“Ancient Egypt, for instance. There the sovereign appropriated the fifth part, I believe, did not he?” “A fifth, I believe: and the same was the case under the Mahomedan government in Bengal. In China, they take our exact proportion, one-tenth, which is a remarkable coincidence. Not that they are able to raise one-tenth——” “Any more than ourselves.” “Any more than ourselves; which extends the coincidence. In some provinces, a thirtieth is the utmost that can be levied.” “Then I hope the coincidence will extend no further.” “Indeed I don’t know,” sighing: “but my proportion becomes less every year. Those Asiatic governments have a power which we English clergy have not. They can help to improve the country from which they levy their tenths, while we can only claim the tithe, without having any title or power to aid its production. There is no inducement to a vicar, like myself, to plan a road, for instance, to some new market for produce, though my tithe might be much increased in value thereby. If I were a prince, on the other hand, I should do this directly, and profit by it.” “And the land also; which seems to point out that this method of raising funds is better for a state than for a church, whose ministers can never have the same power of promoting improvement with those of a government.” “But, papa, does the emperor of China take his fortune in hay or fruit, like you and Apollo, not in money? I should think it would be very easy to cheat him: and what a quantity of things he must have to stow away! And so must a clergyman in a very large parish.” “Yes,” replied Jerom; “and that is the reason that tithes are generally paid in money, in large parishes. The tax would be so in China, too, I dare say, but that the mandarins like to have the collecting of it.” “I think papa had better get a mandarin to collect his for him, if he finds that people cheat him, and do not pay him so much as they ought. Papa, I wish you would make me your mandarin I should like to go about gathering eggs, and apples, and all the things that people pay you.” “The mandarins have a different reason for liking to make these collections. They can cheat as well as the people under them. But yet, collecting under my own eye, as I do, mine is a hard case;—it is hard that I cannot get my tenths of the articles which are as much the property of the church as of the farmer who refuses me my due.” “Mrs. Byrne says, however, that her husband’s is a hard case. He has all the trouble of planting and rearing, she says; and ever so much goes to those who have had none of the toil and the cost.”