does such evidence deserve attention? My Lords, I am myself no farmer, but I have conversed with noble lords who have much knowledge of such subjects; and they assure me that the average crop of the wheatfield of Weldon might, in a good year,* be fairly supposed to amount to four and a half quarters per acre: † And in that case, sixty-nine quarters is no such prodigious quantity for the moiety of the tithe.

My Lords, the learned and honourable counsel who raised this objection from the

* Even Arnsby allowed that the year 1790 was a good year: For, being asked whether the average produce of the wheat-field had been increasing since the year 1780, he answered "Not till the last two years;" and being asked again, to what that increase of the last two years was owing, he answered "To the season."

James Walker deposed, that in the year 1791, the average crop of the wheat-field of Weldon was four and a half quarters upon the statute acre.

quantity, took the objection at first, as I thought, with great fairness and candour. I was sorry that this fairness and candour were lost sight of in the progress of his argument. My Lords, he said that he did not tax Miss Raye with any intention to impose upon the Committee; but he believed she had made this mistake,-that she had not distinguished between the tithewheat and the wheat which grew upon the rector's own glebe; and that the sixtynine quarters to which she had deposed was really the sum total of the two parcels

-the tithe-wheat and the wheat from

the glebe. And having got an answer from one of his own witnesses about the acres of wheat in the rector's glebe, he amused your Lordships with a very pretty calculation, assuming the number of acres in the wheat-field to have been exactly three hundred and twenty-two, assuming the

crop

average crop to have been exactly three quarters per acre,—assuming the acres in the glebe to have been precisely what one of his own witnesses made them,-and assuming farther, that the of wheat upon these acres in the glebe was neither more nor less than three quarters per acre. From a calculation formed upon all these assumptions, the learned and honourable counsel brought out this conclusion,— namely, that the glebe-wheat and the tithewheat, taken together, made exactly, to a single grain, my Lords, the quantity of sixty-nine quarters, which Miss Raye had stated as the amount of the tithe-wheat alone. My Lords, I have been myself too much conversant with calculation not to know the extreme futility of such calculations as these. The only circumstance that gives them effect upon the mind, is the precise agreement of the result with

the conclusion that the computer beforehand desired to bring out; and this precision is itself a circumstance to be mistrusted: It has no weight, unless you suppose an accuracy in the data of calculation which in the nature of things cannot belong to them: In short, it is a mere trick which the computer puts upon himself; he assumes data fitted to the conclusion which he means to bring out, and then he triumphs in the agreement of the result with his own wishes. My Lords, give me leave to make such alterations in the data of this calculation as shall suit my purpose, and shall by no means seem improbable, and I will presently bring out a conclusion as much in favour of Miss Raye's evidence as the learned counsel's was against it. But in good truth, my Lords, such calculations may pass very well as specimens of a young lawyer's scientific accomplishments,

1

but considered as arguments, they are con

temptible.

"But, my Lords, Miss Raye disclaims all benefit from the very fair hypothesis that the learned counsel set up to save her veracity while he impeached her fact. My Lords, she has said most positively, and upon the most distinct and perfect recollection, that the tithe-wheat and the glebewheat were not mixed; they were carefully kept separate. She allows that they were put together (some of the tithe-wheat at least was put with the glebe-wheat) in the same rick or stack; but a separation was made between them by a bed of rushes, damaged hay, and damaged oats. And now, my Lords, it is that I feel myself plunged in solicitude and anxiety; for now, my Lords, we are come to the great question of character, upon which I shall not be ashamed to confess that my feelings