“I have spared you some of the trouble I might have given, if I had enforced my right,” said he. “By common right, the tithe grass may be made into hay upon the spot, and I might have turned in labourers to work on the ground for a couple of days. And then, again, I have not suffered my horses to touch a blade of your grass, Mr. Mackintosh.”
Somebody observed that he would have had to answer for it in law if he had permitted his horses so to act.
“By no means,” replied Peterson. “What does the law say?” (Reading.) “‘And when he comes with his carts, teams, or other carriages, to carry away his tithes, he must not suffer his horses or oxen to eat and depasture the grass growing in the grounds where the tithes arise; much less the corn there growing or cut. But,’” (with emphasis,) “‘if his cattle do in their passage, against the will of the driver, here and there snatch some of the grass, this is excusable.’”
“Against the will of the driver,” repeated some. “No thanks to you, Peterson.”
“It seems to me that making little laws like this is quite fit work for the pharisees,” thought Mrs. Lambert. “The weighty matters of the law seem to find no room here, any more than among those that were so busy with their mint, and anise, and cummin.”
Peterson proceeded. “‘If any person do stop or let the parson, vicar, proprietor, owner, or other of their deputies, or farmers, to view, take, and carry away their tithes as above said; he shall forfeit double value, with costs; to be recovered in the ecclesiastical court.’ 2 and 3, Edward VI. c. 13. s. 2. ‘And if the owner of the soil, after he has duly set forth his tithes,—’”
“I wish the devil had taken me before I set out the tithe, let the law say what it will,” thought Mr. Mackintosh. “I wish I had bid defiance to the law and the fellow at the same time.”
“‘Will stop up the ways,’” proceeded Peterson, “‘and not suffer the parson to carry away his tithes, or to spread, dry, and stack them upon the land, this is no good setting forth of his tithes without fraud within the statutes; but the parson may have an action upon the said statute, and may recover the treble value; or may have an action upon the case for such disturbance; or he may, if he will, break open the gate or fence which hinders him, and carry away his tithes.’ Which is what I have been and am doing, Mr. Mackintosh.”
“So I perceive.”
“Well, sir. What do you say to what I have just read?”
“That you shall hear in court.”
“You cannot say that I have not, in the words of my authority, been ‘cautious that he commit no riot, nor break any gate, rails, lock, or hedges, more than necessarily he must for his passage.’ You cannot say so, sir.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” replied Mr. Mackintosh, stepping out upon his mangled lawn from the window. “Whatever I have to say relates to your principal and to his church.”
“Take care how you blame my principal, sir,” said Peterson; concealing, as desired by the vicar, the fact that these tithes had become his own property. “My principal, sir, asks no more than his right: and if he is guilty at all in the eye of the law, it is for requiring much less than his due.”
“Well, if your principal chooses to live by such a right, let him. If he chooses, for the sake of a mere life interest in such an institution, to pay his rent of servility and dependence to the oligarchy, I wish him joy of his contentment in his holy office. The church is the patrimony of the oligarchy,—that is, the emoluments of the church;—and these emoluments purchase support for the oligarchy. If your principal hopes for salvation while he is helping his employers to confirm their own corrupt dominion, for the oppression of the people, he is even a greater simpleton than I take him to be. And so you may tell him, if you happen to understand what I say.”
Everybody present understood that something was said about the vicar and being a simpleton; and a smile went round. Byrne had no doubt that, so much being true, all the rest must be very fine; and he was vehement in his applause. Peterson turned round to him, and declared that he had some business with him which he would not be long in disclosing. With an air of defiance, Byrne invited the lessee to come and hear his opinions on his own premises. Mrs. Byrne trembled for the consequences of the proposed visit; and earnestly hoped that it would not take place till the minds of both parties had cooled. She would do her utmost with her husband to convince him of the uselessness of contending with the law. If Mr. Mackintosh chose to go into court, that was no reason why a labouring man should incur such expense and vexation. It would be far better to pay tithe out of their garden, which was what Peterson was going to demand, she supposed, than to run any risk by refusal. The vicar had always paid her wages readily when she was a servant in his family, and she should be sorry to make any difficulty about paying his dues, now that it was her husband’s turn to recompense service.
The throng of gazers and mockers naturally followed the waggon. Byrne and another labourer began lifting the gate, in order to set it again upon its hinges; but Mr. Mackintosh desired that it might lie where it was, till a legal opinion should have been obtained as to whether more force had been used than the occasion required, and than the law could justify. Presently, no one was left but the gentleman and Mrs. Lambert, who was not disposed to leave her business to be propounded on another occasion, merely because Mr. Mackintosh had lately been in a passion, and was now out of humour.
“I thought thou hadst been wiser,” observed Mrs. Lambert, in her plain way, “than to cause thyself all this mischief. It seems to me a pity to spoil a pretty place in this manner, without doing any good that I see?”
“No good! It is doing good to resist paying tithe.”
“I agree with thee there. We Friends think it not lawful to pay tithes.”
“No; you let the parson come and seize them. This is a degree better than paying them; but what good has been done by such a resistance as that?”
“I might ask what good has been done by your resistance. Here is your little lawn spoiled; and ill-will confirmed between the vicar and his people. It will not affect thee so much as me, perhaps, that there has been a scandal to religion, too. Ah! I see thee smile; and I am far from thinking that there is religion in taking tithe: but the man who preaches religion in this parish has been held up to scorn; and I fear the contempt may spread to what he preaches. Thou wouldst not object to this? Well, now, if thou wilt let me say so, I do wonder that one who talks of liberty as thou dost, should be so unwilling to allow liberty of judgment to others.”
Mr. Mackintosh protested that the one thing he was always striving after was to emancipate people’s judgments from the monstrous superstitions, the incredible follies which they called faith and religion, and so on. He was for ever trying to set people’s judgments free.
“Rather, to make them think like thee, shouldst thou not say? There is a contempt in thy way of speaking of Christians, and others who differ from thee, which I should be apt to call oppression, dost thou know? No person hinders thee from saying what thy own opinions are, and where other people’s are wrong; and, therefore, what occasion is there for trying to persuade thy neighbours that their clergyman must be a bad man, if he be not a fool. I think thee wrong in doing this, and I say so when opportunity offers, though I have no better an opinion than thou of his clergyman’s gown, and of all the forms which he mixes up with his public worship.”
