and ecclesiastical courts; his livelihood is extortion; his rank in
society is generally the lowest; and his occupation is to pounce on
the poor in the name of the Lord! He is a species of wolf left by
the shepherd to take care of the flock in his absence.' A single
tithe-proctor had on one occasion processed 1,100 persons for tithes,
nearly all of the lower order of farmers or peasants, the expense of
each process being about 8 s. They had heard of opinions delivered
in parliament, on the platform, and from the press by Protestant
statesmen of the highest consideration, that it was a cruel oppression
to extort in that manner from the majority of the tillers of the soil
the tenth of its produce, in order to support the clergy of another
church, who, in many cases, had no flocks, or only a few followers,
who were well able to pay for their own religious instruction. The
system would be intolerable even were the state clergy the pastors of
the majority; but as the proportion between the Protestants and the
Roman Catholics was in many parts as one to ten, and in some as one to
twenty, the injustice necessarily involved in the mode of levying the
impost was aggravated a hundredfold. It would be scarcely possible
to devise any mode of levying an impost more exasperating, which
came home to the bosoms of men with more irritating, humiliating,
and maddening power, and which violated more recklessly men's natural
sense of justice. If a plan were devised for the purpose of driving
men into insurrection, nothing could be more effectual than
the tithe-proctor system. Besides, it tended directly to the
impoverishment of the country, retarding agricultural improvement and
limiting production. If a man kept all his land in pasture, he escaped
the impost; but the moment he tilled it, he was subjected to a tax of
ten per cent. on the gross produce. The valuation being made by the
tithe-proctor--a man whose interest it was to defraud both the tenant
and the parson--the consequence was, that the gentry and the large