the case of the Church, since conscience was obviously and inevitably engaged, was more manifestly unjust and cruel than would be the supposed case of a club or a profession.

The simple and intrepid course of standing to what the Church, in solemn performance of her religious duty, had done, was proposed by Mr. Buchanan.

A more

equivocal course, asserting the possession of spiritual independence in the abstract, but virtually asking the State to say what spiritual independence meant, was proposed by Dr. Cook. The Assembly decided by 183

voices to 142 in favour of the former.

THERE

CHAPTER XIV.

Lord Brougham in fine Form.

HERE was no difference of view between the Reforming and the Moderate parties in the General Assembly of 1838 as to whether the judgment of the Court of Session in the Auchterarder case should be carried by appeal to the House of Lords. It came up

for final decision on the 2nd of May 1839, and on that day Lord Cottenham and Lord Brougham delivered their judicial opinions upon the subject.

It was perhaps a matter of course that Lord Cottenham, an Englishman, should take it for granted that, in a case of discrepancy between lawyers and parsons in Scotland, the parsons should be wrong and the lawyers right. But it sent a shock of surprise, as well as of pain, to many in Scotland, to find that Henry Brougham had so little heart-knowledge of his native land. It is curiously suggestive that one who played a part so memorable, so brilliant, so illustrious, as that of Lord Brougham, in the arena of Parliamentary Reform, should, in adjudicating upon the Constitution of the Church of Scotland, have put scornfully aside, as not worth serious

consideration, the popular call of congregations to their ministers. With the vehemence characteristic of fiery temperaments when they are particularly in the wrong, he emphasised the point that the call could not possibly entitle the people to more than to have the presentee tested by the Presbytery as to his possession of certain specified qualifications. Fancy this as a method for securing that parliamentary constituencies should not have members intruded upon them! Fancy the look

of the free and independent, if they were required to accept Mr. So-and-so, the nominee of Lord This-or-that, to represent them, unless they could prove him exceptionable in a few particular respects! And is it easier for a constituency to discern who are the men fitted to rule the Empire, than for parishioners to discern who is the man. that will visit them in their cottages with glimpses of heavenly consolation, and edify them from the pulpit in the name of Christ?

Macaulay says that Hume so strongly disliked the religion of the Puritans, that he was incapable of doing justice to their services to liberty. Men of affairs are apt to treat religion as if it were really and truly nothing at all. So dark was Brougham on the religious side, that it seems to have never flashed upon him that there could be any analogy between the election of a member by a parliamentary constituency, and the choice of a minister by a congregation. Sympathetic in the highest degree with the aspirations of freemen to send representatives to Parliament, he had no intelligent sympathy whatever with the wish of devout parishioners to have a voice in the election of their ministers. "Surely," said Hugh

Miller, in a Letter to Lord Brougham to which we shall have further occasion to refer, "the people of Scotland are not so changed but that they know at least as much of the doctrines of the New Testament as of the principles of civil government, and of the requisites of a gospel minister as of the qualifications of a member of Parliament." He reminds Lord Brougham of a fact which his Lordship might have learned from Burns, or Carlyle, or Scott, that freedom's sword and religion's Bible have been associate powers in the history of Scotland, the religion having generally been in the van of the freedom. “Is it at all possible that you, my Lord, a native of Scotland, and possessed of more general information than perhaps any other man living, can have yet to learn that we have thought long and deeply of our religion, whereas our political speculations began but yesterday, that our popular struggles have been struggles for the right of worshipping God according to the dictates of our conscience, and under the guidance of ministers of our own choice, and that, when anxiously employed in finding arguments by which rights so dear to us might be rationally defended, our discovery of the principles of civil liberty was merely a sort of chance-consequence of the search?"

Hugh Miller's Letter was suggested by Lord Brougham's opinion on the Court of Session's judgment; but had it preceded that opinion, it would most probably have had no influence upon his Lordship. Was not property involved? Was not the shadow of property more important than the substance of religion? Brougham talked grandiosely about the patrimonial property of the patron,

and took it for granted, as a thing beyond all question, that property, called into existence wholly and solely for the spiritual nourishment of the parishioners, was of more moment than what it subserved.

The call, said

was as mere

this great orator, who loved a joke, a ceremony as the wagging of the tail of the people's champion's horse in a coronation pageant. Property, property, property,-the patron's property,-if the rights. of the people interfered with that, let the people hold their tongues. This peremptory conclusion of Lord Brougham's forms surely the finest historical exemplification discoverable of the verdict returned in that delectable cause célébre, versified by Cowper, between Nose and Eyes. To which of these litigants did the spectacles belong? Clearly to the nose. The spectacles sat upon the nose. The spectacles dignified the nose. The eyes were merely a part of the pageant. The Court decided therefore in favour of the nose, and decreed that, whenever the nose put his spectacles on, by daylight or candlelight, eyes should be shut. Exactly. The only thing required for the perfect legal vindication of the property of the patron in the settlement of ministers, was the formal abolition of the call, the shutting of the parishioners' eyes.

The House of Lords dismissed the appeal of the Church, and confirmed the judgment of the Court of Session.