The Clergy of the Established Church, have no interest like those of the Church of Rome, distinct from the true interest of their country; and therefore ought to suffer under no distinct impositions or taxes of any kind.
The Bill for settling the _Modus_ of flax in England, was brought in, in the first year of the reign of King George I., when the Clergy lay very unjustly under the imputation of some disaffection. And to encourage the bringing in of some fens in Lincolnshire, which were not to be continued under flax: But it left all lands where flax had been sown before that time, under the same condition of tithing, in which they were before the passing of that Bill: Whereas this bill takes away what the Clergy are actually possessed of.
That the woollen manufacture is the staple of England, as the linen is that of Ireland, yet no attempt was ever made in England to reduce the tithe of wool, for the encouragement of that manufacture.
This manufacture hath already been remarkably favoured by the Clergy, who have hitherto been generally content with less than half--some with sixpence a garden--and some have taken nothing.
Employments they say have been taxed, the reasons for which taxation will not hold with regard to property, at least till employments become inheritances.
The Commons always have had so tender a regard to property; that they never would suffer any law to pass, whereby any particular persons might be aggrieved without their own consent.
This essay was first printed in Nos. v. and vii. of "The Intelligencer" (Dublin, 1728). In that periodical it bore the title: "A Description of what the World calls Discretion;" and had the following lines from Ben Jonson as a text:
"Described it's thus: Defined would you it have? Then the World's honest Man's an errant knave."
The text here printed is based on the original issue, and collated with the "Miscellanies," vol. iii. of 1732, and the "Miscellanies," vol. ii., 1747.
There is no talent so useful towards rising in the world, or which puts men more out of the reach of fortune, than that quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of people, and is in common speech called discretion; a species of lower prudence, by the assistance of which, people of the meanest intellectuals, without any other qualification, pass through the world in great tranquillity, and with universal good treatment, neither giving nor taking offence. Courts are seldom unprovided of persons under this character, on whom, if they happen to be of great quality, most employments, even the greatest, naturally fall, when competitors will not agree; and in such promotions, nobody rejoices or grieves. The truth of this I could prove by several instances within my own memory; for I say nothing of present times.