of rate should be treated differently from all other rates and

taxes.

21. Such continued to be the law for some centuries, until the general desire for agricultural improvement, and other things demonstrated the necessity of abolishing the absurd and barbarous system of paying tithes in kind, when all other species of rent had been commuted into money. It will always be considered as a striking monument of barbarism that for more than 1,000 years after the constitution of tithes in this country, they were still legally payable in kind. The practical good sense of the people, however, had generally commuted the payment in kind into a payment in money. It has been said that payment in kind was not made in one case in thirty. But liability to tithe was a serious, and in many cases an insuperable bar to agricultural improvement. It had, indeed, been enacted that newly reclaimed land should be exempt from tithe for seven years; but after that period it would be subject to pay one-tenth part of the gross produce to the tithe owner. What other industry could stand such a burden? Where would the cotton mills of Manchester have been if one-tenth part of the gross produce, or even of the net profits, had been extracted from them as tithe to the clergy? And yet they are equally liable to pay this rate as the agriculturists, by law. In numerous instances it was so evident that the exaction of the full legal tithe would prevent all improvement, that the clergy agreed to accept a smaller amount rather than have none at all. But nothing can be more unjust than that a single branch of industry should continue to be subject to such a burden, all other branches of industry which were equally subject to it by law having quietly discontinued it.

During the Commonwealth, when so many other reforms were attempted which have only been permanently realised in our own day, it had been proposed to commute the payment of tithes in kind into a rent charge; but it did not succeed. At length, in 1836, this great reform, which was absolutely indispensable for any general agricultural improvement, was effected by the 5 and 6 William IV., c. 71. Tithes were commuted into a fixed corn rent charge at their then value. Their average amount for the seven years preceding 1835 was taken. The value of one-third of the amount was estimated in wheat; another third in barley; and

another third in oats: these were taken as a permanent fixed basis. The controller of the corn returns is ordered to publish in January every year the average prices of wheat, barley, and oats during the preceding year: and the tithe-payer has to pay an amount every year on these quantities of wheat, barley, and oats, calculated on their average prices during the preceding seven years. And so steady has been the average price of these kinds of corn on a long series of years, notwithstanding the repeal of the Corn Laws, that on an average of 37 years, the tithe owner has received £110 10s. for every £100 of tithe rent charge as fixed in 1836. Other enactments are prescribed for other kinds of crop, such as hops, market gardens, &c., which we need not enumerate in such a work as this. By this and a series of cognate Statutes a great relief has been accomplished for agriculture: the rate payable by law has become a fixed burden, and all future industry is left free. But yet nothing can excuse the injustice of allowing all other species of industry to emancipate themselves from a burden to which all were equally liable; and leaving the single industry of agriculture to bear it. The only just, and the simplest way of solving the perplexing difficulties which surrounded the question would have been to enact that all payments of tithe should at once cease and determine, and that every member of the ministry should be paid the exact sum he had been receiving as tithes out of the Consolidated Fund. This would have been the only way of making a national payment to a national clergy and of compelling all the classes who had so long evaded their legal duty to bear their fair share of the national burden. And this, indeed, is what ought to be done now: though, of course, there is not the smallest chance that it will be done. But, at all events, these considerations seem to shew that the other classes of the community who have so long illegally withheld such large revenues from the clergy have not a shadow of right to consider the tithe rent charges paid by the agriculturists as national property, if the nation should ever deem it expedient to cease to maintain the Established Church.

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Closely connected with tithes is another species of Incorporeal Property called an ADVOWSON, which is not even a right to any material thing, but only the Right to present to a Right. A grant of tithes is called a Benefice: and an Advowson (advocatio) is the Right of presentation to an ecclesiastical benefice. The

owner of the advowson is termed the Patron of the benefice, but, as such, he has no property or interest in the tithes or the glebe, which belong to the incumbent. As patron he has only the Right of nominating the incumbent as the benefice becomes vacant. Of course, we cannot enter into the origin of advowsons and lay patronage, nor on the expediency of permitting advowsons to be sold; but as a matter of fact they are valuable rights, and exchangeable property, and therefore they are Wealth by our definition. The value of an advowson is usually about eight times the yearly value of the benefice.

At the present time the value of this species of property in England is very large, probably not less than £16,000,000; and here is another example, if any more were necessary, to shew the extreme folly of the doctrine that all Wealth is material and comes from the earth; and that all value is the produce of labour. An advowson is the Right to present to a Right, and how is this Right formed out of the materials of the globe, or how is it the produce of labour?

