THE opposition made by the landowners to the doctrine laid down in this case, was neither worthy of their character, nor congenial with their habits of candour. Their usual openness of conduct seems to have left them during the period in which they continued, with a perversity as strange as it was blind, to agitate this subject. We, who have at all times borne our testimony to the direct and manly actions of the landowners of this kingdom, were surprised that an interest so trifling as that for which they were stickling, should suddenly have converted them into a herd of special pleaders; and that their sound sense should have given way before a ridiculous quibble. The truth of the doctrine held in Joddrell's case has been lately affirmed by a decision in the Queen's Bench, and we firmly believe that no doubt of its validity now exists, save with those inveterately opposed to the Church. The great body of the landlords have returned to their duty, to the law as established, (for in disputing out of doors the legality of a judicial decision they were guilty of an infraction upon the social order that the law establishes,) and they are now satisfied of the propriety of a decision to which they had heedlessly objected.

In stating the arguments, then, on which the truth of Joddrell's case is based, we have no intention to make converts, for we believe all rational and unprejudiced persons, with an understanding of the subject, to be in favour of that case; but our wish is to show, so far as we may be able, how doubts, at one time held by a great portion of the most influential persons in the country, arose, their fallacy, and their injurious tendency.

The landowners, at the suggestion of the Poor Law Commissioners, began the dispute. The Poor Law Commis

sioners being in straits, voted themselves into a committee of lawyers and legislators, picked holes in some Acts of Parliament, and improved others to their own satisfaction, and ended by distorting the law relative to poor-rates, which their duty enjoined them passively to obey. They put a new construction upon the 43d of Elizabeth, the standard of the poor, which ordained equality between all rates to be made for its beneficent object. They trimmed and shaped Poulet Scrope's act into the explication of their own wishes, though it was an act merely declaratory of a portion of that of Elizabeth, already alluded to, neither affecting the spirit of that christian ordinance, nor varying any one of the relations generated by it. By what rules of construction these acts were given a meaning never before nor since suggested in a court of justice, we are not enlightened-but it was whispered that expediency or convenience had regulated the change. An organ of the Poor Law Commissioners assured the country that it was impossible for them to execute their labours, with regard to the branch affecting rates, if the regulations established by the 48th of Elizabeth, and affirmed by the decision of Joddrell's case, were not abandoned, and others, requiring less calculation, not substituted.

These new regulations gave to the landowners some trifling advantage in the relative charge for rates which they imposed upon the two species of property, tithes and land, and for a short time seduced that party into acquiescence in a measure not only injurious to the temporal interests of the Church, but calamitous from deeper results. What was justice and law the landlords held to be injustice; and the fair and legitimate demand made by the clergy for the operation of the act

of Elizabeth, was denounced, by those with whom they had heretofore been allied, as a course of conduct opposite to that before pursued, and contrary to law. With this view the landowners presented obstacles to an equitable arrangement for the contributing to the support of the poor, as authorized by the Act of Parliament we have before mentioned. We cannot doubt that they believed themselves to be upholding a well-established system of rating against some new fangled doctrines, or they would never have hazarded those parochial disturbances which they too surely excited.

It is very true that a lax mode had prevailed generally throughout the country, both in the assessment and the collection of the poor-rate. The two authorities given to the churchwardens and overseers of parishes, the comptrollers of this fund, by the Act of Elizabeth, the one fixed and invariable, the other mutable with the circumstances and convenience of the parish; the one directing the levy of an equal rate upon all things enumerated or within the meaning of the act, the other permitting a limitation of that rate, according to the necessities and a mode of perception suited to the convenience of the parish; became, after a series of years, frequently blended. Many allowances are therefore to be made for those who had attended rather to the working of the act than to the recorded reasons for variations abundantly observed; who were mistaken in the effect and intent of the Act of Elizabeth, and who clamoured therefore against what they called change, and denounced the law of Joddrell's case.

We are ready to admit that the clergy, with that very proper regard to the peace and quiet of their parishioners, had acquiesced in a system of rating that sprung from convenience, whereby they were content to bear a somewhat greater share of the burden of the charge for the poor, than those who were more concerned with temporal affairs. But while they evinced this forbearance,and as a general characteristic, this is interesting, their concessions could never be held to alter the effect of the law under which they were made, nor

to affect the principle of equality over which they triumphed. Whenever the clergy were outrageously imposed upon they appealed to the law courts, which invariably held up the pure doctrine of the law of Queen Elizabeth. Yet it is because of these concessions, and because of this mystification of parochial authority, that Joddrell's case was thought to be inconsistent with the law, and that the clergy, whom the recent alteration in their visitation by the Tithe Act, and after the Poor Law Act had left it no longer a matter of convenience and mutual agreement between parishioner and parishioner, how and in what proportions the rate should be raised, but fixed it unchangeably upon certain portions of property, had requested a measure of poor-rate meted according to the act of Elizabeth, were accused of a craving after the loaves and fishes, excited in them by a misplaced law-crotchet. Before we proceed farther in showing that the dispute on Joddrell's case was not excited by the clergy, but that it was the work, ex necessitate rei, of the Poor Law and Tithe Commissioners, we will state the substance of that case, and such part of the act of Elizabeth upon which it was decided.

