THE TITHE RENT-CHARGE BILL.
WE regret extremely that the Government have not more definitely announced their intention to regard the Tithe Rent-Charge Bill as one of the Bills which must, at any cost of time, be passed before Parliament rises. No doubt the Government have not actually decided to abandon the measure. Indeed, they have expressed a very strong hope that it may meet with such treatment in the House of Commons as will enable it to become law. But this is not enough. Rather it is an encouragement to the tenacious opposition already threatened by a body of Radical Members. We cannot help thinking that there are the very gravest reasons which make the passage of the Bill a matter of the first importance. Since we most sincerely desire the welfare of the Ministry, we are therefore unable to refrain from imploring them to give their most serious attention to the question.
Not only is the Bill equitable in itself as placing the burden of the actual payment of tithe where it of right belongs, but it is at this moment particularly expedient. In Wales we are face to face with an anti- tithe agitation which is spreading daily. This tithe agitation is in its character precisely similar to that which caused such enormous trouble in Ireland fifty years ago. In Wales, as formerly in Ireland, the men who have actually to put their hands into their pockets and pay the tithe, are of a religious denomination different from that on account of which the tithe is paid. Just as was the case in Ireland, the Welsh tithe-payers are—whether rightly or wrongly is not now the question—bitterly hostile to the owners of tithe, and regard the purposes for which tithe is raised as opposed to their own religious interests. It is no good to argue with men in such a frame of nun' d, as did the Financial Secretary of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners on a recent occasion before the Tithe-Riots Inquiry, that the tenants only nominally pay the tithe, and that, in fact, they are merely the hands by which the landlord is discharging his liability. That may be very good political economy, but it merely sounds a mockery to the Welsh peasant, who, since he actually hands over the money to the tithe-collector, cannot be persuaded that it is not he who is sup- porting a Church with which he is entirely out of sympathy. How many educated people never get over the dislike of paying money out of pocket, though they know that they will certainly be reimbursed, and who, when they do so, cannot help feeling as if they were, in fast, bidding adieu for ever to their money. Is it to be wondered at, then, that ignorant Welsh peasants regard the payments for tithe as made by them out of their own pockets ? It is obvious that just now this sense of grievance connected with the tithe has been intensified by the fact that all over Wales the agricultural depression has been very deeply felt. The farmers are irritated and made unreasonable, as men always are by falling prices and bad trade. Add to this the fact that by some strange perversion the tithe is regarded as something anti-national, and opposed to the interest of the Celts, and we have just the conditions tin ler which a tithe
agitation may assume very formidable dimensions. We must remember, too, that in Wales, organisations for combined action spring up as rapidly as they do in Ireland, and that the high spirit and courage of the Welsh render their popular movements extremely vigorous and determined. If things go on as they are going, the Government may during the winter be face to face with a very dangerous organised resistance to tithe. To meet this if it occurs, they will be obliged to use force, but force under great disadvantages. They will be in the unpleasant poeition of maintaining an arrangement which they themselves have condemned as a bad one, and which they are only waiting to abolish by law. Surely every dictate of prudence urges them to meet the difficulties of an extended tithe agitation by proceeding with a Bill which, without wronging any one, affords a peaceful and reasonable solution of a very disagreeable, and possibly a very dangerous, situation. It will, no doubt, be argued that if the threatened opposition on the part of a certain body of Radicals takes place, it will be impossible for the Government in the time at their disposal to carry the Tithe Rent-Charge Bill. We believe that such fears are without foundation. The Government have only to insist on carrying their Bill, and the threats of opposition will die away. In the first place, the Radicals, however much they may desire the destruction of a Radical measure not introduced by themselves, will not really dare to oppose the Bill. To do so would ruin them with the counties, and they know it. The farmers feel on the tithe question as they feel on no other subject. Those who deprive them of relief, or put off that relief, will not earn their thanks. If during the Northwich election Lord Henry Grosvenor could show the farmers that the Opposition were opposing their best interests, the Glad- atonian candidate would not have much chance of victory. Opposition to a measure of relief in the case of tithe would ruin the Gladstenian cause in half the counties in England. Supposing, however, in spite of all this, that the Opposition did, regardless of consequences, obstruct the Bill. Why should that deter the Government from pressing it forward ? Have they not got the Closure at their command 8 Why should they not apply it to English Bills as well as to Irish ? When Parliament gave them the Closure, it meant the new instru- ment to be need, not laid on the shelf. With the Closure resolutely applied not to stifle discussion, but to prevent time being wasted by idle talk, the Government have it now in their power to pass any measure. They could not make better use of this power than in passing a measure which will not only afford relief to the farmer, but which may be the means of checking very serious social agitation in Wales.
That there is nothing in the Bill to which any Radical or Liberal could possibly take objection, a perusal of its clauses will at once make evident. The Bill in its essential points is a very simple one, though, owing to certain minor provisions of a highly technical nature, its clauses cover sixteen pages. Its second section enacts that, after the passing of the Act, the owner for the time being of lands subject to tithe rent-charge shall be liable to pay such rent-charge, and that the old remedy of distress on the land shall be abolished. The next section declares that the tithe shall be recoverable from the owner as if it were a simple contract debt, provided that if it can be shown that the whole profits from the land in any twelie months are not equal to the tithe charged on it, then only so much as the land can produce shall be obtained from the owner. The next clause of importance is the sixth, under which it is enacted that in the case of tenancies existing at the passing of the Act, where the tenants have contracted to pay the tithe, a sum equal to the tithe shall be added to the rent. Next follow facilities for redeeming tithe at not less than twenty years' purchase, and for the compulsory redemp: tion of sums of tithe lees than £2 due on account of tithe other than that in the hands of laymen, and of tithe charged on land divided into building plots. Such is a rough outline of the Act. It is obvious that the framers of provisions so reasonable and beneficial have every right to demand fair treatment for their measure, and if they do not obtain it, to take whatever steps may be necessary to prevent the interests of the country from suffering through further delay of a reform already too long postpone& Governments in England, as else- where, gain by firmness. The Government may do a great deal to establish its hold on the country as a Government of resolu- tion in reform and in administration. It cannot snake a better beginning than by insisting that the Tithe Rent-Charge Bill shall become law before Parliament rises.
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