Ittirto to ts4t attn.
NEGLECTED CLAIMS OF THE BENEFICED CLERGY.
Weston-super-Mare, 6th December 1852.
Sim—Allow me, as a subscriber of some twenty-five years past to your able paper, to trespass fora brief space upon your columns. At a time when compensatory claime.are so clamorously put forward on behalf of the landed interest, not one plea is advanced by their advocates (on the principle, I suppose, of every man for himself) in support of the much stronger claims of the beneficed clergy of our National Church to com- pensation for the serious diminution they are sustaining in the amount of their tithes, from the present low averages of the prices of wheat and other grains. When the Tithe Commutation Act became law, those averages (as respects wheat) ranged some fifty per cent higher than they now do ; and it would need the highest stretch of imagination to suppose that, under our present commercial system of unrestricted competition, established by the blessing of God in this country, prices will materially advance in future years. The boon Mr. Disraeli promises the clergy will be but a paltry equivalent for what they are minus in pocket by the act of 1846. Upon the principle, then, of fair play to all classes of the community, let me trust, Mr. Editor, that you will give this most hardly dealt-by class the benefit of your powerful aavocacy of their undoubted claim to a just and equitable compensation.
I remain, Mr. Editor, with much respect, jUSTITIA. [We admit the hardship ; we do not perceive an attainable remedy. What compensation would our correspondent suggest,—in what shag "Fair play to all classes of the community" are words used in roue Parlia- mentary periods—not a rule of conduct for the Government. See ow Mr. Disraeli serves his old clients the West India planters ! Fine words they may still have, and deceptive figures ; but if you ask more, the ready official answer is, " Privy Councillors have no sympathy !"—En.]
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