THE TITHE BILL
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—When I read the bitter letter of Mr. W. J. Wenham on the above subject in your issue of June 22nd and contrasted it with your editorial comment a week earlier, the immediate reaction to my mind was one of hopeful expectation that the " trial " of tithe before the Royal Commission will be in the hands of tried publicists rather than before extreme partisans.
Mr. Wenham acknowledged The Spectator as a source of " sweetness and light " on the tithe problem but if he con- siders that his letter displays any of those qualities I hesitate to think what Mr. Wenham would write if he were really angry.
He suggests that " every lawyer saw through the trick " in the recent Bill ; that is certainly news to me—at any rate, the Lord Chancellor spoke, and he and other lawyers voted, in favour of the Bill. His latter, however, with the references to a " feudal ecclesiastical tax " and a " privileged and predatory Church " discloses such inaccuracies and irrelevan- cies that it hardly calls for a serious reply.—I am, Sir, &c., GEORGE MIDDLETON, Chairman of the Tithe Com- mittee of Queen Anne's Bounty.
Bounty Office, 3 Dean's Yard, Westminster, S.W. 1.
Previous page
