The City of London Tithes Act of 1879 (42 & 43 Vict. c. clxxvi.) provides for the commutation of tithes and payments in lieu of tithes arising or growing due in certain parishes in the City of London, and for the redemption of rent-charges charged upon lands under the above Act. By the Christ Church (City) Tithe Act, 1879 (42 & 43 Vict. c. xciii.), S. Bartholomew’s Hospital receives in lieu of tithes the annual sum of £1,800, which is levied and collected as tithe rates by the hospital from persons rateable to poor rates in that parish. Tithes in arrears are recoverable by distress in the same manner as stated in the Commutation Act of 1836. The vicar of Christ Church, Newgate Street, with S. Leonard, Foster Lane, has £456 per annum; population, 1,380. This is a Fire parish. Mr. Edward Jeffries Esdaile and his successors are the owners by purchase, £20,000, of the tithes of the parish of S. Botolph without, Aldgate. Disputes arose after the Act of 1879 as to payments to be made to Mr. Esdaile in respect of tithes. An Act was therefore passed in 1881, called, “The City of London Tithes, S. Botolph without, Aldgate,” (42 & 43 Vict. c. cxcvii.) to commute the tithes. By sec. 3 of this Act, the tithe-owner is to receive £6,500 a year in lieu of tithes, which was to be levied and collected by the churchwardens from the persons by law rateable to poor rates, and shall be assessed on the annual rateable value of the houses assessed for poor rates. The £6,500 a year was to be paid by the churchwardens to the tithe-owner after the 29th September, 1881, by two half-yearly payments. The cost of making and collecting the tithe-rates is to be paid by the ratepayers, and is to be exclusive of the £6,500. The owners of houses can redeem the tithes as if they were rent-charge under the Tithes Commutation Act of 1836. CHAPTER XVIII. _THE COMMUTATION ACT OF 1836_[285]. Up to the time that this Act was passed, the tithe-owner claimed in kind the tenth part of the gross produce of the land, without contributing anything towards cultivation or improvement. In fact, the claim retarded both, and the object of the Act was to advance and not to keep back the cultivation and improvement of the land. The tithe was a tax upon labour and capital. The collection of tithes became both unpopular and obnoxious. “Tithes are a tax,” says Archdeacon Paley, “not only upon industry, but upon that industry which feeds mankind. They operate as a bounty upon pasture. The burden of the whole tax falls upon tillage, that is, upon that precise mode of cultivation which it is the business of the State to relieve and remunerate in preference to every other.”[286]