him the customary commission he has so well earned. The difficulty is not in carrying out a transfer or a valuation when a purchaser is found, but the difficulty is to find the purchaser and arrange the price, etc. When this is done the rest is comparatively simple. If vendors and purchasers would come together to agent's offices (as the agent takes them together to solicitors' offices), the agent would be satisfied with a moderate fee instead of a commission in arranging terms between them, but the cost of maintaining an office to find purchasers, and then to bring the requirements of vendors and purchasers into harmony is the crux.

It is the distinction between an absolute and a risk charge which has to be considered, and when this is done, reasonable men cannot make unreasonable comparisons.

To ensure contentment, disperse the people from too crowded centres, suppress agitation, add to development of rural districts, and for other reasons, a wider diffusion of land is desirable. But to bring this about the transfer of land must be made more easy.

It may appear at first sight that so cheap and easy a system of transfer as the Torrens system would deprive conveyancing solicitors of a large part of their income, but I do not believe that this would be the effect. It would be some years before any very large part of the titles of the country were registered, and generally speaking it would be solicitors who would submit and explain the titles to the Government title examiners, and when the system became common there would arise a considerable volume of business in a variety of ways.

The necessity for a readier system of transfer is not only on account of expense, but on account of the intolerable delay which accompanies most transactions.

If an owner sells or mortgages his property he has a specific purpose in doing so; it may be to acquire another property which is in the market, or to pay off an existing mortgage, or to give a son or a daughter a start in life, or to meet some pressing liability, and as solicitors often occupy not only weeks but months in carrying through conveyances and mortgages, the public have become discontented with a system which entails a wearying suspense, increasing external costs in a variety of ways, causing loss of opportunities of profitably using the money, raising difficulties in negotiations with those being treated with, and in case of meeting liabilities the odium which attaches to a debtor through constant excuses and delays.

A system which is cumbersome and vexatious should in these days of general scientific advancement call forth the acumen of some legal mind to bring about such a change as the circumstances demand.

It may be that some restrictions should be enforced as to some forms of the settlement of land. Modern Radical reformers, who attack the just rights of owners, are oftentimes violently coercive in their principles, and coercion is contrary to that freedom which owners of property should possess, but the question of some restriction in some forms of settlement is, perhaps, a necessary exception to the rule. I am not a lawyer, however, and I cannot do more than draw attention to the subject in the way I have done, trusting that some competent person may be aroused to action in bringing about some such system of registration of titles and of easy transfer as is adopted not only in the new countries of the Antipodes, but in the old countries of the Continent of Europe.

C. F. DowSETT.

CHAPTER LXXVIII.

A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF TITHES.

BY THE REV. THOMAS MOORE, M.A.,

Rector of All Hallows the Less, and Vicar of All Hallows the Great, Upper Thames Street, E.C.; Author of "The Englishman's Brief on behalf of his National Church,” "The Case for Establishment stated," "The Established Church Question; How to deal with It," "The Dead Hand in the Free Churches," "Talks on Tithes; Why pay them?" "Moore's Church Manuals" series of three)—(1) "State Control over Church and Chapel," (2) " Church and Chapel Property," (3) Parliamentary Grants to Church and Chapel," "The Education Brief on behalf of Voluntary Schools," "The Church the Educator of the English Nation,” etc.

THE history of the origin and growth of tithes is a very wide subject. It covers a large area of legislative, legal and literary ground which ought to be surveyed in order to secure for the subject an exhaustive discussion. It may, however, suffice to say that the Church, from the earliest times, enjoined upon her members the observance of their religious duty in providing for her organisations and ministries the means of permanent support.

In recognition of that duty to devote to this object the tenth of the produce of the soil, and, in some cases, even the tenth of the gain of personal employments, suggested itself as not only being in accordance with God's law in the Jewish Church, but as being in accordance with the religious customs of various ancient nations.

To our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, when newly con

verted to the Christian Faith, the question would not unnaturally suggest itself: "Why should we Christians do less for our Church than the Jews did for theirs, or less than the religious-minded heathen did for their various idolatrous forms of religion"? Thus the voluntary dedication of tithes to the use of the Christian Church soon became a standing custom, and the custom, in course of time, became a part of the unwritten or common law of the kingdom.

When the unwritten law and custom with reference to tithes became a matter of doubt and contention, then, and not till then-and solely and exclusively to meet this emergency-written law with reference to tithes became necessary; the written law, in such a case, not creating tithes, nor laying down any new basis of a legislative or legal character as the grounds of the obligation for the compulsory payment of tithes, nor prescribing what things should be titheable, nor how the tithes should be collected, but simply removing alleged doubts as to these matters, and further explaining and declaring what the original basis of the obligation to pay tithes really was, and setting forth at what times, in what proportions, and in what manner they should be paid according to ancient custom.

Thus the statute, the 1st of Richard II., cap. 12, declares that tithes are "due of right and possession to His (God's) Church," and the 5th of Henry IV., cap. II, describes them as "due as the law of holy Church required"; while as to things titheable, and with reference to the method of payment of tithes, the 27th of Henry VIII., cap. 20, and the 32nd of Henry VIII., cap. 7, as well as various other statutes referring to the ancient customs of individual parishes, declare them to be payable not in conformity to any prevalent uniform mode, but "according

to the laudable usages and customs of the parish or other place where the tithepayer dwelleth."

In not one of the ancient statutes on tithes is there a single clause purporting to be the provision under which and by which tithes were created.

Their previous existence in every case in which they are mentioned is assumed.

In not one of the Acts is their payment declared to rest solely upon a common law or statutable basis. In every case their payment is primarily made to rest upon the requirements of the law of God and of His Church.

In not one of the statutes is the separate parochial amounts and modes of payment of tithes declared to rest upon a legislative basis. The legislative provisions of each statute do but say that tithes shall be payable according to the laudable differing customs of the parishes in which such tithes arise.

It is plain, therefore, that these facts effectually disprove and dispose of the assumptions of the alleged State creation of tithes, or the alleged primary State prescription of the obligation and manner of paying tithes; and further, that they are facts which are only consistent and compatible with the voluntary private, manorial and parochial origin of the whole tithe system.

SUMMARY OF STATUTE LAW AS TO TITHES.

Legislative enactments as to tithes were only rendered necessary when misunderstandings arose between the tithe payer and the tithe receiver as to the customary amounts of tithes and methods of their payment which prevailed in each parish in which the tithes arose, which had been manorially and parochially originated and acted upon, and had been sanctioned by centuries of common law.