paid, without any harassing of the tenant, exactly as similar charges, in the way of ground-rents, are paid to-day. For tithe rent-charge is, in fact, a ground-rent, or, to give it a more accurate title, a reserved rent. A landowner gives a lease for ever of some land for building, reserving a ground-rent for every house. The lessee builds the houses, seeks the tenants, bargains for and receives his profit rents. If the property increase in value, he pays no more to the head landlord, and no less if it diminish. Suppose the ground-rent to be 10l. per house, and the house-rent agreed upon with the lessee to be 100l. The lessee does not expect for a moment that if the value of each house sinks to 50l. the landlord will remit him half the ground-rent. He makes his bargain, from time to time, in the market, taking profit or loss to his own share. If the value of each house fall to 11, his property is only worth 1. a house to him ; if it fall to 10l., he simply abandons it to the landlord; if it fall below 10l., the landowner then, but not before, must forego so much of his ground-rent. The lessee has been a speculator, and dealt with his speculation in the market, at market value, for his own loss or profit. The ground landlord has not joined in his speculation, has not shared in his profits, and should not be called on to share in his loss. The occupiers of such houses, while covenanting to pay 100l., 50l., or 25%. to the lessee for rent, will never think of expecting the ground landlord (of whose very name they may be ignorant), with whom they have made no contract, to hand them over a portion of his reserved rent because the value of house property has fallen; nor even think it cruel of him to distrain upon them for the ground-rent if left unpaid by the lessee, since, in such a case, they have their remedy against the lessee for subjecting them to distraint. In real truth the case of tithe rent-charge liability is exactly parallel to this; as long as land will produce rent and tithe, the tithe is a fair first charge; only when it produces less than tithe must the tithe-owner submit to reduction. All other fluctuations in value concern the landlord and tenant, not the tithe-owner, and are subject to the higgling of the market; and were the tithe insisted upon from the landlord and not undertaken by the tenant, the tithe-owner would be free, as he ought to be, from all money contact with tenants, and from all the unworthy imputations of selfishness and greed, which deeply and undeservedly hurt his feelings, and injure his influence. So much for the obvious and easy remedy of the first grievance we examined, the liability of occupiers (not being owners) to payment of rent-charge. It can be remedied, to the true advantage of all parties concerned, by their refusing to make themselves liable, as they now do. The next grievance was based, as we have shown, upon a supposed difference between 'protection' and 'free-trade' prices. For this we need consider no remedy, as the supposed difference has been shown to be non-existent. The third grievance was stated to arise from incompleteness of the returns of corn sold, which is supposed by some to produce a calculation of values unfair to the tithe-payer. The remedy proposed for this is also a modification or alteration of the law. We are certain that tithe-owners generally will be of the first to say, 'Let any proven injustice be remedied.' If a fair case for legal interference can be made out, as honest men, and further, as Christian ministers, they would and should be advocates that, at whatever cost to themselves, justice should be done. But we are of opinion that the grievance alleged arises, not from the fact of the present law making insufficient provision for fair returns, but from the fact that any alleged unfairness arising from its operation is of such infinitesimal amount as to make the trouble of correcting the injury greater than the injury supposed to need correction. In a word, if the returns be really insufficient, the parties concerned may, if they will, make them more systematic and complete under the present law. Further, if any method better still can be devised, which shall enable us more accurately to estimate the values of rentcharge on the principles laid down in the Commutation Act, by all means let it be tried; nay, alternative methods for the same purpose may fairly be made matters of experiment; and no objection need be made. But, for the present, we have no suggestion on the subject which sufficiently commends itself to any of the parties concerned to awaken the slightest enthusiasm for its introduction; various fanciful and complicated schemes have been put forward, in which, so far at least as they have been explained, the general public seem to see no promise of improvement upon present conditions likely to counterbalance the injury which must result from the disturbance of arrangements which have worked fairly well during the best part of half a century, and the alleged unfairness of which is a matter of altogether modern discovery. The grievance of special apportionments we have already treated, as well as that arising from the alleged covetousness of tithe-owners in not reducing their tithes. These are senti mental grievances, both founded on misapprehensions, and therefore we have naturally no suggestions before us for alterations in the existing law as touching these particular points. Having thus examined one by one the grievances alleged against our system of tithe rent-charge, showing their allegation to be due either to ignorance of the present law on the subject, or to neglect of its provisions on the part of complainers, our task would really be at an end, did it not seem indispensable to examine briefly a number of suggestions on the subject freely made, on the one hand, by persons desirous, not indeed of correcting wrongs or adjusting differences, but simply of having, as they suppose, less to pay than they have covenanted to do; on the other hand, by tithe-owners who imagine that, though a great concession from the Church's rights has already been made, apparently without success, as regards the class of people who desire to evade the payment of rentcharge, an additional concession (which would