them for “the support of themselves and their families.”  And this dilemma was felt so keenly by the clergy themselves, that it had become a very general feeling with them that, “if any sort of commutation could be devised, they would be delighted to be delivered from this objectionable mode of payment.”  Indeed, Sir Robert Peel, whose measure of the preceding year had been chiefly directed to the encouragement of voluntary commutations, had stated to the House that there were already two thousand parishes in the kingdom in which a commutation between the clergyman and his parishioners had been agreed upon, and established as a durable settlement by separate acts of Parliament.  Indeed, arrangements of this kind existed very generally; the parishes in which the tithe was taken in kind being comparatively few, and the plan usually adopted being for the occupier of land to pay the incumbent a fixed annual sum bearing a certain proportion to his rent.  But arrangements which were optional were, of course, liable to be rescinded; and Peel desired to establish a system which should be universal and permanent.  And with this view he had designed the appointment of a temporary commission, one member of which should be nominated by the Primate, as the representative of the Church, under whose supervision the tithes of every parish in the kingdom should be commuted into a rent-charge, regulated partly by the composition which had hitherto been paid, and partly by the average price of grain—­wheat, barley, and oats.  It was no new idea, since as far back as 1791 Pitt had proposed a general commutation of tithes for a corn rent, and had submitted a plan with that object to the Primate, though circumstances of which we have no accurate knowledge prevented him from proceeding with it.[241] Objections[242] were taken to this last part of the arrangement, chiefly because it would render perpetual the terms of existing compositions, the extreme augmentation of them which was provided for in the bill being only ten per cent., while it was notorious that the majority of incumbents had shown such liberality in these matters that the compositions rarely amounted to two-thirds of the sum to which they were legally entitled.  And it was hardly denied that the measure did involve some sacrifice of the extreme legal rights of the clergy; but it was urged and generally felt by the most judicious friends of the Church that the peace and harmony which might be expected to be the fruit of the measure was worth some sacrifice, and the bill was passed with very general approval; a bill on similar principles, with such variations as were required by the differences between the two countries, being also passed for Ireland.