“Then you must let me declare you wrong.”
“That such is thy opinion. Certainly. But I wonder thou art easy in making thyself answerable for mixing up with Martha Lambert’s follies some things which are of graver importance;—things which, true or false, make or mar a great deal of happiness, and cannot, therefore, be whiffed away, like trifles, with a joke. Thou wert free, last Sunday, to go into the fields instead of the church, and to tell every one that passed why there should be, as thou thinkest, no church going: but I do not see that it was more proper for thee to point at thy neighbours of the church and the meeting, and say that they differed only in going to see Punch in a wig and Punch in a broad-brim, than it would be in the Lamberts to say that thou desirest the perdition of mankind because thou dost not worship as they do.”
“Whoever told you of that speech of mine should have added what I said besides;—that the Quakers are the only Christians I respect, on account of their——”
“That is all very well in its way: but I do not ask for compliments to the Friends, but for justice to everybody. I could wish to see thee go to law, (as thy conscience allows it,) rather than hold up the good vicar to scorn. Thou wilt allow the suggestion.”
“Ah! you have not that resource. The Friends do not go to law when they believe themselves wrongfully tithed.”
“Their reference is to the divine, not to human law. Their pleas against tithe are three, which would avail nothing in a court of law;—that the interference of civil governments with spiritual concerns is unauthorized and unholy——”
“True, true.”
“That the tithe system is a return to the Levitical law, which can have no place under a profession of Christianity.”
Mr. Mackintosh smiled his utter contempt of both Judaism and Christianity.
“And that religion can never be lawfully made a trade; the rule of the case being the precept, ‘Freely ye have received; freely give.’ If thou dost not agree in this last, but thinkest, as the generality do, that the setting forth of spiritual things deserves hire in the same way as the teaching of the mathematics, and other things that belong to the mind, there is the less reason for thy pronouncing that the vicar must be a bad man or a simpleton for requiring the maintenance that the law allows him.”
“It is an infamous practice! The oppression is intolerable. The injustice is what nobody ought to endure. That we should have the church of Rome over again at this time of day! Your favourite vicar may be just such a simpleton of a priest as one might find in the old Popish days, in country villages: but what a poor wretch to set to teach the people!
“Suppose, then, we try to mend the law that displeases us both so much. If the law makes the vicar do and expect what thou thinkest folly, a wiser law might enable him to conduct himself more wisely in thy eyes. My sons will be happy to conduct thee to affix thy name to a petition of the Friends against tithes, which is lying for signature in the next town.”
Mr. Mackintosh would have a petition of his own, whenever he signed one for such a purpose. He would not mix himself up with Christians in any way. He should petition at once for the overthrow of all superstition in this country.
“And, of course, that thou shouldst be appointed judge of what is superstition, and what is not; for I fear thou art not else likely to be satisfied. Meantime, I fear thou wilt not let the Quarry Wood farm to superstitious people.”
“Not unless I were sure that their superstition did not make them cheats: as superstition generally does.”
“Have the Lamberts cheated thee in their management of the Abbey Farm?”
“No. I had rather let your sons have the Quarry Wood farm than any soft, sneaking tithe-payer. Every man that is a slave to the church is an enemy to me.”
“And all who pay tithes are slaves to the church. I am sorry for thee, George Mackintosh, for I think, at this rate, no man has ever had so many enemies. I presume that thou, as a scholar, hast as long a list of the tithe-payers of all the world from the beginning, as the vicar himself. He would make one believe that the Friends alone are, as thou sayst, not slaves to the church, and therefore thy allies.”
“I offered the Quarry Wood farm at a very low rent, if I could find a tenant that I approved,” said Mr. Mackintosh. “Your sons shall have it at that low rent, in consideration of—of——”
“Of their opinions on one point happening to suit thy own. This is the principle by which thou wouldst secure perfect liberty of thought and speech. However, I shall be glad if my sons can come to an agreement with thee in time to prevent any one from professing himself an infidel in order to obtain thy farm at a low rent. It is creditable to the public that thy advertisement to such persons has not already answered to thy satisfaction.”
Superstition was too strong and too popular yet for individuals, Mr. M. replied. Most men had not the courage to put themselves in a position of defiance, such as he had in this case offered.
“Thou wilt now withdraw thy advertisement,” urged Mrs. Lambert. “There is no fear of my sons being taken for any thing but what they are by those who know them: but I should be sorry they should be obliged to disclaim in the public papers any character that thou mightst seem to fix upon them.”
Not only was this promised, as a matter of course, and an arrangement made for an interview at the Quarry Wood farm, when all the terms might be discussed; but Mrs. Lambert obtained permission to call upon the crying housekeeper, and the gaping foot-boy, for aid towards securing the pretty garden from the intrusion of pigs and other trespassers. Before sunset, the gate swung once more on its hinges; and the grass was rolled and rolled again till half its disasters were repaired. It was as much a labour of love as teaching in a school, or cooking broth for a sick neighbour; and when Mrs. Lambert found she must go home, the foot-boy ran before her to open the gate; the housekeeper blessed her; and even Mr. M. sent a message after her to beg that she would not go till she had rested herself.
Chapter IV.
HERESY.
