“The tithe,” says Adam Smith, “is always a great discouragement both to the improvement of the landlords and to the cultivation of the farmers. The one cannot venture to make the most important, which are generally the most expensive, improvements, nor the other to raise the most valuable, which are generally, too, the most expensive, crops, when the Church, which lays out no part of the expense, is to share so very largely in the profit.”[287] Agricultural depression, during the four years previous to 1836, and the growing discontent of agricultural tithe-payers, demanded a speedy solution of this problem. Statesmen tried to solve it before Lord Russell attempted the task. Lord Althorp tried it in 1833, and again in 1834, but failed on both occasions. His three principal propositions were: (1) To substitute a money payment in lieu of tithes in kind; (2) The rent-charge to bear a fixed proportion to the rent payable on the land; and (3) To redeem the tithe by twenty-five years’ purchase, or the creation of a rent-charge of equal value. The second proposition was the weakest. Any attempt to establish a proportion between the tithe and rent would end in failure, for the two had no similar foundation. Tithe was founded upon produce, but rent was not. Lord Althorp would make tithe to fluctuate with rent, retaining a fixed proportion of rent-charge. In principle it was a tax on capital, and therefore failed. In 1835, Sir Robert Peel, when Prime Minister, introduced a Bill on the same subject. The principle contained in his Bill was that there should be a fixed money payment in the shape of a corn-rent in lieu of tithes, varying yearly according to the price of the three corns—wheat, barley, and oats; that it should be a voluntary arrangement between the tithe-owner and tithe-payer. The machinery to carry out this Bill was to appoint three Commissioners, viz., two by the Crown, and one by the Archbishop of Canterbury. These Commissioners should appoint Assistant Commissioners. Within a month after he had introduced this Bill, his Government went out of office, on the 8th of April, 1835. Lord John Russell, a member of Lord Melbourne’s Government which succeeded Sir Robert Peel’s, took up the subject of tithes by introducing a Bill on the 9th of February, 1836. “Tithe,” said his lordship, “was a discouragement to industry, a penalty on skill, a heavy mulct on those who expended the most capital and displayed the greatest skill in the cultivation of the land.” These were true words; and it gives one pleasure to observe that he had the courage to boldly express his opinions. But his boldest statement was that “tithes were the property of the nation.” This remark has again and again been quoted by the opponents of tithes, and it has as often been contradicted by the defenders of tithes.