"I consider the late Tithe Bill as an experiment, which I apprehended would, if it produced no other effect, show the unreasonableness of the Irish landholders on the subject of tithes. Tithes are undoubtedly a great oppression to agriculture. They are a tax upon the most important manufacture, the production of food. If the woollen manufacturers, for instance, were obliged to pay the tenth yard of cloth manufactured for the maintenance of the clergy, what would be the effect? Just the same as the payment of the tenth of agricultural produce. The price must be raised in proportion to the charge, or the profit of the manufacturer would be wholly absorbed. A profit of 10 per cent. is esteemed a fair mercantile profit; but the tithe of the manufactured cloth would be more than 10 per cent. on the price for which cloth now sells. Importation would keep down the price, but it would ruin the manufacturer if the article could be imported at a cheaper rate. If, therefore, tithes could be transferred from the occupier to the landowner, it would be beneficial to cultivation, though it would fall heavy on the proprietors of land. On this ground also, I have approved of the commutation of tithes in enclosures. "We give two-ninths of arable, and one-eighth of green land to the tithe-owner. So far as tithes belong to the clergy, they put so much land in mortmain. But land in mortmain is not so injurious to agriculture as tithes taken in hand. And I thought the Bill might lead to some permanent commutation, or at least to a settled rent, putting all the occupiers of land on an equal footing with respect to cultivation. "The French agriculturists have gained a great advantage by throwing the maintenance of their clergy on the nation at large, instead of tithes which pressed wholly on agriculture. Formerly land was almost the only property productive of income; and, therefore, many charges were imposed on land which ought, in the present circumstances, to be a charge on property generally, if that could be effected. It seems to me that the present state of the European world is so changed that other changes must follow. Moneyed property, the profits of trade and manufacturers, are now a vast proportion of the income of the inhabitants of this country, and the persons deriving income from these sources bear that proportion only of the public burdens which are taxes on expenditure; while the income derived from land maintains the Church, the poor, the roads, the administration of justice, etc., etc., to a vast amount, and pays at the same time all taxes on expenditure; and the direct burdens on land increase with the riches produced by trade and manufactures, and the moneyed property. This I take to be a great cause of distress amongst the agriculturists and their landlords. "Truly yours, "REDESDALE." TRANSPORTATION (1823). =Source.=--In the _Edinburgh Review_, 1823, by the Rev. Sydney Smith.