22. The last species of Incorporeal Property which it may be necessary to mention is a Policy of Insurance. Any sum of money being equal in value to an annuity, an exchange may be made between an annuity and a sum of money. In the funds a person pays down a sum of money and receives in exchange an annuity, or the right to a series of payments. In an insurance a person pays an annuity, estimated according to scientific laws, and buys the Right to a sum of money on some contingency happening. In some cases he cannot, in other cases he may, sell or assign this policy, and therefore it is wealth to him. And here again we see how an obligation may be capital. A policy is an obligation of the company; but it produces them a revenue; hence it is capital to them. The amount of Property in Policies of Insurance is very large and constantly increasing; and are these Rights formed out of the materials of the globe, and are they the produce of labour?

We have now said enough regarding Rights of Obligation: they are called choses-in-action because there is always some person who is bound to discharge them, and if he refuse to do so an action will lie against him.

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On RIGHTS OF EXPECTATION.

23. We have now to consider another very important class of Incorporeal Property, in which, although some person is entitled to receive the payment or the profits, no other person in particular is bound to make the payment, but it is only expected or hoped that some one will. This species of property, therefore, cannot correctly be called a chose-in-action, though it sometimes is. It is called in Roman Law emptio spei or emptio rei sperata. It is merely the Right to an expected or hoped for profit; and hence it may be called a Right of EXPECTATION.

To this class of Incorporeal property belong Shares in Commercial Companies of all sorts: Copyrights: Patents: the Practice of a Professional man: the Goodwill of a business : Tolls Ferries: Fisheries; and some others.

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On the CAPITAL AND SHARES OF A COMMERCIAL COMPANY.

24. In comparatively recent times an enormous class of Property has been created, the fruit of commercial enterprise and the spirit of association. Commercial enterprises are now conducted on such a colossal scale that the capital of no single person is adequate for them: they require the joint contributions of a large number of adventurers. Each adventurer is entitled to share in the profits in proportion to the capital contributed by him. And as he is not allowed to withdraw his capital, and may not wish to continue a member of the Company, he is allowed to sell or assign his Right to the future profits, just as a fundholder can only receive his principal by selling his right to the annuity to some one else.

To understand this subject properly we must revert to the example of land, the standard case of value. In this case the Capital or source of the annuity, the land, is corporeal, and before our eyes. It may be seen and handled. Moreover, the fruits of it from which profits are made, viz., the corn and the cattle, exists corporeally before our eyes, and may be handled and measured. It is by the exchange of these corporeal products for other products and services that we obtain the enjoyment of the property in land.

But we shall now proceed to shew the analogy between this standard case of Value, and other immense classes of cases. We shall first deal with a class of cases in which the source or instrument of the profit is corporeal, like the land. But we shall spunge out the materiality or corporiety, of what is analogous to the produce of the land, namely, the service performed by the instrument, and which brings in the profits, or the instrument, as corn and cattle bring in the profits of land. And we shall call upon our readers to believe in the real existence of these profit-producing incorporeal elements just as much as in the existence of the material corn and cattle.

We have thus obtained two cases of Capital and Produce. The first, in which the Capital and the Produce are both material; the second, in which the materiality of the Capital remains, but the Produce is immaterial. But in either case, each are Economic Elements. We shall also find that there are two other cases, correlative to the two first; namely, a third one, in which the Capital or source of Produce is immaterial, and the Produce material; and, lastly, we shall spunge out the corporiety both of the Capital and the Produce. And we shall call upon our readers to believe in the real existence of these incorporeal sources of revenue, or this incorporeal capital, producing incorporeal entities, or elements, which are exchanged for corporeal profits, and which have as real an existence as much as the land, and the corn and cattle. And this incorporeal capital and its incorporeal produce may be measured and valued with as much certainty as any material article whatever. And when we have surveyed all these kinds of property, we shall be able to form some estimate of the magnitude of property in this country, and the domain of Economics.

As an example of the first case of this latter species of property, we shall instance Railways and Canals. It is perfectly clear that what we may call the source or instrument of the annuity, analogous to the land, namely, the railroad, or the canal, formed and maintained at a vast expense, is corporeal and visible like the land. But is the service which the railroad or canal is capable of rendering, and which produces, or draws forth, the profits, corporeal? Whence do the profits of the railroad or canal come? They are given by the public in exchange for the service which the railroad or canal is capable of rendering, namely, the transport