It were more reasonable to grant the clergy in three parts of the nation an additional support, than to diminish their present subsistence. Great employments are and will be in the hands of Englishmen; nothing left for the younger sons of Irishmen but vicarages, tide-waiters' places, &c.; therefore no reason to make them worse. The _Modus_ upon the flax in England, affects only lands reclaimed since the year 1690, and is at the rate of five shillings the English acre, which is equivalent to eight shillings and eightpence Irish, and that to be paid before the farmer removed it from the field. Flax is a manufacture of little consequence in England, but is the staple in Ireland, and if it increases (as it probably will) must in many places jostle out corn, because it is more gainful. The Clergy of the Established Church, have no interest like those of the Church of Rome, distinct from the true interest of their country; and therefore ought to suffer under no distinct impositions or taxes of any kind. The Bill for settling the _Modus_ of flax in England, was brought in, in the first year of the reign of King George I., when the Clergy lay very unjustly under the imputation of some disaffection. And to encourage the bringing in of some fens in Lincolnshire, which were not to be continued under flax: But it left all lands where flax had been sown before that time, under the same condition of tithing, in which they were before the passing of that Bill: Whereas this bill takes away what the Clergy are actually possessed of. That the woollen manufacture is the staple of England, as the linen is that of Ireland, yet no attempt was ever made in England to reduce the tithe of wool, for the encouragement of that manufacture. This manufacture hath already been remarkably favoured by the Clergy, who have hitherto been generally content with less than half--some with sixpence a garden--and some have taken nothing. Employments they say have been taxed, the reasons for which taxation will not hold with regard to property, at least till employments become inheritances. The Commons always have had so tender a regard to property; that they never would suffer any law to pass, whereby any particular persons might be aggrieved without their own consent. ***** ***** ***** ***** AN ESSAY ON THE FATES OF CLERGYMEN. NOTE. This essay was first printed in Nos. v. and vii. of "The Intelligencer" (Dublin, 1728). In that periodical it bore the title: "A Description of what the World calls Discretion;" and had the following lines from Ben Jonson as a text: "Described it's thus: Defined would you it have? Then the World's honest Man's an errant knave." The text here printed is based on the original issue, and collated with the "Miscellanies," vol. iii. of 1732, and the "Miscellanies," vol. ii., 1747. [T.S.] AN ESSAY ON THE FATES OF CLERGYMEN.