Peterson was not long in performing his promise or threat of visiting B.’s cottage. Indeed, he had so much to do now that it was necessary to fulfil his engagements as they arose, if he meant to discharge them all. He was not only the lessee of the vicar’s tithes, which cost him no small trouble to gather in. He was also the collector of Sir William Hood’s; and the time approached for making the usual valuation of the crops before harvest. Some of the land was, as has been said, tithe-free. A small portion besides, which seemed to lie within the verge of the parish, caused him no trouble. It had never been included, with certainty, within the bounds of any parish; and the tithe thereof, being extraparochial, was the prerogative of the king, with whom Peterson had nothing to do. A composition had been agreed upon for the tithes of other lands, for a certain number of years; but there still remained a large extent of ground on which the great tithes had either to be compounded for on a valuation, from year to year, or where the contribution to the parson was to be levied in kind. His own property by lease, the small tithes and hay which he rented from the vicar, he determined to levy in kind: and his first step was to study the precise extent to which they were due, and to levy them to the utmost. Of the prædial tithes,—those which arise merely and immediately from the ground, the grain and wood had to be valued in order to a composition. The hay, being the vicar’s by special endowment, had to be levied in kind with the other prædial tithes which came under the denomination of small tithes; viz.: fruit, vegetables, and herbs. He had not only been the round of the hayfields, but was looking into all the gardens, and casting a calculating glance over the orchards, in anticipation of a tenth of their produce. Then the mixed tithes gave him much trouble; tithes of produce which arises not immediately from the ground, but from things immediately nourished by the ground, and which, according to the murmuring parishioners, paid tithe twice or three times over. When they had paid tithe of grass, they contended, it was hard to have it to pay again in the shape of a calf, and again in that of milk. In like manner, the grain on which their poultry fed paid tithe; and then the poultry; and also eggs. In like manner, the sheep pasture paid tithe; and then the tenth lamb must be given; and lastly, the wool. Endless disputes arose out of the lessee’s claims, and he was perpetually sent to his tithe gospel, as he called his law-book. There he found a provision by which he might annoy Byrne, and every parishioner in Byrne’s rank of life. There was another kind of tithe, besides the prædial and the mixed;—the personal tithe, which might be made, if possible, more offensive than the mixed. He knew that by a claim for this kind of tithe, at least, he could punish Byrne for his partisanship with Mr. Mackintosh in the morning.
When he arrived at Byrne’s, both the labourer and his wife were occupied in helping Alice to feed her little birds, the twelve young partridges which bore testimony to the efficacy of flannel and fire in June. Byrne did not trouble himself to look up when his foe entered; but observed, while guiding an infant beak to the mess which was prepared, that Peterson need not flatter himself that he would be permitted to carry away any of Miss Alice’s birds. The little girl’s own father should not rob her of her pleasures. Peterson thought it a pity such a defiance should be wasted; but he really never thought of such a thing as tithing wild birds. Pheasants and partridges are decided by law to be feræ naturæ, and therefore not titheable. Though their wings be clipped, they would still fly away if they could; and if they should breed, their young, though imprisoned, are still wild, and therefore not bound to support the clergyman. Alice’s pleasures were safe.
“O, I am so glad!” cried Alice; “and now we need not be afraid about the bees either, I suppose.”
“Ay; your bees, Mrs. Byrne,” observed Peterson, smiling. “You need not twitch the young lady’s sleeve, Byrne; I thought of the bees before; and, in fact, they made part of my errand. I see you have a fine range of beehives at the south end of your garden; and that spreading jessamine, and the thyme bed, and the tall honeysuckle must yield plenty of wax and honey. You must keep my share for me, remember.”
“If partridges are wild, so are bees, I should think, Mr. Peterson.”
“So the law says: and I am of opinion the law is therein defective: since, though bees can fly away individually, they are stationary, as a swarm, when once fixed in a hive. I should recommend that every tenth swarm should be set apart for tithe: but the law does not so ordain. The wax and honey, however, do not fly away, and it is of them that I spoke when I said you must remember the vicar’s share.”
“The vicar would have been sure enough of his share,” said Mrs. Byrne, somewhat heated, “if you had let me alone to offer it. Miss Alice will tell you that every year she has had much more than a tenth of my honey; and so she would still, without your interfering to make that a debt which was much more precious as a grace.”
“Mr. Peterson shall not bring me my honey,” protested Alice. “I won’t take it, unless you let me carry it home myself, Jane.”
Peterson wondered what would become of religion, if it was to be left to be supported by free will, instead of by dues.
How little was he aware what was included in this question! How little was he aware with whom he identified himself while asking it! This has been the faithless question of all the perverters of the quenchless religious principle in man, from the beginning of time,—of all the priests of all the trinities that the world has known. This is the question asked by the wise man of the Egyptian temple, when he unveiled the hawk-headed Osiris, and the swaddled Orus, and the crocodile-shaped Typhon, and told the prostrate people what to pay for housing the triad of creators that they came to adore.—This is the question asked by the ancient Hindoo priest, when he finished his evening meal of rice in the echoing recesses of the rocky temple, and waited only for the departure of the last impoverished worshipper, to go and see how much wealth was deposited for Brahma, and how much for Vishnu, and how much for Siva, and how many bribes were offered for admission into each of the seven paradises of the seven seas. This is the question asked before the Greek altars, when goats and horses and black bulls were sacrificed there, to the gods of the earth, and the sea, and the infernal regions, and tithe was demanded to be yielded to the one on his ivory seat, and another in his car of sea-shell, and the third on his throne of sulphur. This is the question asked by the skin-clothed ministers of the Gothic deities, Odin, Vile, and Ve, when they called upon their barbarian brethren to offer the hides of wolves, and the flesh of boars, in homage to the three sons of the mysterious cow. This is the question asked by the Mexican priests of old, when they forbade the feathered and jewelled warrior companies to come empty-handed to the sanctuary of the father-sun, the brother-sun, and the son-sun; the trinity of unpronounceable names. This is the question asked by the monastic orders of the Catholic church, when they ordained, as penance, that the children’s inheritance should be made over to the church, to the glory of the Gnostic triad which they enthroned on the Seven Hills, and to which they dared to invite adoration in the name of Christ. This is the question now asked by our Episcopal preachers of the three-fold deity, the Avenger, the Propitiator, and the Sanctifier; and enforced for the support of their tri-partite form of religion, compounded of Heathenism, Judaism, and Christianity.