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cording to certain circumstances) six years or nine years purchaseof them as so valued. These teinds, so purchased, continuingliable, after those not purchased should be exhausted, to suchstipend as the Scots Parliament (since the Union the Court ofSession) should judge it meet to allocate from them to the Clergy.
Tythe may be commuted upon two different principles ; eitherthat of fixing them down for ever, as in Scotland , at their pre-sently existing value; or that of allowing their value, like thatof rent to keep pace with the increasing value of land. If va-lued upon the first principle, the commutation must either be,—in money, which exposes them to fall with the depreciation ofmoney,—or in equivalent of allocated land, which dooms it tosterility under mortmain holding,—or in a grain rent, which wouldnot be attended with the inconveniencies of disputes about quali-ty, or of forcing the Clergy into the corn trade, if the ipsa cor-pora were neither tenderable nor exigible, but to be paid for al-ways at a conversion money price, and upon the average of lastseven or eight years (to prevent the effect of the wide fluctuationsof grain prices from year to year). If they are commuted uponthe second principle, of their value not being fixed, but left am-bulatory, to follow the fluctuation of the value of land, none ofthe above modes of commutation can apply, but the deleteriousone of the allocation of land. And no other eligible mode sug-gests itself, to avoid the present bad constitution of a tax upongross produce, but converting the tythe into a given proportionof the free rent paid to the landholder.
By act 1748, the Scots tenant is relieved from all burdens notexpressly stipulated in his lease, or what should be imposed bya ct of Parliament , excepting the one half of schoolmaster’s sa-lary and of poor’s rates, and adstriction to mills.
The tenant’s half of school salary and poors’ rates will hardly,on an average, exceed one or ope and an half per cent, upon histent.
Adstriction to mills, so far as it goes, is, like tythe, a tax upongross produce, and gives the same obstruction to land improve-ment.
The rate of adstriction, both as to the quantity of produceever which it extends, and the proportional part of that quantitywhich it claims, is various, in various parts of the country. Thelowest quantity of adstriction extends to all the oatmeal used intoe family of the farmer,—a quantity not susceptible of very ac-vurate definition. That quantity the privileged mill has the ex-elusive privilege of manufacturing, and is entitled to a twenty-fifth part, (the lowest proportion generally accompanying themost confined extent), as multure, or price of the manufacturing,mstead of a thirty-second part, which is esteemed the ordinaryMarket rate. The exclusive privilege is sometimes found to ex-tend to all the growing corns, seed and horse corn only excepted;