1899.] Tithe Bent Charge Bill. [129
In cases 1 and 2 the titheowners received the whole tithe and paid the rates themselves. In case 3 the titheowner received the tithe, less the amount of the rates, very much in the same way as a landlord received his rents, less the amount of the income tax thereon. To ascertain the full value of the tithes under case 3 it was obviously necessary to add what was paid to the rate-collector to what was paid to the titheowner. This was what the assistant commissioners were directed to do by the Tithe Commissioners in May, 1838 : —
" It is the purpose of the act to put upon exactly the same footing the titheowners who have paid their own parochial rates and the titheowners whose rates have been paid for them by the tithepayers. If, therefore, in two parishes, in each of which the tithes have been treated as worth 600Z., the tithe- owner in one has received 400Z., and 200Z. has been paid for him as rates, the 200Z. must be added to the 400Z., to make up the titheowner's real average, and put him on a footing with his neighbour."
Although the Government measure had been met with violent disfavour from the Liberals and with lukewarm support from their own side, they showed no desire to shirk the issue thus raised, and the second reading was taken on the first available day (June 27). On behalf of the Opposition Mr. Asquith, Q.C. (Fifeshire, E.), at once moved its rejection. Having taken exception to the time and manner of its introduction, and declared that the interim report of the Eoyal Commission on Local Taxation (which he criticised adversely) did not justify it, he went on to discuss the origin of tithes, which he asserted to have been appropriated in part to the relief of poverty and suffering. Of the act of 1836 he said that it made two pro- visions — (1) that where there had been a composition, the rates should be added to it ; and (2) that the rent charge created by it should be subject to rates and taxes then in existence or thereafter to be levied. Therefore the titheowner could only have suffered if the rates now payable were in excess of the average rates of the seven years prior to the commutation, and even then no substantial injustice could have been done, because every clergyman in the country who now held a benefice had taken it with a knowledge of the law and his eyes open to the facts. But there was the best reason to believe that the rates now charged on tithe rent charge were upon the average in rural districts considerably less than at the date of the com- mutation. The relief would amount to about 81. a head, but those who paid the highest rates — that was, those whose rent charges stood highest — would get the bulk of the money, and the poor clergymen, whose distress and necessity for relief he admitted, would not get more than 3Z. or 41. apiece. The distress was due not to excessive rating, but, first, to the fall in the value of agricultural produce, and the moral was that it was extremely undesirable that the income of the parish clergy-