—This is not the question asked by Jesus, when he sent forth the Seventy, bidding them have faith that they should be supported by free-will offerings better than by dues; or when he cleansed the temple from the defilements which but too soon returned to harbour there; or when he sat on the well in Samaria, and declared who it was that the Father sought to worship him; or when he strayed in the wilderness, despising the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, and asking instead, the heart of man; or when he sat on the mountain-side, gazing on the temple towers which were bathed in the evening light, and telling of the time when the young pigeons should try their first flight from the summit of Moriah, instead of fluttering in death on the altar of sacrifice; and when the husbandman should plough up the foundations of the sanctuary, finding, through the gospel, that his own heart was a holier place.—What is included in this question,—whether religion can be supported by free will, and not by dues? To ask it is to doubt whether God has vivified the human heart with a principle of faith, and whether man be not really made to grovel with the beasts which perish, or, as the only alternative, to pursue shadows till the grave swallows him up like a pitfall in his path. It is to suppose that by mere accident alone has the northern barbarian been found watching for signs in the driving clouds; and the western Indian looking abroad over the blue Pacific; and the Persian hailing the sunrise from the mountain-top; and the Greek lawgiver waiting upon the voice of the oracle; and the Christian child praying at the knee of its parent. It is to question whether there be more in a sunrise than yellow light, or in a pestilence than so many dead, or in a political revolution than a change of actors in an isolated dramatic scene, or in the advent of a gospel than the issuing of a new and fugitive fiction. It is to deny that every man needs sympathy in his joys, and consolation for his sorrows; that he ever questions whence he came and whither he must go; that he ever feels the weight of his own being too vast to be sustained without reposing on Him who called it forth. It is to question whether there be faith on the earth, except within the pale of two or three churches; whether, for the rest of the world, the sea does not raise its everlasting voice, and the starry host hold on their untiring march in vain. It is to question whether the decrepid can truly worship in the aisles of our churches; or the lordly care for the things of the Spirit, unless those things are joined with worldly pomp. It is to pronounce the apostles profane in their fishing and tent-making, and foolish in their fully-justified reliance on the faith and charity of their disciples. It is to declare Jesus wrong in saying that to the poor the gospel is preached, and that his kingdom was not of the old world,—belonging to the formal Judaical dispensation. It is to put his gospel for correction into the hands of the prelates who legislate for its security, and who predict its permanence, if it be sustained by the means they prescribe,—by gifts and offerings wrung from the reluctant; by endowments, by bounties of first-fruits and tenths, by tithes and oblations. To question whether religion can be supported by free-will instead of by prescribed dues is to libel man, to doubt the gospel, and to stand with a sceptical spirit amidst the temple of God’s works.
Would that the vicar had had sufficient faith in the gospel he preached to believe that it might be supported without exactions which it does not sanction! Would that he had been wiser than his tithe-gatherer, and had foreseen the consequences, as well as been aware of the guilt, of alienating the spirits which it was his express office to win! He looked very grave at his little daughter, when she loudly complained that Peterson wanted to take away some of Jane’s honey for him, when she knew he had much rather that Jane should give it him herself. He told her that she must not speak of matters that she did not understand:—a rebuke which astonished Alice more than all the rest, as she thought she had never heard of anything more easy to be understood.
There was little show of respect to the vicar, this evening. When he entered Byrne’s cottage, Peterson was traversing the garden, making notes of potatoes, turnips, and cabbages, of onions, parsley, and sage. He counted the currant bushes, and looked up into the cherry-tree. Mrs. Byrne attended, in terror lest there should be a quarrel. She tried to persuade her husband to go and make his bow to the vicar; but Byrne would do no such thing. He dogged the tithe-gatherer’s heels, disputing where he could, and threatening where he could not dispute. He did not mean to pay tithe these seven years, for the new bit of garden which he had just taken in. He would contest it to the death. He hoped the turnips would prove tough enough to choke the tithe-gatherer. He would not gather his cherries at all, if he must pay tithe of them. They should be left for the birds, and for any village children who might come to take them.
“That is all very fine talk,” replied Peterson: “but I can tell you this. If your fruit is taken by the birds, or other downright thieves, I must bear the loss with you: but if it be taken with your knowledge and consent, whether by school-children or anybody else, you must pay me the tithe of what was taken: and if left to drop from the tree, I must have the tenth of what so falls. Pray, are these peas and beans for sale, or for domestic use?”
Byrne could not tell till they were gathered; and his wife did not pretend to have made up her mind, any more than he.
“Well; if you won’t tell me, I must be on the watch to see whether your hog touches any of them, and how many find their way to other people’s tables. And then, you will have no right to call me prying, remember. I asked you the fair question, which you would not answer.”
Byrne thought he might as well live under Bonaparte, or any other tyrant, at once, as be liable to sow and tend and reap for another, in this way; and to be watched by a spy, as if this was not the free country it prided itself on being.
“What would you say if you were a farmer?” cried Peterson, with a smile. “Here you have only to pay a little honey, and a few vegetables, and a little fruit, and—one thing more, for which I find the vicar has strangely omitted to charge you hitherto. See here,” producing his law-book. “By a constitution of Archbishop Winchelsea, and the statute, 2 and 3 Edward VI., c. 13., tithes are payable for profits arising from personal labour or merchandise. They are payable, you see, where the party hears divine service, and receives the sacraments; but only the tenth part of the clear gain, after all the charges are deducted. Now I find your wages are per week——”
“Do you dare to want to strip my husband of his wages?” cried Mrs. Byrne. “I will call the vicar to put an end to this.”
Peterson’s triumph was complete. The vicar was full of concern that anybody suffered pain or inconvenience about the matter: but it was not for him or his parishioners to alter the constitution of the church.church. His duty to his church and to his successor required that the ecclesiastical law should be obeyed in all its provisions. Two or three zealous clergymen had lately revived this claim, after it had lain dormant for very many years, throwing into gaol the labourers who opposed themselves; and he would support them through evil report and good report.
“Then you may throw me into gaol,” cried Byrne. “As for attending your services, neither I nor mine will ever do it more, Mr. Hellyer: and I never wish to see you within my gate again, sir.”
“O, John!” cried the terrified wife.
“I am not going to be angry,” said the vicar to her, with his usual air of quiet complacency. “I have long feared that the infidel who has come among us would corrupt your husband, and I see he has done so completely. Nay: do not cry so, Jane. All our hearts are in the hand of God: and you should trust, as I do, that he will sustain his church under the attacks of the unbelieving.”
