indeed little logical texture, and no legal grasp, but it had the sonorous ring, the muscular energy, the fusing fire which characterised all the utterances of the great preacher and philanthropist. He concluded by moving, that they should offer no further resistance to the claims of Mr Young, or the patron, to the benefice of Auchterarder, but that they could not abandon the principle of non-intrusion, and should therefore appoint a committee to consider how the privileges of the national establishment and the harmony between Church and State might be preserved unimpaired, and to confer if necessary with the Government.

Dr Muir, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, intervened with a middle motion, embodied in a set of resolutions, in which it was declared that the veto was illegal, but that it was necessary the Church should possess the power of judging of the fitness of presentees for the parishes to which they had been presented. He supported his resolutions in a conciliatory speech, in which he foreshadowed the leading principles of the future Aberdeen Act. Dr Bryce, Dr Burns, Sir Charles Ferguson, Mr Whigham, Mr Earle Monteath, all took part in the hot discussion. Mr Candlish was already well known in the Church, but he had not yet distinguished himself in debate, or exhibited those qualities which soon raised him to be the leader and almost the dictator of his party. He now made a speech which combined subtlety of thought with energy of diction, and drew all eyes upon him. It was feared Dr Muir's resolutions would divide the Evangelical party, and therefore he made a fierce assault upon them. He argued that they contained no recognition of the Christian liberties of the people; they referred to intrusion not against the will of the congregation but of the presbytery; they would lead to a spiritual despotism. "If the trumpet," he cried, "give an uncertain sound, if we merely assert the rights of the rulers of the Church, while we sacrifice or hold in abeyance the people's liberties, it will be no wonder if we have not; we shall not deserve to have with us the hearts or the prayers of one single man who is worthy of the name of Scotsman." The debate went on from twelve o'clock at noon till two o'clock the next morning, and when the vote was taken Dr Chalmers's motion was carried by 197 to 161 against Dr Muir's, and 204 to 155 against Dr Cook's, being a majority of 49.1

1 The newspapers of the date. Buchanan's Ten Years' Conflict, vol. i. Bryce, vol. i. Wilson's Life of Candlish.

Next day, when the names of the committee appointed under Dr Chalmers' motion were read out, Dr Cook rose up and said he declined to act upon it. A young gentleman beside him immediately afterwards rose up and said that he had to request that his name also should be removed from the committee; he would not form part of the governing body of a church which had placed itself in an attitude of dogged defiance, of virtual disobedience to the declared law of the land; by the vote of yesterday the Assembly had lost the allegiance of many of her earnest and fastest friends, and in fact rang the death-knell of the Church of Scotland. Having said this, he lifted his hat and left the Assembly.1 It was Lord Dalhousie, who afterwards made for himself a great name in Oriental History as Governor-General of our great Indian Empire.

There were more than Lord Dalhousie who thought the vote of 1839, followed as it was by instructions to the presbyteries to proceed as before in all settlements according to the Veto Act, but to refer disputed cases to the Assembly, was rebellion against the State, and a fatal step toward the breaking-up of the Church; for, in the unequal encounter which must ensue, it was easy to foresee which would be the stronger power. The Government was no longer so feeble as it was in the early days of James VI., when Melville could terrify the timid king into submission; and besides, high ecclesiastical pretensions no longer found the same favour among the people. And why should not the Church resile from a position which was declared to be untenable? It had appealed to the law, why should it not submit to the law's decision? It had passed the Veto Act because it was assured it was legal, why should it not now, when it had discovered it was illegal, retrace its steps, and occupy the old ground which its constitution gave it? No new law had been made stripping the Church of its ancient privileges. It was left in the full possession of all the rights and immunities which it had possessed for centuries. Only it was told that Acts of Parliament almost as old as the Reformation, and once greatly honoured, must be obeyed.

Though Dr Chalmers had increased his reputation as an orator by his speech in the Assembly, he had damaged, in the eyes of many, his character for prudence and fidelity to his promises. "You know my opinion of Dr Chalmers," 1 From the Gallery I was a witness of this scene.

wrote Sir James Graham to his friend, Mr Colquhoun of Killermont. "I admire his talents, I acquit him of worldly ambition; I give him credit for genuine piety and fervent religious zeal; but I can no longer trust his prudence or believe his promises. Last winter he declared to me and Sir William Rae at Possil, that he would contend no more for the Veto, but be content with the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the presbyteries to the exclusion of the popular voice. The General Assembly witnessed his observance of this declaration; and why he should become more enamoured of the Veto, when, by a judgment of the House of Lords, he had ascertained it to be illegal, remains to be explained. Nay, such is the infirmity of his purpose, that you describe him as twisted against his judgment to follow a course which the evening before you had warned him to avoid, and which he had promised you not to adopt." 1

