Here it is necessary to distinguish two sorts of property.

1.  Land carries no mark on it to distinguish it as ecclesiastical, as tithes do, which are a charge on land; therefore, though it had been made inalienable, it ought perhaps to be subject to limitation.  It might bona fide be held.

But, first, it was not originally inalienable, no, not by the Canon Law, until the restraining act of the 11th [1st?] of Elizabeth.  But the great revolution of the dissolution of monasteries, by the 31st Hen., ch. 13, has so mixed and confounded ecclesiastical with lay property, that a man may by every rule of good faith be possessed of it.  The statute of Queen Elizabeth, ann. 1, ch. 1, [?] gave away the bishop’s lands.

So far as to lands.

As to tithes, they are not things in their own nature subject to be barred by prescription upon the general principle.  But tithes and Church lands, by the statutes of Henry VIII. and the 11th [1st?] Eliz., have become objects in commercio:  for by coming to the crown they became grantable in that way to the subject, and a great part of the Church lands passed through the crown to the people.

By passing to the king, tithes became property to a mixed party; by passing from the king, they became absolutely lay property:  the partition-wall was broken down, and tithes and Church possession became no longer synonymous terms.  No [A?] man, therefore, might become a fair purchaser of tithes, and of exemption from tithes.

By the statute of Elizabeth, the lands took the same course, (I will not inquire by what justice, good policy, and decency,) but they passed into lay lands, became the object of purchases for valuable consideration, and of marriage settlements.

Now, if tithes might come to a layman, land in the hands of a layman might be also tithe-free.  So that there was an object which a layman might become seized of equitably and bona fide; there was something on which a prescription might attach, the end of which is, to secure the natural well-meaning ignorance of men, and to secure property by the best of all principles, continuance.

I have therefore shown that a layman may be equitably seized of Church lands,—­2. of tithes,—­3. of exemption from tithes; and you will not contend that there should be no prescription.  Will you say that the alienations made before the 11th of Elizabeth shall not stand good?

I do not mean anything against the Church, her dignities, her honors, her privileges, or her possessions.  I should wish even to enlarge them all:  not that the Church of England is incompetently endowed.  This is to take nothing from her but the power of making herself odious.  If she be secure herself, she can have no objection to the security of others.  For I hope she is secure from lay-bigotry and anti-priestcraft, for certainly such things there are.  I heartily wish to see the Church secure in such possessions as will not only enable her ministers to preach the Gospel with ease, but of such a kind as will enable them to preach it with its full effect, so that the pastor shall not have the inauspicious appearance of a tax-gatherer,—­such a maintenance as is compatible with the civil prosperity and improvement of their country.