£ 1. Clerical Appropriators 681,695 2. Parochial Incumbents 2,415,040 3. Lay Impropriators 766,334 4. Schools, Colleges, etc 196,055 ---------- £4,059,124 ========== The recipients of (1) and (4) are stated in the Appendix. In 1891, the depreciation is £967,419, and the total gross value is £3,061,705. Assuming £2,000 to be the price by Act of Parliament of £100 commuted value; the Government would advance to the landowners £58,837,965 at £4 per cent., and would hand over stock at £2¾ per cent. to this amount to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, in trust for the parochial incumbents and clerical appropriators. They would pay the dividends, amounting to £1,705,200 per annum, to the incumbents, etc., just as they do the dividends on other properties vested in them. Now, in 1891, the same tithe-owners receive about £1,734,152 net. The depreciation in value of tithe is, we may say, at its _nadir_. Therefore the income from stock should not be less than this nadir value, and hence the purchasing value should not be less than £2,000. The property is national, and therefore care should be taken to maintain its value, and to prevent landowners, as in 1836, from getting another large slice of this national property. THE EXTRAORDINARY TITHE-RENT CHARGE. On one important point, Lord Russell had deviated from its leading principle in the second reading of the Bill. A deputation of Middlesex market-gardeners waited upon him after the Bill was introduced, who pointed out that they had expended a large amount of capital on improvements of their market-gardens during the past seven years, and that if they were to pay a rent-charge on the average of these seven years, they would continue liable to a very heavy charge, while the owners of arable land or common land in their neighbourhood, paying very low tithe composition, would come into competition with them and thus ruin them. This argument had actually influenced his lordship even against his own will, and so he introduced an extraordinary rent-charge, calculated on each acre, in addition to the ordinary rent-charge on hop grounds, orchards, and market-gardens, brought into new cultivation. In introducing this Bill, and before the Middlesex market-gardeners influenced him, Lord Russell used these remarkable words: “Whatever might be done with orchards and gardens now existing, he felt considerable difficulty in rendering land that might be converted into orchards or gardens in future, liable to increased tithes. Orchards were a precarious and uncertain description of property, and frequently did not bear in certain years; and in respect of garden lands, if the Legislature allowed the question to be opened again from time to time, it would give rise to incessant disputes.”[288]