be asked from no other class of proprietors in the universe) may be expected to pacify opponents whom success in this direction would only make more greedy, more clamorous, and less reasonable than before. One of these suggestions is as follows: to fix the tithe rent-charge at a par value, for every year, of 100%. Against this astonishing proposal, which can only be put forward by men who understand nothing about fluctuations in the purchasing power of money, one objection out of many will be quite enough to urge: namely, that just the present time is the wrong one for tithe-payers to dream of accepting such a change, even were tithe-owners willing to offer it. For we are, in our depressed agricultural state, on a descending plane of tithe values; the septennial average is now a diminishing one, and may fall back a long way behind 100, as it has often done before now.1 With this prospect in view, it would be childish to suppose any tithepayers who complain of present charges (on account of agricultural distress) ready to bind themselves by any sort of agreement to pay always 100l., where 957. or 90/. may seem, for many years to come, the limit of their probable liability. In fact, the suggestion put forward in sheer good nature by some very inconsiderate clergymen has been already held up to scorn and reproach by the class whom it was meant to pacify, as a fresh instance of the cunning and rapacious 1 It may be noted that from 1850 to 1857 inclusive the rent-charge was always under par, as well as in the years 1865, 1866, and 1867; in 1855 100l. of tithe rent-charge was worth only 891. greed of the tithe-owners, and a snare into which tithe-payers should be careful not to fall. The economic absurdity of the suggestion has been admirably exposed by the Right Hon. J. G. Hubbard, M.P., in his able letter in the Times of March 19th last, to which we refer our readers. Another proposal is that the rent-charge shall be redeemed, and thus all friction between tithe-owners and tenants removed. The same objection does not lie against this as does against the 'par value' proposal. If redeemed, the sum paid for redemption might be invested in land, and the value of each rent-charge would consequently always bear the same relation to the value of land. Practically, this would be doing what the Tithe Commutation Act might have done namely, assigning land, instead of rent-charge, to the titheowner, with the difference that the land in which the redemption money was invested would not necessarily form part of the parish whose rector received the interest. Still there would be nothing, as a matter of principle, to oppose to such a redemption. Its practice, however, would be difficult and complicated, and all the good it could accomplish would be met in a far simpler manner by the landlords paying the tithe themselves, instead of leaving it to be collected by the tithe-owners from the tenants, as is now so frequently the case. A general reduction, and even abolition, of rent-charge, by way of relieving the distress of cultivators, has also been boldly suggested. But (apart from the fact that to deprive any one particular class of its possessions and leave its members to starvation by way of alleviating difficulties of another class, which the state of the land market will relieve in any case, is only another name for indiscriminate plunder and spoliation) the measure, could it be carried out, would fail to benefit its promoters. Were the Church deprived of its claim to tithe rent-charge to-morrow, the tenant farmers would not get a penny of it. If given to the landlords, it would enhance the value of land, and raise the tenants' rent; for land tithe-free at the present day commands by so much a higher rent than land subject to rent-charge. But it would never be given to the landlords either; distressed though they be, they know better than ever to dream of expecting such a thing. It is a charge which in some form or other the land will have to bear, as long as its cultivation can tempt any man with a hope of profit; and to take it from its present owner, the Church, would do infinitely more injury, in a moral sense, to the nation, than its abolition could ever benefit individuals, even could its value be transferred to them. The whole agitation on the subject has arisen from a mixture of ignorance and self-interest; the parties really concerned in the question, the tithe-owners and the landowners, have taken no part in the matter, while those who have made themselves prominent have not looked enough into the mere husk of the subject to see that all their clamour, however successful in disturbing peaceful relations between the clergy and their flocks, could never, even if successful, better their own position by one foot's breadth, or place a single penny in their pockets. There is some satisfaction, in the review of this whole matter, to note that no public print pretending to influence general opinion, and no public man with any character for statesmanship at stake, has shared for an instant in this shortsighted and unreasonable movement, or committed himself to the expression of views contrary to just principles, subversive of mutual confidence, beneficial neither to individuals nor to classes, and hurtful both to Church and people, to the public and the public weal. ART. V.-ON BRAIN SCIENCE IN RELATION TO RELIGION. 1. The Functions of the Brain. By DAVID FERRIER, M.D., F.R.S., Member of the Royal College of Physicians,' Assistant-Physician to King's College Hospital, Professor of Forensic Medicine in King's College, London. (London, 1876.) 2. The Brain as an Organ of Mind. By H. CHARLTON BASTIAN, M.A., M.D., F.R.S., Professor of Pathological Anatomy, &c., in University College, London, &c. (London, 1880.) 3. An Inquiry into the Process of Human Experience, attempting to set forth its lower Laws, with some Hints as to the higher Phenomena of Consciousness. By WILLIAM CYPLES. (London, 1880.) IT has been remarked as one of the features which have specially distinguished the intellectual world of England from that of continental countries that, on the one hand, there has been much more of religious belief amongst our scientists; and, on the other hand, much greater readiness to accept well |