The Clergy cannot but think it extremely severe, that in a bill for encouraging the linen manufacture, they alone must be the sufferers, who can least afford it:  If, as I am told, there be a tax of three thousand pounds a year, paid by the public, for a further encouragement to the said manufacture; are not the Clergy equal sharers in the charge with the rest of their fellow subjects?  What satisfactory reason can be therefore given, why they alone should bear the whole additional weight, unless it will be alleged that their property is not upon an equal foot with the properties of other men?  They acquire their own small pittance, by at least as honest means, as their neighbours, the landlords, possess their estates; and have been always supposed, except in rebellious or fanatical times, to have as good a title:  For, no families now in being can shew a more ancient.  Indeed, if it be true, that some persons (I hope they were not many) were seen to laugh when the rights of the Clergy were mentioned; in this case, an opinion may possibly be soon advanced, that they have no rights at all.  And this is likely enough to gain ground, in proportion as the contempt of all religion shall increase; which is already in a very forward way.

It is said, there will be also added to this Bill a clause for diminishing the tithe of hops, in order to cultivate that useful plant among us:  And here likewise the load is to lie entirely on the shoulders of the Clergy, while the landlords reap all the benefit.  It will not be easy to foresee where such proceedings are like to stop:  Or whether by the same authority, in civil times, a parliament may not as justly challenge the same power in reducing all things titheable, not below the tenth part of the product, (which is and ever will be the Clergy’s equitable right) but from a tenth-part to a sixtieth or eightieth, and from thence to nothing.

I have heard it granted by skilful persons, that the practice of taxing the Clergy by parliament, without their own consent, is a new thing, not much above the date of seventy years:  before which period, in times of peace, they always taxed themselves.  But things are extremely altered at present:  It is not now sufficient to tax them in common with their fellow subjects, without imposing an additional tax upon them, from which, or from anything equivalent, all their fellow-subjects are exempt; and this in a country professing Christianity.

The greatest part of the Clergy throughout this kingdom, have been stripped of their glebes by the confusion of times, by violence, fraud, oppression, and other unlawful means:  All which glebes are now in the hands of the laity.  So that they now are generally forced to lie at the mercy of landlords, for a small piece of ground in their parishes, at a most exorbitant rent, and usually for a short term of years; whereon to build a house, and enable them to reside.  Yet, in spite of these disadvantages, I am a witness