iv. Perhaps the most irritating of all imposts that press upon the country parson is that to which he has to submit because the churchyard is technically part of his freehold. In many parts of the country a fee is charged for burying the dead. In the diocese of Norwich there are no burial fees. The right of burying his dead in the churchyard is a right which may be claimed by any inhabitant of the parish; the soil of the churchyard is said to belong to the parishioners; the _surface of the soil_ belongs to the parson. This being so, the parson is assessed in the books of the parish for the assumed value of the herbage growing upon the soil, and on this assumed value he is accordingly compelled to pay rates, Income-tax, and Land-tax. Of course the parson could legally turn cattle or donkeys into the churchyard to disport themselves among the graves; but happily that man who should venture to do this nowadays would be thought guilty of an outrage upon all decency. Who of us is there who does not rejoice that this state of feeling has grown up among us? But the result is that the churchyard, so far from being a source of income to the parson, has become a source of expense to him in almost all cases. Somebody has to keep the grass mown, and see that God’s acre is not desecrated. Few of us grumble at that; and some who have large resources pride themselves on keeping their churchyards as a lawn is kept or a garden. But it surely is monstrous when everybody knows that the churchyard, so far from bringing the parson any pecuniary benefit, entails an annual expense upon him which is practically unavoidable--it is monstrous, I say, that the parson should be assessed upon the value of the crop which might be raised off dead men’s graves, and that he should be taxed for showing an example of decency and right feeling to those around him. “Well! But why don’t you appeal?” My excellent sir, do you suppose that nobody ever has appealed? Do you suppose that very original idea of yours has never occurred to any one else before? Or do you suppose that we the shepherds of Arcady, find appealing against an assessment, made by our neighbours to relieve themselves, before the magistrates at Quarter Sessions, is a process peculiarly pleasurable and particularly profitable when the costs are defrayed? We grumble or fret, we count it among our trials, but we say, “After all, it is only about five shillings a-year. Anything for a quiet life. Let it go!” So the wrong gets to be established as a right. But it is none the less a wrong because it continues to exist, or because in coin of the realm it amounts to a trifle. Was it Mr. Midshipman Easy’s nurse who urged in excuse of her moral turpitude in having an infant of her very own, “Please, ma’am, it was _such_ a little one?”