“Not if such as you have the management of it,” cried Byrne. “You talk of Mr. Mackintosh: but I tell you that nothing that I ever heard him say turned my heart from you and your religion as you yourself have done to-day; and I rather think that Mr. Mackintosh owes to you much of such power as he has. We shall soon see that. Send the labourers of this parish to gaol for their tithe of wages, break gates, and pry into gardens, and you will see what a congregation Mr. Mackintosh will have on his lawn, to hear what he has to say about a religion that teaches such oppression.—Be pleased to hold your tongue, sir, and walk out of my garden.—Hush, Jane!” he cried to his weeping wife. “There is nothing in their tithe-law that prevents my saying that.—Go, go, and milk the cow.” And he turned over the pail, which still stood with milk in it, as in the morning. He declared that he knew something of tithe-law as well as Peterson, and therefore claimed the liberty of spilling the milk which had not been removed, after due notice, so as to restore the pail in time for the afternoon milking. Peterson could not deny the correctness of Byrne’s law.
“Well; but, why not come to church?” mildly inquired the vicar.
“To hear you thank God that you are no extortioner, I suppose. I am sick enough of that.”
“But, John,—do listen, John!—He can’t help it: it is no fault of his: he only asks what the law gives him.”
“Then let the law leave off making a man contradict in the pulpit on Sunday all he has been doing during the week. ’Tis a hypocrisy that I am sick of, and I’ll never enter the church door till there is an end of it. You see the gate, sir. You are welcome to go away as soon as you choose.”
There was nothing for the vicar to do but to walk away, however Mrs. Byrne wished to detain him till her husband had cooled. Peterson had found his way over the fence, rather than cross the path of the angry man. Byrne saw this, and shouted after the vicar, loud enough for Peterson to hear,
“You are mightily afraid of a deist, Mr. Hellyer: but if you care for your church, look to your tithe-gatherer.”
“Run after your papa, my dear,” said Mrs. Byrne to Alice, who was contemplating the spilled milk: “never mind your birds; I will put them under a coop till you come again.”
“Papa looks so odd!”
“The more reason you should go. Run after him, and talk about every thing you can think of.”
Alice hopped and skipped down the road, while Jane wept as if her heart would break. Her grief could scarcely have been greater if she had known the truth that time revealed,—that from this hour, her husband hated the vicar with an intense hatred.
Chapter V.
EXTORTION.
Before two years were over, the experiment of a close exaction of tithes was considered by good judges to have been fairly tried, and to have produced consequences as apparent as could be expected to arise in any given case.
First. There were three law-suits.—The vicar was plaintiff in a cause where his late friend, Sir William Hood, was defendant. He claimed tithe for the produce of a portion of the Abbey Farm; (or suffered under the imputation of doing so, from still keeping the secret of having let his rights to Peterson.)
The Lamberts were not a little astonished at such a claim being made on their tithe-free farm: but the vicar alleged that the exemption ceased when the land was turned to other uses than those which prevailed when the exemption was granted. The prescription was at an end, he contended, when, as in this case, land which was in a state of tillage when exempted was converted into pasture land. Much trouble was given to the Lamberts, at the same time, by their being called upon to show the requisites for the exemptions which had never been disputed;—that the lands they held had been really abbey lands, and that they had been immemorially discharged of tithes. Another suit was instituted against Mr. Parker, to set aside a modus with which all parties had hitherto been pretty well satisfied. By this modus,—or composition whereby the layman is discharged from rendering his tithes, on his paying in lieu thereof what immemorial custom, or the custom of the place, directs,—Mr. Parker paid fourteen pounds for produce which, paid in kind, would have yielded twenty. He had often thought himself unlucky in his bargain in comparison with some who had a good bargain of their modus, paying two-pence an acre, as their ancestors had done; or a fowl instead of the year’s tithe of eggs: but he had little expected that the vicar would lodge a complaint in a court of law of the modus being too large. It accorded with six out of seven of the rules which constitute a good and sufficient modus; but it violated one. It was certain and invariable: it benefited the tithe-taker only: it was different from the thing compounded for: it did not discharge from the payment of any other species of tithe: it was, in its nature, as durable as the tithes discharged by it: and it was immemorial without interruption; that is, it had existed from the beginning of the reign of Richard the First, which is the period fixed by the law as “the time of memory.”
All this was indisputable; but the seventh condition was, that the modus should not be too large;—that it should not be a rank modus. If Mr. Parker had been paying four shillings, instead of fourteen pounds, the modus might have been held a good one; but this was so doubtful as to be supposed worth contesting, according to the decision, “the doctrine of rankness in a modus is a question of fact to be submitted to a jury, unless the grossness is obvious.”
The third suit was of more consequence than either of the other two. It had always been believed in the parish that the glebe land, which was now annexed to the vicarage, had been once upon a time offered and accepted as a substitute for the lesser tithes of a farm at present occupied by one of the most respectable of the parishioners. Now, however, for the first time, Mr. Pratt was called upon, either to show evidence of such a bargain having taken place under all due formality of circumstance, or to pay full tithe. Mr. Pratt was indignant when he ceased to be astonished, and refused to pay the tithe unless he had the glebe land back again. This was refused; and the law, as of course, was made the arbitrator between the parties.
Every body in the parish who paid a composition, now began to hunt up the evidence of the ordinary having consented to it; of its being old enough; and of its not having run on for a longer term than twenty-one years, or the lives of three parsons.
These proceedings did not improve the influence of the clergyman in the parish. One after another of his flock wandered away to the Friends’ Meeting house. There was talk of encouraging the methodists to build a chapel, though an attempt to do so had failed three years before. Subscriptions were withdrawn from the parochial library which the vicar had set up: and in proportion as the law-suits were discussed, did the respect with which he was once regarded change into rudeness. Few heads were uncovered before him. Men turned their backs at his approach, and the women did not look up from their work when the children gave notice that he was passing by. He bore this, as he said, very patiently; praying to God to turn the hearts of the flock once more to true religion and reverence for the church. He declared himself resigned to having fallen on evil days, and could wait till his parishioners should repent of their treatment of him. He heroically adhered to his habits, amidst the change of times; taking his walk past the houses which were chalked with maledictions on him, and over the green where every one put on a solemn look as soon as he came in sight. Alice could never prevail on him to go round by the back lanes, though is was evident that she suffered much pain, if not absolute terror, whenever she was his companion amongst his alienated people.