Rex v. Joddrell, 1 B. and Ad. 403, was one of appeal against a rate for the relief of the poor of the parish of Yelling.

The parish of Yelling had been enclosed by Act of Parliament, under which tithes were extinguished and a compensation made in lieu. The rector was assessed for the full amount of his compensation, a corn-rent, while the farmers in the parish were only rated upon the rack-rent paid by them. It was decided in full court that the parson had been rated too high, and that the mode of rating must be relative as to his corn-rent and the landlord's and tenant's profits together.

This is the substance of that case we intend to cite at length in its proper place.

By the 43d Eliz. c. 2, it was ordained that certain rates for the support of the poor should be raised in each parish; they were to be a burden upon all who, within the provisions of that act, were held rateable. But it was not enjoined

that the amount or mode of raising a rate in one parish should conform with that raised in another. By that statute, upon the construction of which the whole question rests, the overseers of a parish are required "to raise weekly or otherwise (by taxation of every inhabitant, parson, vicar, and other, and of every occupier of lands, houses, tithes impropriate, propriations of tithes, coalmines, or saleable underwoods in the parish, in such competent sum or sums of money as they shall think fit) a convenient stock, &c., to be gathered out of the parish, according to the ability of the same parish."

Now, either Joddrell's case was or was not law, and we think it requires no extraordinary legal acumen to discover its general agreement with that part of the statute we have cited, and which is the only part bearing upon the question. It was necessary therefore that the two Commissions-the Poor Law, which was to assess and locate poor-rates, and the Tithe Commission, which had to partition the clergyliable lands, and to give habitation to their commutation claims upon lay lands-should agree upon the law of rating; as the exact rateable charge, both upon the commutation claim to be apportioned upon lands bounded and admeasured, and that upon the lands themselves was indispensable to the ascertainment of the relative values of the commutation-apportioned rent, and the lands upon which they were apportioned before any apportionment could at all be made. We have before stated that the Poor Law Commissioners were disposed to set aside the law of Joddrell's case, and to put a new construction upon the original Poor Law Act, the 43d of Elizabeth. But the Tithe Commissioners, more considerate in their judgment, determined that, until Joddrell's case was reversed, it carried the sacredness of law with it, which they were bound to obey. Thus the two commissioners were stuck: nor could the one complete a single assessment, nor the other make perfect the most trifling parochial commutation, until they were both agreed upon a settled and legal mode of rating. The landowners readily became active partisans on that side

L

where their interests were supposed to be most protected; while the clergy, who were little else than listeners to the dispute, were said to be the chief agitators. For themselves the clergy cared little what mode of rating should be adopted, they were only anxious for the quiet of their several parishes, and their earnest desire was the completion of the great change then being made in tithe property, without social disturbance or parochial contentions. They showed no greater regard to this part of the general arrangement than, as trustees, their duty to their successors demanded.

That they were perfectly right in upholding Joddrell's case, so far as they did; that not only were they then obeying the established law, but that both ancient and modern authority were with them, the recent approval of Joddrell's case by the Queen's Bench abundantly testifies, a remarkable proof of the correctness of the judgment they had formed upon its merits, as well as an incontestible evidence of their general inclination to repress worldly advantage. For nothing could have been simpler to perform than for the clergy to have enforced the doctrine in Joddrell's case in every parish in the kingdom.

Let us now examine the dispute that arose upon the case just mentioned. We have already given its outline, and that clause of the 43d of Elizabeth, bearing upon the question involvedin the case. We will, therefore, be perfectly intelligible in showing the ground of difference, by simply stating that the landowners were opposed to the equal mode of rating mentioned in the 43d of Elizabeth, and decided in Joddrell's case. As we shall now attempt to collect in a brief form the arguments or opinions used by either of the disputant parties, we here subjoin the objections that were urged by the appellant before the Queen's Bench, and the whole of that part of the decision weighing upon them:

"It was objected by the appellant, that as he was assessed at such a sum as, with his poor-rate, inade up the full gross amount of the corn rent, the profit accruing to the occupiers beyond the amount of rent paid, and beyond