Such was the statesman's opinion of the divine in the heat of the conflict. But in after times people of all parties came to think more kindly of him. Associated by the ties of friendship and party with the Non-intrusionists, he was yet no fanatic in that or any other cause, and hence never had the single-mindedness of the fanatic. Urged on by men narrower but more resolute than himself, he sometimes hesitated and looked backward, and confessed his misgivings, which gave to his conduct the appearance of vacillation. But all his private correspondence, as well as his public speeches, show that he honestly believed the majority of the Assembly were right in the course they were now pursuing. Looking to his strong political conservatism, we may believe he was anxious to conform his views as far as possible to those of Sir James Graham, so illustrious a chief of the Conservative cause; and he declared in public that he had been prepared to repeal the Veto and fall back upon the ancient rights of the people, but that the speeches of Lord Brougham and Lord Cottenham had swept that ground from under his feet. So at least had he been persuaded after days of hesitation. He therefore really occupied a different position, after the judgment of the House of Lords, from what he did when he met Sir James Graham in the house of the author of the "History of the French Revolution." But even after his victory in the Assembly, he had his misgivings-no doubt his conscientious mis

1 MS. Letter, Sir James Graham to J. C. Colquhoun, M.P., 25th December 1839.

[CHAP. XXVIII. givings which he could not conceal from his friends. He must have foreseen, though dimly, the probable result, and trembled at the thought.

By Dr Chalmers' motion the Presbytery of Auchterarder was instructed to offer no further resistance to the claims of Mr Young or of the patron to the emoluments of the benefice of Auchterarder. They never had made such a claim, and the presbytery never had offered resistance to a claim which did not exist; but the presentee had asked to be taken on trials, and the House of Lords had now said that the presbytery were bound to comply with his request, and the Assembly had not ventured to face this explicit declaration of the law. In spite of the express declaration of the judges, they were fostering the fond delusion that the only penalty which the Church would have to pay for resisting the law of patronage was the loss of the benefice. In an Act passed in 1592 tc prevent parishes being kept vacant, it was provided, on the one hand, that if the patron did not present within six months, the right of presentation passed to the presbytery; and, on the other hand, that if a presbytery refused to induct a qualified presentee, the benefice went to the patron. Founding on this statute, able lawyers had declared that presbyteries simply forfeited the stipend by rejecting the patron's presentee, and inducting another in his stead. "The sentence of ecclesiastical courts," said Lord Kames, "is ultimate, even where their proceedings are illegal; the person authorised by their sentence, even in opposition to the presentee, is, de facto, minister of the parish. The check provided by law is, that a minister settled illegally shall not be entitled to the stipend." In accordance with this dictum, there was the case of Lanark, where it was found that Dr Dick had been inducted upon a presentation from a wrong patron. He continued minister of the parish, but he never received a farthing of the stipend; and there were other cases of a similar kind. But in no case could a presentee, who had not been inducted into a parish, claim the stipend; such a thing had never been heard of in Scotland since the days of the commendators. And though patrons had once claimed the fruits of all vacant benefices, by a recent and beneficent Act of Parliament these had been transferred to the Ministers' Widows' Fund. It was, therefore, like mocking the presentee and patron to tell them to take the stipend if they could get it.

1 Kames' Law Tracts. Courts.

The Veto Act had now been in operation for five years, and although it had been declared illegal, it was acknowledged on all hands to have worked well. Within the period of five years after it came into operation, a hundred and fifty parishes had fallen vacant, and only ten of the presentees had been vetoed. It had not, therefore, very seriously curtailed the power of the patrons, but it had made them more careful in the selection of their presentees, and had given very general contentment to the Church. All that it wanted was a parliamentary sanction, and, unfortunately, the state of parties rendered that impossible at the time; but if the Church had loyally submitted to the law, it would undoubtedly have gained its point in the end. It is seldom that churches recognise the wisdom of yielding so as ultimately to conquer. They are ever prone to exalt matters of policy into life-and-death principles, and make their maintenance an affair of conscience. In this case their open defiance of the law for what they considered a sacred principle, cut them off from powerful friends. "It is in the present state of this painful contest," wrote Sir James Graham to Mr Colquhoun, who was anxious to have the call legalised, "where law is on one side, and violence and oppression on the other, with the Church itself nearly equally divided, and the people by no means unanimous, that you propose an alteration of the law to meet the views and wishes of those who have preferred violent resistance to peaceable submission, and an act of power to an appeal to the wisdom of the legislature." 3

1 Even Dr Bryce makes this acknowledgment (vol. i. pp. 59, 60). Dr Cook made the same acknowledgment in 1836. "He had sanguine hopes, if the measure got fair play, it would prove a blessing to the people, and might be the means of doing much good to the country." It was objected to the Veto that in some Highland parishes only a small fraction of the parishioners were communicants; and, moreover, that by confining the right of dissent to male heads of families, it not only disfranchised all women, but all unmarried men.

Memorial addressed to Her Majesty's Government by Dr Gordon, Moderator of the General Assembly, 1841, p. 7. Buchanan's Ten Years' Conflict, vol. i. p. 330. The Memorial says 250, but Dr Buchanan's number, 150, is the more probable, especially if parish churches alone are taken into account.

MS. Letter, Sir James Graham to J. C. Colquhoun, M.P., 25th December 1839.