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A second instance is, the argument by which it used to be contended, before the commutation of tithe, that tithes fell on the landlord, and were a deduction from rent; because the rent of tithe-free land was always higher than that of land of the same quality, and the same advantages of situation, subject to tithe. Whether it be true or not that a tithe falls on rent, a treatise on Logic is not the place to examine; but it is certain that this is no proof of it. Whether the proposition be true or false, tithe-free land must, by the necessity of the case, pay a higher rent. For if tithes do not fall on rent, it must be because they fall on the consumer; because they raise the price of agricultural produce. But if the produce be raised in price, the farmer of tithe-free as well as the farmer of tithed land gets the benefit. To the latter the rise is but a compensation for the tithe he pays; to the first, who pays none, it is clear gain, and therefore enables him, and if there be freedom of competition, forces him, to pay so much more rent to his landlord. The question remains, to what class of fallacies this belongs. The premise is, that the owner of tithed land receives less rent than the owner of tithe-free land; the conclusion is, that therefore he receives less than he himself would receive if tithe were abolished. But the premise is only true conditionally; the owner of tithed land receives less than what the owner of tithe-free land is enabled to receive when other lands are tithed; while the conclusion is applied to a state of circumstances in which that condition fails, and in which, by consequence, the premise will not be true. The fallacy, therefore, is
For those not familiar with this notion, the process, in brief, is this: The Government pays the tithe-holder the capitalised value of his tithe, and takes over from the landlord as much land as produces in net annual rent the amount of the tithe-rent charge, leaving the rest of his land tithe-free for ever.
Every tenant who took part in it had inherited or acquired his farm, subject to payment of tithes, and might have been charged a higher rent if he could have obtained it tithe-free. The tithe was the property of the parson as much as the land was the property of the landlord, and the wilful refusal of it was from a legal point of view sheer robbery.
The land in general was let as if it had been tithe-free, whilst, at the same time, and in precisely the same grasping spirit, it so happened, that wherever it was tithe-free the rents exacted were also enormous, and seen as supposing tithe had not an existence no country ever could suffer to become the basis of valuation, or to settle down into a system.
Unfortunately, the act of 1823 had provided that the payment in commutation of tithe should be distributed over grass-lands hitherto tithe-free in Ireland as well as over land hitherto liable to tithe. The act was in consequence unpopular with a section of farmers, while at the same time the bishops resented the commutation, as likely to diminish the value of beneficies.
By passing to the king, tithes became property to a mixed party; by passing from the king, they became absolutely lay property: the partition-wall was broken down, and tithes and Church possession became no longer synonymous terms. Now, if tithes might come to a layman, land in the hands of a layman might be also tithe-free.
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