Those who suffered most, next to the vicar and his daughter, were perhaps the Lamberts. Through the exterior of calmness which they considered it a religious duty to preserve, it might be discerned that their lightness of heart was gone. No lads could well be merrier than Charles and Joseph used to be; and their mother’s influence was formerly more frequently exerted in mildly chastening their mirth than in any other way. When they had masqueraded, under pretence of amusing Alice, or from singing a ‘ditty’ in the farm-house parlour had advanced to some high thoughts about the cultivation of music, she had told tales of the sobriety observed in her young days. Now, her endeavour was to cheer them when they came in dispirited from their farm. She now asked for ‘a ditty,’ and taught them two or three which their father used to sing to her before they were born. She encouraged Joseph to use his pretty talent for drawing, and was always ready to be read to when Charles seemed disposed to take up his book in the evenings. It was the least she could do, she thought, to keep up their spirits as well as her own, since she had sanctioned their taking the Quarry Wood farm, which seemed likely to run away with the gains they had made on the Abbey Farm; and with more besides, if this season should turn out one of as great scarcity as was apprehended. It was the least a mother could do, while discouraging Charles from marrying Henrietta Gregg till his prospects should clear, to make his home as little irksome as possible, and occupy his thoughts with other things besides his love and his disappointments. Some people thought (and they declared the vicar to be on their side) that the ill success of the Lamberts on the Quarry Wood farm was no more than might have been expected from their having any thing to do with such an infidel as Mr. Mackintosh; and they had little pity, in some quarters, for their failure: but they thought the whole might be sufficiently accounted for without supposing that a special judgment had overtaken them. Thus much, at least, was true: that no disasters had befallen them in their management of the abbey farm, though Mr. Mackintosh was their landlord; and that the Quarry Wood farm might have been made to answer if it had been tithe-free. The natural conclusion was that the tithes of the church were to blame, and not the infidelity of Mr. Mackintosh.
The rent of the Quarry Wood farm was low; and this had been the chief temptation to the Lamberts to take it. They were aware that it required much improvement, and were prepared to lay out a good deal of capital upon it. The composition for tithe which had been formerly paid was very moderate, and every body had supposed that it would, as a matter of course, be continued. But the new tenants had not been in possession half a year, before Peterson found means to set aside the composition, and gave notice that he should demand tithe in kind. They hoped that, at least, their improvements would remain exempt for seven years, according to the statute:—a vain hope; as it was proved that the land, though long left in wild condition, was not what the law would call barren. The tithe seized the first year swallowed up so much of the returns as to leave by far too little to pay for the enclosures. There was, indeed, so much capital thus locked up that the young men declared they should have let the land alone if they had known how they were to be taken in about the tithes. The same was the case with an extent of woodland which they had stubbed and grubbed, and made fit for the plough. As it had borne wood, it was not ‘barren’ land, and it came under the tax. Of course, the improvements were put a stop to presently, amidst many regrets that the money had not been employed on some far inferior land on the tithe-free farm. It had better have lain idle in their iron chest than have been thus expended to a loss. If they had known more than they did of the history of tithes, they would have been better aware of the policy of idleness under such a system;—that idleness, both of labour and capital, on which tithes offer a direct premium. They would have known that the cultivation of flax and hemp in Ireland was suspended till a low modus was fixed by law, under which it has flourished ever since. They would have known that the production of madder was long confined to the United Provinces, which, being Presbyterian, offered no ecclesiastical tax on its cultivation; and that its growth in England began from the time when, by a special provision, 5s. per acre were to be taken in lieu of tithe of madder. They would have known that the reason why Edward VI. exempted barren land from tithe for seven years was, because, without this provision, the land would never have yielded at all, either to the public or to the church. They would have known how tremendous is the waste, to the public, to the farmer, to the landlord, and eventually to the church, by a method of taxation which causes worse land to be cultivated while the better lies waste—by a method of taxation which reaches land untouched by rent, and which, by absorbing a larger and a larger share of profits which are perpetually decreasing, raises prices to a degree quite inconsistent with the prosperity of all the parties concerned. If the Lamberts had duly studied the tithe question, they would have foreseen the disasters which must arise, instead of being taught by bitter experience. Their case was just this;—and it is a fair specimen of what is taking place wherever the tithe system is adopted.
The best land on their two farms yielded an equal produce. As the Quarry Wood land paid tithe, they would have been obliged to raise the price of their corn so high as to cover the cost of the impropriator’s share, as well as the expences of cultivation, if this had not been already done by the body of tithe-paying corn growers. Corn was already dearer in the market, by the parson’s share, than it would have been if the parsons had had no share. The produce of the abbey farm brought in a larger profit through this elevation of prices; but this circumstance had been considered in fixing the rent; and the surplus profit went, not to the Lamberts, but to their landlord, in the shape of higher rent. Thus far, they neither lost nor gained. The consumers of corn lost, and Mr. Mackintosh gained. The same took place on a few inferior kinds of land. But there was soil which would have paid profits of stock as well as rent, if there had been no tithe, but which should have been left uncultivated (because tithe would swallow up the profits) if the Lamberts had been aware of the claim which would be advanced by the parson. On this soil their labour was lost: landlord and parson being paid, nothing remained for them. This land, therefore, was to be let out of cultivation; and the capital and labour employed upon it were transferred to an inferior kind of land on the tithe-free farm, which required a much larger expenditure to produce an equal return. In this case, the Lamberts lost by their unprofitable expenditure of labour and capital; and nobody gained. A yet lower quality of soil was next taken into cultivation, requiring a yet larger proportionate outlay of capital and labour, and yielding a sufficient return to the cultivator only because it was exempt from rent as well as tithe. The rise of price, caused by the relinquishment of the better land for the sake of cultivating the worse, was injurious to all the three parties, and particularly to those—viz., the Lamberts—who had to pay the most wages. It would have answered incalculably better to have paid over to the church the capital which was arbitrarily buried in the lower soils, than that portion of produce which caused it to be so buried. Rent would have been equalised between the two estates; prices would have kept their natural elevation; the better soil would have been tilled, and the worst let alone; the parson would have had as much gain and cheaper bread; the landlord would also have had cheaper bread, and a larger rent for the one estate, as well as a smaller for the other; and the Lamberts would not have lost on the one hand by being deprived of their profits, and on the other by the rise of wages. The only persons anywhere who had ground for unmixed rejoicing in this state of things were the landlords of none but tithe-free estates. By the rise of rent, they gained, and they alone: and their gain was by no means in proportion to the collective loss of the other parties. But it was a curious fact that, while the church was complained of (and justly) on all hands, for the tremendous injury occasioned by its tithe system, the benefits of it went into the pockets of landowners amidst the hills and dales of Scotland, where a commutation long ago placed them beyond the hazards of the desperate game; and of all who could take their stand on abbey lands, or on some lucky ancient modus, or equally happy modern composition.
