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Title: Late Tithe Case
Author: Thomas Moore [
More Titles by Moore]
_"sic vos non vobis."_
1833.
"The Vicar of Birmingham desires me to state that, in consequence of the passing of a recent Act of Parliament, he is compelled to adopt measures which may by some be considered harsh or precipitate; but, _in duty to what he owes to his successors_, he feels bound to preserve the rights of the vicarage." --_Letter from Mr. S. Powell_, August 6.
No, _not_ for yourselves, ye reverend men,
Do you take one pig in every ten,
But for Holy Church's future heirs,
Who've an abstract right to that pig, as theirs;
The law supposing that such heirs male
Are already seized of the pig, in tail.
No, _not_ for himself hath Birmingham's priest
His "well-beloved" of their pennies fleeced:
But it is that, before his prescient eyes,
All future Vicars of Birmingham rise,
With their embryo daughters, nephews, nieces,
And 'tis for _them_ the poor he fleeces.
He heareth their voices, ages hence
Saying, "Take the pig"--"oh take the pence;"
The cries of little Vicarial dears,
The unborn Birminghamites, reach his ears;
And, did he resist that soft appeal,
He would _not_ like a true-born Vicar feel.
Thou, too, Lundy of Lackington!
A rector true, if e'er there was one,
Who, for sake of the Lundies of coming ages,
Gripest the tenths of laborer's wages.[1]
'Tis true, in the pockets of _thy_ small-clothes
The claimed "obvention"[2]of four-pence goes;
But its abstract spirit, unconfined,
Spreads to all future Rector-kind,
Warning them all to their rights to wake,
And rather to face the block, the stake,
Than give up their darling right _to take_.
One grain of musk, it is said, perfumes
(So subtle its spirit) a thousand rooms,
And a single four-pence, pocketed well,
Thro' a thousand rectors' lives will tell.
Then still continue, ye reverend souls,
And still as your rich Pactolus rolls,
Grasp every penny on every side,
From every wretch, to swell its tide:
Remembering still what the Law lays down,
In that pure poetic style of its own.
"If the parson _in esse_ submits to loss, he
"Inflicts the same on the parson _in posse_."
[1] Fourteen agricultural laborers (one of whom received so little as six guineas for yearly wages, one eight, one nine, another ten guineas, and the best paid of the whole not more than 18_l_. annually) were all, in the course of the autumn of 1832, served with demands of tithe at the rate of 4_d_. in the 1_l_. sterling, on behalf of the Rev. F. Lundy, Rector of Lackington, etc.--_The Times_, August, 1833.
[2] One of the various general terms under which oblations, tithes, etc., are comprised.
[The end]
Thomas Moore's poem: Late Tithe Case
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