[Footnote 1:  For the bishops to divide livings.  See the two preceding Tracts. [T.  S.]]

For, although it hath been allowed on all hands, that the former of those Bills might, by its necessary consequences, be very displeasing to the lay gentlemen of the kingdom, for many reasons purely secular; and, that this last attempt for repealing the Test, did much more affect, at present, the temporal interest than the spiritual; yet the whole body of the lower Clergy have, upon both these occasions, expressed equal gratitude to that honourable House, for their justice and steadiness, as if the clergy alone were to receive the benefit.

It must needs be, therefore, a great addition to the Clergy’s grief, that such an assembly as the present House of Commons; should now, with an expedition more than usual, agree to a bill for encouraging the linen manufacture; with a clause, whereby the Church is to lose two parts in three, of the legal tithe in flax and hemp.

Some reasons, why the Clergy think such a law will be a great hardship upon them, are, I conceive, those that follow.  I shall venture to enumerate them with all deference due to that honourable assembly.

First; the Clergy suppose that they have not, by any fault or demerit, incurred the displeasure of the nation’s representatives:  neither can the declared loyalty of the present set, from the highest prelate to the lowest vicar, be in the least disputed:  because, there are hardly ten clergymen, through the whole kingdom, for more than nineteen years past, who have not been either preferred entirely upon account of their declared affection to the Hanover line; or higher promoted as the due reward of the same merit.

There is not a landlord in the whole kingdom, residing some part of the year at his country-seat, who is not, in his own conscience, fully convinced, that the tithes of his minister have gradually sunk, for some years past, one-third, or at least one-fourth of their former value, exclusive of all non-solvencies.

The payment of tithes in this kingdom, is subject to so many frauds, brangles, and other difficulties, not only from Papists and Dissenters, but even from those who profess themselves Protestants; that by the expense, the trouble, and vexation of collecting, or bargaining for them, they are, of all other rents, the most precarious, uncertain, and ill paid.

The landlords in most parishes expect, as a compliment, that they shall pay little more than half the value of their tithes for the lands they hold in their own hands; which often consist of large domains:  And it is the minister’s interest to make them easy upon that article, when he considers what influence those gentlemen have upon their tenants.