During Jerom’s residence at the vicarage,—that is, during the few weeks which Alice’s friends thought long enough for the assertion of that dignity on which her father had bestowed some of his last thoughts,—it occurred to many people that Jerom would like very much to be the future incumbent of this vicarage.—Jerom did indeed wish it. The allotment of new land, in which he had invested his share of the bounty, did not answer. The tenant did not, he thought, cultivate it properly; and he had no influence over the tenant, whom he had allowed to build on the ground, and from whom he had no means of purchasing the new erections. He was almost as poor as before he obtained the bounty; and could not well have got through the year but for his brother’s legacy of the little crops that were in the vicarage-ground.—He must get on, however, on this little wealth, as well as he could; for the parishioners had no intention of allowing anybody connected with the late vicar to be their pastor. They gave Jerom to understand this very plainly. That wealth of his was indeed but small. The season turned out even worse than was expected; and so generally, that its effects were felt by every class in society. Wages had been rising all the year, and this occasioned a further rise in the price of produce; and these things all together proved to such as had eyes to see, the essential vices of the tithe-tax. Never had there been a greater outlay with a smaller per centage of gain to the cultivator than this season: never had tithe been so expensive to him as this year, when he could least afford it: never had the labourers, whose increased wages would not suffice to buy them a sufficiency of bread, so enviously regarded the increase in the revenue of the church;—an increase which arose from the same cause as their privations. Many were now convinced who had not been convinced before, that the bread-eaters of Britain pay a capitation tax to the church. The average consumption of grain being commonly allowed to be equivalent to a quarter of wheat a head, wheat pays a shilling a bushel as tithe, when wheat sells at 80_s._; so that, at that price, the church exacts a capitation-tax of 8_s._; it being clear that 72_s._ would be a remunerating price to the grower, if he had no tithe to pay. Many now allowed, who had not been fond of the subject before, that it is unjust that the religion of little more than half the nation should absorb a larger portion of the national resources, in proportion as these resources fail. Many now hinted, that if the preachers of the gospel had no power to feed the hungry with loaves in the wilderness, they ought not to be entitled to exact larger tribute from their hearers, the more their hearers hungered.