No. XX. We've cheated the parson, we'll cheat him agen OLD SONG. THE following treatise, occasioned by a report that the Tithe-bill would be revived this sessions, was sent from an unknown person, by the post, to our bookseller. "His Worship holding the Parson's Tithe-pig by the tail; or, Five Arguments, most humbly offered to the public, and more particularly addressed to many members of the honourable House of Commons; setting forth and shewing the great reason there is for passing the Tithebill (as it is commonly called), which was brought before the Parliament the last sessions, though unfortunately not ordered a second reading. "Courteous Reader, "I look upon it as one of the chief causes of the decay of primitive christianity, that there is any set of men particularly appointed to attend upon the affairs of religion. We should certainly do much better without them than with them, and be able to find a way to make their revenues more serviceable to the good of the nation, and turn to a much better account, than they do at present. If religion is a personal thing between God and a man's own conscience (as without all doubt it must be), it then follows from the reason and nature of things, and is demonstratively proved by the Independent Whig, that there cannot be the least occasion for a parson, and that every man ought to be a spiritual guide unto himself; for which the countrymen and day-labourers of England seem at present to be extremely well qualified; they being most of them able, as I have been credibly informed, to read English. "As for the clergy, it must be acknowledged that they have hitherto tolerably well maintained their ground. But how have they maintained it? or why have they been able to maintain it? why, not by their own great learning and abilities; not by the exemplariness of their lives, or the prudence of their behaviour; but by a constant fatal mismanagement in the worthy gentlemen who have opposed them ; who, by laying their arguments in too loose, indigested, and incoherent a way; and by being more intent upon exposing the follies, weaknesses, or wickednesses of particular persons, than upon the grand point of shewing the use lessness of the order itself; have ever given the soberer and more rational part of the clergy some room for acclamation and triumph. I must say for my present performance (and I hope that it will not be thought to have the least tendency towards vanity), that I have carefully avoided this method. I argue close; I keep to the point; and do not let my reader lose sight of the subject, as is commonly done by most writers: and though I have purposely insisted only upon five arguments, when I could very well have produced treble the number; yet, I hope, these five are so well managed, and set in so clear a light, that the Reverends and the Right Reverends will find themselves held to hard diet, and have a very troublesome and difficult bone to pick. "Fare thee well, live and grow wiser. "Before I proceed to lay my arguments for passing the Tithe-bill before my reader, I must beg leave, by way of introduction, to premise, and very solemnly to assure him, that I have set myself with the utmost impartiality, and without the least bias on my mind of interest, prejudice, or passion, to examine the subject. I can safely say that I have not, nay, that I never had, any private quarrel or misunder standing with any clergyman whatsoever; but, on the contrary, have lived, and do even now live, with many of them in very great freedom and familiarity; and have no possible objection against very many among them, as to their manners or their morals, or indeed in any other respect than as they wear the gown and cassock. "As to my being prejudiced against them: it may rather, and with a greater show of reasoning, be objected by a lay-man, that I am prejudiced for them; because in fact I was bred up a member of the Church of England, and still continue to profess myself a member of it; and am not ashamed of confessing, that if we must have a Church (for which, I hope, no one will think me ignorant enough to believe that there is any occasion), I, really and strictly speaking, consider the Church of England as the best constituted, and freest from pedantry, moroseness, and superstition, of any Church in the whole world. "And, lastly, as to my being interested in the affair, this can surely only be urged by those who are not acquainted with me, or my circuinstances; for here I protest (and I can, if there is the least scruple remaining, bring sufficient evidence to the truth of what I say) that I do not pay tithe for a single foot of land in his majesty's whole dominions; the little fortune that I have consisting chiefly in money, together with two or three copperas works, for which there was never any thing demanded, or so much as pretended to be demanded, by the neighbouring minister. say thus much, to obviate any unjust reflections, or loud-mouthed clamours, which may very probably come from the clergy quarter, on account of my not being a competent judge, and writing with partiality on the subject; and I likewise say it, to dispose the laity to attend to the following arguments (which, by the way, ought to be in every one of their hands, from the highest to the lowest) with the same candour and disinterestedness with which they were first drawn up, and are now sent into the world by me. “And, first, let me take notice, that the passing of this Bill would, in a great measure, tend to lessen the exorbitant incomes and overgrown revenues of the rural clergy; who are generally observed, by those who are acquainted with their last wills and testaments (and particularly by the learned and facetious author of a, late London Journal), to die immensel speech and to leave vast fortunes to their d |