If we judge by things past, it little avails that this Bill is to be limited to a certain time of ten, twenty, or thirty years.  For no landlord will ever consent that a law shall expire, by which he finds himself a gainer; and of this there are many examples, as well in England, as in this kingdom.

The great end of this Bill is, by proper encouragement to extend the linen manufacture into those counties where it hath hitherto been little cultivated:  But this encouragement of lessening the tithe of flax and hemp is one of such a kind as, it is to be feared, will have a directly contrary effect.  Because, if I am rightly informed, no set of men hath for their number and fortunes been more industrious and successful than the Clergy, in introducing that manufacture into places which were unacquainted with it; by persuading their people to sow flax and hemp, by procuring seed for them and by having them instructed in the management thereof; and this they did not without reasonable hopes of increasing the value of their parishes after some time, as well as of promoting the benefit of the public.  But if this Modus should take place, the Clergy will be so far from gaining that they will become losers by any extraordinary care, by having their best arable lands turned to flax and hemp, which are reckoned great impoverishers of land:  They cannot therefore be blamed, if they should shew as much zeal to prevent its being introduced or improved in their parishes as they hitherto have shewed in the introducing and improving of it.  This, I am told, some of them have already declared at least so far as to resolve not to give themselves any more trouble than other men about promoting a manufacture by the success of which, they only of all men are to be sufferers.  Perhaps the giving them even a further encouragement than the law doth, as it now stands, to a set of men who might on many accounts be so useful to this purpose, would be no bad method of having the great end of the Bill more effectually answered:  But this is what they are far from desiring; all they petition for is no more than to continue on the same footing with the rest of their fellow-subjects.

If this Modus of paying by the acre be to pass into a law, it were to be wished that the same law would appoint one or more sworn surveyors in each parish to measure the lands on which flax and hemp are sown, as also would settle the price of surveying, and determine whether the incumbent or farmer is to pay for each annual survey.  Without something of this kind, there must constantly be disputes between them, and the neighbouring justices of peace must be teazed as often as those disputes happen.

I had written thus far, when a paper was sent to me with several reasons against the Bill, some whereof although they have been already touched, are put in a better light, and the rest did not occur to me.  I shall deliver them in the author’s own words.