to be true-admitting that it states no more than the real produce of the rectorial tithes of that year, yet the produce of a single year cannot be taken to be the average value of the living; and it is assumed that the average value, deduced from the produce of many successive years, is the thing to be compared with the value of the allotment, in order to form a judgment of its adequacy or inadequacy.

My Lords, I shall trouble your Lordships with my sentiments upon both these objections. I shall contend, my Lords, that the account given in upon the oath of the rector's daughter is a true one,—that it is a true statement of the produce of the rectorial tithes of Weldon in the year 1790. Many objections have been made to different items of the account. I trust that I shall be able to set it upon its legs; and, when I have done this, I shall trouble your

Lordships with my judgment upon the famous doctrine of average of which your Lordships have heard so much from the learned counsel against the petition. It is indeed my opinion, that the produce of this single year differs little, if at all, from the average value. But whether this be so or no, I shall venture to maintain a principle which I know will at first seem paradoxical,—that in making a comparison between the value of the tithes in kind and the intended allotment, your Lordships ought to take the value of the tithes upon the produce of the year 1790, rather than upon the average of that and several preceding years: I shall maintain, that the doctrine of average does not apply to the question of adequacy in this instance.

My Lords, upon the first point—the truth of Miss Raye's account of the produce of 1790, I shall trouble your Lord

ships in very minute detail: Upon the question of average I shall be I shall be very short indeed; for if the principles which I shall advance speak not for themselves when they are clearly propounded, I shall not think it worth while to spend words in support of them.

"My Lords, the truth of the account given in by Miss Raye rests chiefly on her own evidence. Witnesses have been produced to contradict her evidence in many particulars. My Lords, I pledge myself to vindicate the truth of her evidence in every article in which it has been impeached. My Lords, this is a point upon which I think myself competent to speak with some degree of confidence: I have attended the Committee, from the first opening of it to the present moment, with the assiduity of a committee-clerk; I have heard, not only heard, but I have minuted the

whole evidence; I have not only minuted the evidence, but I have studied it ;-I speak from a distinct connected view of the whole, and from an accurate knowledge and recollection of every particle of the evidence; and, my Lords, I undertake to defend, not only the veracity of the rector's daughter, most unwarrantably impeached by the learned and honourable counsel who summed up, but I defend the matter of her evidence. My Lords, I distinguish, and I am sure your Lordships will admit the distinction, between the veracity of a witness and the truth of particular facts averred: A particular fact may be false, without any want of veracity in the witness. But, my Lords, I assert not only the veracity of the witness, but the truth of the facts to which she deposed; and I undertake to show, that in every particular in which the witnesses called on

the other side have been said to contradict her, there has either been in reality no contradiction, or the great preponderance of credibility is on her side. I shall speak to the several particulars of her evidence that have been called in question, in the order in which they occur in this paper (the printed account which the Bishop held in his hand).

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My Lords, the first exception that was taken to Miss Raye's evidence, was upon the article of the tithe-wheat. She deposes, that the rector's tithe-wheat, in the year 1790, amounted to sixty-nine quarters; and, at fifty shillings per quarter, was worth 1721. She told your Lordships that it was not all sold; she said ten quarters were consumed in the family, and five more were used upon the land for seed: The rest was sold at fifty shillings per quarter upon the average; and the wheat being