THE GOVERNMENT AND TITHE
[To the Editor of TUE SPECTATOR.] Stn,----I observe that you say that " the justice and merits " of the Government's tithe proposals " are so clear that the arguments brought against it are unconvincing." It is won- derful with what complacency we human beings are able to watch the property of other people being taken from them. I daresay if I read that the country cottages of literary gentlemen were to be taken over by the Government because they made the villagers jealous, I—not having one--might with calmness—and, indeed, a certain sense of virtue— exclaim, " Quite Right. Most Just ! "
I fear the parties to the tithe dispute are likely to be less easily convinced that a proposal which mulcts all tithe-owners of one-fifth of their income and compels all tithe-payers, whether hard cases or not, to go on paying under penalty of the law, is obviously just or even sensible.
Think what it means to a poor parson who has an income of £4300 or £400 a year, who has to live in a large house, suddenly to find his income reduced by £50 or £70, when he has planned his life on the reasonable assumption, based on the 1925 Act, that his income would remain at the larger, though hardly affluent, figure.
And why ? • -Not because of any act of God, but because a Government wants to get rid of a tiresome question without expense. Many landowners will certainly benefit, though many have no wish to do so in this unjust fashion. But the really hard-pressed tithe-payer will not. He will have to face the tax-gatherer man, not the more merciful Queen Anne. There is something to be said for disendowing the Church and giving it freedom, but nothing for this piecemeal plan. And all the trouble could be saved if only the redemption period were made 76 instead of GO years. Not a just plan, nor _a very clever one.—Your obedient servant,
A. S. DUNCAN-JONES.
The Deanery, Chichester.
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