From the circumstances of the case, the Lamberts suffered all the injustice which must accrue upon the first institution of this most pernicious tax. When it has been long enough paid to become calculable, it is allowed for in the rent, and falls next, like other land taxes, on the landowner—the person most able, from the perpetual tendency of rent to rise, to bear the burden. But it is not long a burden to him, except as a consumer; for, as it operates in increasing the expense of cultivation, it raises prices; and the consumer ultimately pays. The hardship of a new institution, or, as in this case, of a revival of tithe, is very great upon the tenant, and is a sufficient exponent of the pernicious nature of the impost. The lease of the Quarry Wood farm had not many years to run; but the experience of the first two years, and the opening of the third, left the prospect of the young farmers anything but bright. The present spring had been most unfavourable to the crops. The doubt was whether so much rain was not rotting the vegetation in the ground. The view from the summer-house was dreary,—of sodden fields, and lanes lying under water. The very wall-flowers languished for want of sun, Mrs. Lambert found when she one day climbed the hill: but they did not droop like her poor son Charles, whom she found there, looking out of the window, with his head leaning on his hand, and listening to the patter of rain-drops which again began to fall, and to drop from the broad thatch into the little dell over which the summer-house projected. It was a dispiriting thing to wander over the lands of Quarry Wood farm, and see enclosures deserted when half finished, and fields from which golden harvests had been anticipated, grown over with briars and thistles. It was in such a place that Mrs. Lambert met Joseph, one April afternoon, when the twilight was settling down.
“What hast thou got there, mother?” said he: “A heavy load for thee to carry.”
“Not so heavy as large. These stringy, branchy roots make a fine blaze to drink tea by; and I thought it a pity this one should lie and rot yonder. But thou hast thy hands full, seemingly. Where art thou taking that poor thing to?”
It was a ewe, very near its time of yeaning. Joseph explained that Peterson’s eagerness about where the ewes couched and fed had put into his brother’s head and his own a device which it was very well to have thought of. In the next parish, tithes were only half the amount that they were in this; and Charles and he had prepared the bit of land they had in that parish for their ewes. The animals were now being transferred thither, gradually and quietly, lest Peterson should set up a plea of fraudulent removal. The lambs would remain there till the tithing was over: and it was much to be wished that there was room for all their flocks till shearing time should have also passed.
“But I am afraid we must go a long circuit, before we can get to the ground,” continued he. “This field is too deep in wet for the poor thing to cross. ’Tis like a ditch, from end to end.”
“I should not have thought there had been rain enough of late to soak the meadow in this way,” observed the widow.
“Except by filling the drains,” replied Joseph. “They are choaked up, too, from our having left the whole concern hereabouts to itself, this year. But how in the world am I to get this animal over? She will make herself heard with her bleating after the flock.”
“These are strange times, surely, Joseph, when a ewe may not bleat her own bleat, and when a son of mine skulks under a hedge on his own farm.”
“And the cause is full as strange, mother,—fear of man. I little thought to fear men; but there are two that I would go a mile round to avoid.”
“And they would say it is because thou art trying to cheat them;—in the very act of carrying thy ewes to yean out of their dominions.”
“Let them say so. It is not such a charge that I fear. Disclaiming, as we do, the ordinance of a priesthood altogether, my conscience leaves me free to put my beasts to couch and feed where it is most convenient, without regard to the parson. My fear is that I should hate those men. They injure me, and I cannot resist; and I have lost patience of late. I would rather walk close under my own hedge, and keep my ewe from bleating than speak, even to myself, as I hear some speak of the collector, and of the vicar, who countenances him in his strictness.”
“I sometimes think that if the vicar’s wife were still living, she would be rather uneasy about his terms with his people. She would hardly like his being much from home after dark.”
“So, that has struck thee too, as well as Charles and me. It was only this morning that I was saying to Charles, that perhaps it is a blessing that Alice is too young to have such fancies as she may live to suffer from. I suppose she is in bed and asleep when he goes and comes through that lonely lane at the back of the vicarage, as he visits his brother of an evening. That lane is hardly the place for a man who has so many enemies.”
“I trust thou hast no apprehension of anything worse than a few insults; or at most a beating, to show contempt.”
“Indeed, I thought of something much worse. There is less contempt than hatred of this man. He is so persuaded that he is right in all that he does that it is impossible to despise him as if he defied the inward witness: but he is the more hated as people see no end to their troubles with him. If I am not mistaken, there are some in the parish who have diligently inquired his age; and not precisely for the purpose of wishing him many happy birth-days.”
“Is the ewe by thy side?” asked Mrs. Lambert, in a low voice, and peering through the gathering twilight; “or was it something else that I heard stirring in this ditch?”
It was not the ewe, but Peterson, who had come, as he said, over a gap in the hedge. In the darkness, it would have been impossible to make out whether he had heard anything of what had been said. Mrs. Lambert therefore asked him.
“Friend, didst thou hear what we were talking about?”
“Tones of voice tell as much as words, mistress: and I wonder at a plain spoken person like you calling me ‘friend,’ when both you and I know that you hate me like the devil. However, I am going to make you hate me more still, I fancy. Mr. Joseph, you have let this land go to waste in a very sad way; and a field yonder, too. The water stands a foot deep in this meadow; and my children play hide and seek among the whins yonder, where you might have corn growing, if you would.”
Joseph supposed he might do as he pleased with the land till his lease was out.
