Irish Tithe Act of 1838

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Irish Tithe Act of 1838

The Irish Tithe Act of 1838 effectively ended the tithe war of the 1830s. Earlier legislation in 1823 and 1832 had converted the contentious and fluctuating tithe charge into a fixed, standard payment based on the quality and quantity of land that each tithe payer held. Left unresolved, however, was the basic problem that Anglican clergymen still had to collect tiny sums from thousands of Catholic parishioners, all of whom fiercely resented being forced to support the Protestant Established Church. The 1838 act addressed this problem by transferring the burden of paying tithes from the numerous occupiers of the land, who were overwhelmingly Catholic, to the relatively fewer owners of land, who were usually Anglican.

By the terms of the 1838 act, tithe was converted into a charge on the landowner at three-quarters of the original amount due to the tithe owner. A tithe owner who previously had tried to collect a total of £100 from the many occupants of a parish would now receive £75 directly from the owner of the estate. In theory, the landowner could then add up to the full amount of the original tithe to his tenants' rent, thus receiving a bonus of up to 25 percent for his trouble. The liability traveled down through the layers of subtenants, stopping just above those who held land at will or from year to year. Tenants in this latter category, comprising the vast majority of Catholic landholders, were now completely exempt from tithe. In addition, all the uncollected tithe of the 1830s was effectively written off, as was the money already advanced to Anglican clergymen in 1833 by parliamentary act. Additional money left over from that 1833 legislation was now made available to tithe owners in order to help cover their losses.

Despite eight years of fierce resistance to paying tithes, the new rent charge met with surprisingly little opposition. By removing the burden of tithe from the majority of Catholic landholders and by abandoning all efforts to collect arrears, the new measure insured that the countryside would remain undisturbed. Furthermore, nonpayment of what was now rent carried a greater risk, as a landlord could evict or refuse to renew a lease.

The 1838 act finally put an end to the hostile transaction between Anglican parsons and the rural Catholic population, while maintaining tithe as a species of property for the support of the Protestant Established Church. It provided much needed financial stability to the Church in the years before its disestablishment in 1869.