Mr. W. H. Smith has made an important announcement which
will probably lengthen the Session by a week or a fort- night,—namely, that the Government intend to press the little Tithes Bill, which substitutes for the unpopular and invidious procedure by distraint, the ordinary procedure for debt in a County-Court. The Government will move the second reading on Monday, and proceed with it de die in diem till it is passed. We are heartily glad that they have taken this timely reso- lution. It is clearly the right thing to do. There are clergy- men in Wales in considerable numbers who will simply starve if they cannot recover the tithe, to which they are as much entitled as the owner of any other rent-charge on property, and it is a monstrous thing that the mere unpopularity of the method by which the payment of tithe is at present enforced should interfere with a man's obtaining what is as much his own property as if he had lent the money to the farmer who pays the tithe, and were receiving interest on his loan. The Government will lose nothing by their salutary firmness, though they might have come to the decision somewhat sooner.