“But my employer is not to suffer for your neglecting your land. The law makes a distinction between land that is really barren, and that which is needlessly inundated, or overgrown with briars. ‘The field of the slothful,’ you know. My eldest girl got her frock so torn with your briars, that she brought a pretty scolding upon herself, I can tell you.”
“Send her up to me, and I will mend her frock,” requested Mrs. Lambert. “I will give her a new one if thou wilt let my son alone as to whether there shall be briars or anything else in his field.”
“No objection in the world, ma’am, if he pay the due tithe.”
“I’m sure thou art kindly welcome to a tenth of the water in this field, and of the stones in the one above,” observed Joseph. But this offer was declined, and the old composition for these two fields proposed instead.
Before there had been time for the dispute to proceed further, a strange sound from the church tower arrested Peterson’s attention. The bells seemed about to be rung, and Peterson was gone.
What the occasion of rejoicing could be, the Lamberts did not know; nor did they very much care. They had grown listless about good news, and were now most anxious to conclude the business of the evening. As Peterson had crossed the meadow, it must be possible for them and their charge to do so too. The little ridge which stood out of the water was found, and, one by one, several of the teeming ewes were removed and penned into their new inclosures before Joseph went home; and no tormentor appeared.
Joseph told his mother that the labourers who had cut the osiers for hurdles had been questioned whether the article was intended for sale or gift, or for use on the farm. The labourers were glad to be able for once to repulse the tithing man, whom they were weary of having for ever at their heels. There was no small pleasure in seeing the meek animals comfortably provided for on the outskirts of the farm; as if they were as conscious as their owners of the inhospitable character of the parish whose bounds they had crossed. It does not appear that lambs know a tithing-man by instinct; but Joseph put expressions of pity into his farewell for the night which might seem to imply that he felt them to be fellow-sufferers with himself under the rule of the parish tyrant.
After running home in the dark, with sleet pelting in their faces, the mother and son liked the aspect of their house, with its old-fashioned windows lighted from within.
“See what it is not to wear curled hair,” cried Mrs. Lambert, wiping the cold drops from her short, grey locks, combed straight down on her forehead. “If I had had such ringlets as some fine ladies, now, what a figure my sons would have thought me all this evening, with hair as lank as a melancholy queen’s in a tragedy! I call it neat as it is.”
Joseph had not observed his mother’s hair, he was so taken up with examining a letter which had lain among the tea-things on the table. He guessed its contents; and they were indeed such as would have damped a far greater cheerfulness than could arise from the aspect of a warm parlour on a chilly evening. Mrs. Lambert’s only sister, a widow, was dead, and had left five children with a very inadequate provision, if any.
When Charles entered, a short time afterwards, he knew from the first glance at his mother, sitting with crossed hands and a countenance of placid gravity, that something was the matter. Joseph was standing in the chimney corner, gazing into the fire. Charles looked from one to the other. His mother roused herself.
“We are not made to choose our own duties, son,” said she. “I know that it is thy wish to be a husband, Charles; and Joseph and I wish it for thee. But here are thy five cousins left helpless. Their mother is dead; and while I live, they must be my children, as much as you. I must take them into this house, and let them eat at my table.”
“And do you think we will not help you, mother? I will go to-morrow and bring them; and if it shall please God always to disappoint me, I must bear it as well as I can.”
“I hope he will let it be with thee as it has been with me, Charles. All the worst troubles that I have known have been unlooked for; and every thing that I have particularly dreaded has turned out better than I expected. I know that this is a blow to thee, though thou bearest it well at present. I hope that thou wilt not have to wait so long for Henrietta as we now expect.”
“I wish thou wouldst not speak of me, mother, when I know that this death is a matter of great concern to thee. When my aunt was last here, and every one said that she looked more like thy daughter than thy sister, we did not think that we should not see her again.”
The crossing of the hands again, and the slight change of countenance showed that this subject was very painful. Next to her sons, there was no one in the world that Mrs. Lambert loved so much as this sister—many years younger than herself, to whom she had been, in early life, as a mother.
Presently she moved about, much as usual, doing all that she would have done if no bad news had come,—only with somewhat more gravity and silence. She did not forget to put on the dry root to burn; and it blazed and crackled as busily as if it had been ministering to the comfort of the merriest tea-party in the world.
“There are the bells again!” cried Charles. “I thought I had stopped them. I wish thou wouldst go down, and try to stop them, Joseph.”
There was an odd reason for the ringing of these bells. A stranger who had been seen loitering in the parish for a day or two was supposed to be the person who had told the publican that the vicar had received a remonstrance from his ordinary respecting his strictness in the exaction of his tithes; and that it was probable that he might be removed ere long, to give place to some one more acceptable to the parishioners. The publican had made the most of the news; and some of his customers, warmed with his good ale, had sallied forth, and found easy means of setting the bells ringing. Peterson was trying in vain to silence them, when Charles went down to enquire; but Charles had prevailed where the tithe-gatherer had met with only defiance. The bells, however, were now ringing again.
Joseph thought that enough had been done. In a better cause, he would not have regarded the sleet and the north wind that he must encounter in his way to the church; but he now preferred sitting in the chimney corner, hearing the merry peal by fits, as the gust rattled at the window and passed on. Besides, his mother wanted him to help to lay plans for these orphan children.
When the Lamberts had been more prosperous than they were now, they had planned an enlargement of their house, which was scarcely large enough for themselves, and would have required an addition on Charles’s marriage, if only from respect to Henrietta. It was particularly conveniently placed for receiving an addition of two or three rooms on the south side; and a pretty parlour, with a bay-window, was to have ornamented the dwelling. Prudential considerations had caused the scheme to be given up; but this evening it was revived. Charles produced the plans which his brother had drawn, and which he had hoped would next see the light in Henrietta’s service. He suppressed a sigh when his mother’s decided pencil scored out the bay-window; and he roused his best powers of judgment to discuss the necessary questions of convenience and economy.—There was some good brick clay in one corner of the farm, and timber enough for their purpose; and the young men thought that, by dint of their working like labourers, and their mother’s superintending during their unavoidable absence, the enlargement of their dwelling might be effected without any very ruinous expense. The brick making was to be set about immediately, if the weather should but prove fine enough. Bricks were very dear this wet season; and the supply now wanted must be made at home, if possible.