ference between landlord and tenant. But when the rent is from five to nine or ten parts less than the worth, the bishop, if he consults the good of his see, will be apt to expostulate; and the tenant, if he be an honest man, will have some regard to the reasonableness and justice of the demand, so as to yield to a moderate advancement, rather than engage in a suit, where law and equity are directly against him. By these means the bishops have been so true to their trusts, as to procure some small share in the advancement of rents; although it be notorious that they do not receive the third penny (fines included) of the real value of their lands throughout the kingdom.
I was never able to imagine what inconvenience could accrue to the publick, by one or two thousand pounds a year in the hands of a protestant bishop, any more than of a lay person[1]. The former, generally speaking, lives as piously and hospitably as the other; pays his debts as honestly, and spends as much of his revenue among his tenants: besides, if they be his immediate tenants, you may distinguish them at first sight by their habits and horses; or, if you go to their houses, by their comfortable way of living. But the misfortune is, that such immediate tenants, generally speaking, have others under them, and so a third and fourth in subordination, till it comes to the welder (as they call him) who sits at a rackrent, and lives as miserably as an Irish farmer upon a new lease from a lay landlord. But, suppose a bishop happens to be avaricious (as being composed
- ↑ This part of the paragraph is to be applied to the period when the whole was written, which was in 1723, when several of queen Anne's bishops were living.
