TITHE RENT SALE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 228, 26 September 1931, Page 9

TITHE RENT SALE.

Bucket of Mud' Over Head of

Auctioneer.

KENT FARMERS STONE POLICE

LONDON, September 25,

A crowd of 200 farmers in East Kent poured a bucket of ipud over the head of an auctioneer during a sale at Canterbury to recover arrears of tithe rent, against which farmers everywhere have rebelled.

The farmers stoned the police guard. The sale was abandoned, and the auctioneer escaped in the police car.

Tha "Daily Mail" states that the total of the annual tithe payments in England and Wales exceeds £3,000,000, of which the parish clergy receive threequarters. The remainder goes to education and charity.

The question of tithes has recently caused much friction both in and out of Parliament, mainly in connection with the Tithes Remission Bill, the passing of which was favoured by the former Minister' of Agriculture, Dr. C. Addison. Tithes were originally in English law "an ecclesiastical inheritance due to God" and payable to the person whose duty it was to provide for the cure of souls in each •district. This was sometimes the king and sometimes the local monastery.

By the Tithe Act of 1891 nearly all tithes have been commuted into a titherent charge—i.e., a sum of money charged on the land and payable half-yearly by the landlord, and it is this sum which the present-day tithe-payers complain of as having, by the Tithe Rent Charge Act of 1925, grossly exceeded the original 2/6 in the £.