The bill would CHAP. XI. came with grace and Dr. M'Farlan. form est moder truth and a good conscience more. place the foot of the patron on the necks of the people -and the foot of the civil power on the neck of the church courts,-and Dr. M'Farlan could not consent to purchase peace on such degrading and dishonourable terms. From a man of so clear a head and so pure a The answer mind-of such standing in the church and experience peculiar in affairs—and who was hazarding, moreover, in this conflict the largest living in the church-such a statement came with peculiar grace and force. His still more aged namesake, the principal of the university of Glasgow, was altogether of an opposite opinion. Holding, as he had always steadily and consistently done, by the policy of the Robertsonian school of moderatism, it was a fact of some significance that, in common with such staunch adherents of that " good The extrem old cause" as the Rev. Dr. Bryce, formerly of cutta, and the Rev. Mr. Bisset, of Bourtie, he enamoured of the bill. It was the juste milieu between despotism and democracy-between the vultus instantis tyranni, and the civium ardor prava jubentium. The Principal forgot, at the moment of uttering these classic allusions, that the lord whose threatening brow had darkened so often upon the congregations of Scotland in the days of forced settlements, was not the patron but the presbytery; and that the great objection to the bill was just this, that it was fitted to turn the presbytery into a tyrant again. It is true the bill would, in one sense, have done even-handed justice, by making the presbyterial tyrant in his turn a slave, —a slave to the civil power. There would in this, however, have been little comfort for the people. Of Cal was ates all in love with the bill. allusions of Principal McFarlan not quite appropriate. CHAP. XL. all oppressors, a slave, "dressed in a little brief authority," is uniformly the worst. Rev. Dr. Compares Lord Aber Speech of the A speech of great felicity and freshness, which conPatterson. siderably relieved the tedium of this protracted debate, was that of the Rev. Dr. Patterson of Glasgow. He told, with inimitable humour, Sir Walter Scott's tale of the rough border baron who, having by some lucky chance made captive a formidable chief with whom he was at feud, brought in his daughter,—a frightfully ugly female, considerably out of date-and presented her to the unhappy prisoner,-offering him, at the same time, his choice between a wedding and the gallows! Lord Aberdeen's bill would bring about many courtships of a similar kind. Speaking in answer to some of those who laboured to show that the bill excluded the interference of the civil courts, "If you sail up Loch Long," said Dr. Patterson, you find on either hand a firm and beautiful boundary of rock and wood; you would say there is no outlet either to the right or left; but just when the eye is resting on the continuous barrier, all at once a smoking steam-boat issues from the solid rock, meets you on your passage, and shows that there is another sea-way as open as the one that lies before you. I see as wide a road in that bill by which presbyteries will be brought up to the court of session. Sir, it is true the bill does say, that the appeal shall be exclusively to the ecclesiastical courts.' In what other way could the appeal go? I never could suppose an appeal from the presbytery or the synod to the court of session. It is not an appeal that I fear, but an application to the civil court, on the part of patron or presentee, on the deen's bill to 66 Loch Long. * (alleged) ground of civil right." * "The bill CHAP. XI. does not say, as the old act did, that the matter, when it has gone the round of the church courts, shall then Barr. The impa House. Among the speakers in support of the bill, was the The Rev. Dr. Rev. Dr. Barr, then of Port-Glasgow. It was late when this gentleman rose, and the scene which followed was somewhat amusing. He had been sitting on the side of the house occupied by the moderate party, but as he had hitherto been identified with their opponents in all his principles and proceedings, they took for granted that he was against the bill. Their impatience, aggravated by the lateness of the hour, was so universal and so vehement, that for some minutes the assembly had the benefit of nothing but the speaker's gesticulations. His lips were seen to move, tience of the and his body to bend to and fro, but everything else was lost amid the cries of "vote, vote, question, question," and the other customary voices with which an audience determined not to listen, is wont to salute an unwelcome orator. By and by, however, it became manifest that those who sat immediately around him were in the act of making some unexpected and agreeable discovery. Earnest attempts to catch his words, party make a looks and entreaties deprecating any further interrup- and become tion, were seen to proceed from well-known members listen. of the moderate party who happened to be sitting near him. To their astonishment and delight the antipatronage member was turning out to be in favour of the bill; and as the discovery spread, the cries of vote and question were suddenly exchanged for the "hear, hear" of cordial and eager applause. It was a case of con The moderate discovery, eager to CHAP. XL version, and was no doubt imagined to be symptomatic of other desertions from the non-intrusion cause: and hence the peculiar satisfaction with which it was hailed. All such expectations, however, were speedily and effectually crushed; for after a very short address from Dr. Cook, and a few sentences from Dr. ChalThe division, mers by way of closing the debate, the division came, 221 to 131. and the bill was condemned by a majority of 221 to -the bill re jected by Second read- House of June. 134. It seemed, for a time, as if Lord Aberdeen were determined to disregard this strong expression of the mind of the assembly, and to force his obnoxious measure upon the church notwithstanding. On the 16th of June, his lordship moved the second reading of the bill, in the house of lords, and carried it, against ried on 16th the amendment of the Marquis of Breadalbane, that "the bill be read that day six months," by 74 to 27. It was in the course of the discussion which took place on that occasion, that Lord Aberdeen allowed himself to use language in reference to the assembly's nonintrusion committee, to which it is painful even at this distance of time to refer. After so describing what the committee had said in their report to the assembly regarding a statement alleged to have been made to a deputation of their number, by Lord Melbourne, as to elicit from his lordship something like a caveat against it, or a conditional and qualified contraAttack made diction of it,-Lord Aberdeen hastened to throw out Aberdeen on a most offensive charge against the committee's honour committee. and good faith, and tried, with more dexterity than by Lord the non intrusion fair-dealing, to make Lord Melbourne a partner in this outrage. "He would fairly tell the noble viscount, bourne re in the accu sation. that he did not believe the statement contained in the CHAP. XI. report. In the report of the communications which the committee had had with him, they had been so unscrupulous in their statements, that it was probable they had not dealt more honestly with the noble viscount.' His lordship would hardly have ventured to make that statement on the floor of the general assembly. Lord Melbourne, on the instant, disclaimed all Lord Melparticipation in so odious a charge. The entire fuses to join correspondence which had passed between Lord Aberdeen on the one side, and Dr. Chalmers and the nonintrusion committee on the other, relative to the church question, was given almost immediately thereafter, to the public. And few, perhaps, of those who have read it with any ordinary measure of candour and attention, will hesitate to allow that it is stating the case very guardedly and moderately, to affirm that the harsh and injurious expressions in which his lordship indulged against the committee, might with at least an equal show of reason and justice be employed against himself. But enough has been already said in an earlier part of this chapter upon the subject. The interests of truth are not advanced by perpetuating Not desirable those angry feelings and bitter prejudices which Lord such scenes. Aberdeen's attack upon the committee betrayed, and which it was too well calculated to excite in others. Finding that the bill was still persisted in, a petition Those who desire to examine it more minutely will find all the materials in the "Earl of Aberdeen's Correspondence with the Rev. Dr. Chalmers, &c., from 14th January to 27th May, 1840: Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1840;" and in "A Letter to the Earl of Aberdeen on the Correspondence, &c., by Alexander Dunlop: Edinburgh, Johnston, to dwell on |