Thoughts upon the demand for Church reform - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1831 Excerpt: ... Income of the Fund amounts to £10,000, the operation of which must be obviously extremely slow, and indeed hardly perceptible. It has, accordingly, been frequently proposed (and that proposal has recently received the sanction of a most learned and estimable person,) that a new Valuation should be made, by which the payment of Tenths should become more real than it is at present; that a graduated scale might be agreed upon, while many small Livings might be discharged altogether; and every Living above a certain value might be taxed according to its income: as it is said to be obvious, that an Incumbent of £1000 a year could much better afford to pay a Ninth, than an Incumbent of £300 a year could pay a Tenth. When this subject was considered so long ago as the year 1810, Lord Harrowby, in a very valuable pamphlet on the Augmentation of Poor Livings, adduced reasons in opposition to this scheme, which ought to have set the agitation of it at rest for ever. Besides the important consideration of the hardship of it, he showed clearly that it would be an act of gross injustice. When nearly three centuries have elapsed during which this tax has been considered as invariable, when so large a number of Livings have become private property, and have passed for a valuable consideration from one purchaser to another on the faith of the invariability of this tax, a fresh valuation, for the purpose of increasing the tax, would be an arbitrary seizure of vested estates, in order to throw upon a particular class of Proprietors that burthen which ought to be borne in common. It must be observed, too, that the notions which have been hitherto entertained as to the magnitude of Livings are very erroneous. Mr. Rose, in the publication already referred to, st...