INTRODUCTION. Xx¥

The fpirited cultivator may be inclined to improve his lands, as is frequently the cafe, even where the profit he is to derive from fuch improvement cannot be confi- derable; but under fuch circumftances he muft conftantly be prevented from pro- ceeding by the operation of this injudicious regulation: where a tenth or more of the produce arifing from the exertions of the improver are to be taken away, it is ob- vious that fmall returns will not anfwer; efpcecially in a bufinefs where there is much. rifk from feafon and other caufes. By this means the community is confequently deprived of the various advantages refulting from increafed induftry and augmen- tation of produce. By the fame fyftem alfo, much good land, exclufive of commons and waftes is conftrained to remain in the unprofitable ftate of grafs, which might otherwife, by a trifling expenditure of money, and no very extraordinary degree of exertion, be rendered greatly more productive under proper arable management. And it is likewife highly injurious in many inflances, by fubjeéting the farmer to a difgufting dependence on the tythe-owner.

It is evident that the effects of this meafure muft be equally detrimental to the interefts of the proprietors of lands as to thofe of atual farmers’; for whatever tends to leffen the exertion and induftry of the latter muft neceffarily diminith the incomes of the former, and in a proportion much greater than is commonly fuppofed. But they are injured in another way befides that of rent; for as a tenth of the produce of the lands is thus taken away in kind, a deficiency of manure to that extent muft be the confequence, the difadvantages of which are now generally well underftood. The effe¢ét which the abolition of tythes in Scotland has had in promoting agricultural improvements, alfo affords a ftrong and fatisfaCtory proof of their operating powerfully again{t the advancement of hufbandry; for it cannot be attributed to any other circumftance that improvements have been carried on fo: much more extenfively in that part of the ifland than in this.

But it is not merely in{topping the progrefs of agricultural improvements that the payment of tythes in kind is prejudicial, its effe&ts are injurious in many other points of view which it is unneceflary to confider at prefent. It is therefore a mat- ter of the utmoft importance that fuch an alteration.or modification fhould be ef- fected as might render the claims of the proprietors fecure, without producing thofe mifchievous confequences which proceed from it in its prefent form*.

* An able and ingenious cultivator, the Rev. H. J. Clofe, has fuggefted a plan for the removal of the payment of tythes in this way, which, from its nature and fimplicity, feems to deferve our attention. The Communications to the Board of Agriculture, Vol. III.