On the whole, being a real friend to the principle of enclosing, and seeing nothing in the present Bill which took it out of that general rule or principle, he would vote for receiving the report immediately, and of course give his negative to the learned prelate's motion for recommitting the Bill.

The Bishop of Llandaff (Dr. Shute Barrington) said he had been but a few days in town, and had never seen the Bill till he came into the House. The light, however, thrown upon it by the learned lord on the woolsack, the uncommon ability with which he had gone through each clause, the various unanswerable objections he had urged with a force of argument peculiar to himself, had left no doubt in his mind what opinion he should give. With regard to the incidental matter which had been blended with the proper consi deration of the day, he should be ready to meet it in its full extent, whenever a time should be fixed for its discussion. It was a question which involved in it a variety of the most important points which could possibly affect the whole of a most useful and respectable body of men, the parochial clergy; and which therefore should not be decided but upon the most

mature reflection.

collegiate leases.-There were two assertions, he said, which had been rather unguardedly advanced by the noble earl who spoke last, which, but for the liberal professions of regard to the clergy, and zeal for their interests, he should have suspected to have proceeded from an enemy, rather than a friend, which he could not permit to pass unnoticed. The noble earl had asserted, that the parochial clergy of this country were amply provided for. The only answer he should make, was stating a single fact, from which he should leave their lordships to draw their own inference. The livings which did not exceed 50l. a year would not receive their complete augmentation in less than three centuries. The second assertion of the noble earl contained a charge of a heavy nature indeed, no less than that of a premeditated design to encroach on the rights of the laity. From whence did the noble earl collect his evidence of this design? Did the learned lord on the woolsack frame, or was he only a subordinate agent in this hardy project? How came the right reverend prelate, who espoused the same side of the question with the noble earl, to have opposed this beneficial plan? The learned prelate concluded with observing, that the clergy of this kingdom felt and acknowledged the blessings of an establishment fixed and ascertained by law. Incorporated with the laity, connected in one common interest, citizens of the state holding their property by the same laws, they must be mad indeed could they for an instant forget the obligations they owed to a lay legislature, or entertain a thought of engaging in a combat which must terminate in their inevitable ruin.

He would, however, so far enter into the proposition opered by the right reverend prelate who spoke first, as to declare his concurrence in the general doctrine laid down by his lordship. He meant not to tread over again the same ground, he should only press an argument which the right reverend prelate bad left untouched, and which continued to strike his mind, after nine years view of it, with its original force. One consequence, he said, of commuting tythe for land, was subjecting the clergy to all the burthens of landed property. Some of those burthens had not yet been felt; they would ultimately, he feared, be destractive; but he begged their lordships to consider what must be the situation of a clergyman, whose all depended upon the land allotted by the inclosure? The immediate advantages derived from an increase of income, were more than compensated by the heaviest future inconveniencies, which, as they were remote, were unfortunately neither foreseen nor attended to. Taken on either supposi tion of the incumbent's occupying the land himself, or letting it to a tenant, the event must, in process of time, prove equally fatal to the church. Ill cultivated, impoverished, and exhausted ground, desolated fences, dilapidated barns, an insolvent landlord, and an undone tenant, must leave the successor without relief, and without remedy, to bemoan, in fruitless wishes, the ill-judged exchange. With respect to the present constitutional provision of tythes, he was free to acknowledge, that it was attended with occasional dificulties, though those difficulties had, in his opinion, been considerably overrated, both as to their magnitude and frequency. The clamour raised from the few incumbents who received their tythe in kind, was studiously propagated, while the silent meritorious moderation of the many who benefited their parishioners by an inadequate composition, remained either unknown, or studiously suppressed. The question had hitherto been argued only on the idea that there was no third mode. Should, however, the legislature determine, contrary both to his sentiments and his wishes, to annihilate tythe in future bills of enclosure, he would just hint then, as a matter deserving their lordships' future consideration, the substituting a corn rent on the principle of the well known act of queen Elizabeth, which regulates the payment of reserved rents in [VOL. XXII.]

The Bishop of Peterborough said, he always paid a proper deference to what fell from the learned lord on the woolsack, but he hoped his lordship would excuse him from taking any thing as proved, merely on the authority of a name; regardless with whom he might have the misfortune to differ, he was much more anxious to act right, agreeably to his own judgment, than run the risk of acting wrong in direct contradiction to it. The reverend prelate, who had opened the debate, had opposed the present Bill principally on account of the allotment carved out by it for the rector in lieu of tythes. To that point he chiefly spoke when he first rose, and he must declare, that he heard nothing from the learned lord sufficient to induce him to change his mind, [F]