LATE TITHE CASES.
[From the Times.] " The Vicar of Bramham desires me to state, that, in consequence of the passing of a recent act of Parliament. he is compelled to adopt measures which may by some be considered harsh or precipitate ; but in duty to what he owes to his successors, he feels bound to protect the rights of the vicarage."-Letter from Mr. Samuel Powell, Aug, 5.
No, not for yourselves, ye reverend men,
Do you take one pig in every ten, But for Holy Church's future heirs, Who've an abstract right to that pig, as theirs ; The law supposing that such heirs male Are already seized of the pig, in tail.
No, not for himself bath Bramham's priest
His "well-beloved " of their pennies fleeced : But it is that, before his prescient eyes, All future Vicars of Bramham rise,
With their embryo daughters' nephews, nieces, And 'tis for them the poor he fleeces.
He heareth their voices, ages hence,
Saying. " Take the pig "- ' Oh take the pence ! "
The cries of little vicarial dears, The unborn Bramhamites, reach his ears ; And, did he resist that soft appeal, He would not like a true-born Vicar feel.
Thou, too, Lundy of Lockington !
A Rector true, if e'er there was one ; Who, fur sake of the Lundies of coining ages, Gripest the tenths of labourers' wages.* 'Tis true in the pockets of thy small-clothes The claini'd " obventionf" of fourpence goes; But its abstract spirit, unconfined, Spreads to all future Rector-kind, Warning them all to their rights to wake, And rather to face the block, the stake, Than give up their darling right to take. One grain of musk, it is said, perfumes
(So subtle its spirit) a thousand rooms ; Anti a single fourpence, pocketed well, Through a thousand Rectors' lives will tell. Then still continue, ye reverend souls, And still, as your rich Pactolus rolls, Grasp every penny, on every side, From every wretch, to swell its tide : Remembering still what the Law lays down, In that pure, poetic style of its own- " If the parson in ease submits to loss, he Inflicts the same on the parson in posse."
* " Fourteen agricultural labourers (one of whom received so little as six guineas for yearly wages, one eight, one nine, another ten guineas, and the best-paid of the whole not more than 181. annually) were all, in the course of the autumn of 1832, served with demands of tithe at the rate of 4d. in the pound sterling, on behalf of the Reverend Francis Lundy. Rector of Lockingtom in the East Riding of Yorkshire."-Tbses, August 1833. One of the various general terms under which o'ilations, tithes, &e. are comprised:
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