congregation. We shall select one example, which is the most important and the most frequently and confidently cited by our opponents.

In 1736, the General Assembly, in the vain hope of conciliating the original Seceders, passed an "Act against intrusion of ministers into vacant congregations, and recommendation to Presbyteries concerning settlements," which, though short and simple, is one of the most in. structive passages in the Records of the Church. It consists, as might be gathered from the title, of two parts, a declaration and a direction. The General Assembly, after citing the Second Book of Discipline, and several of its own former acts, declares, "That it is, and has been since the Reformation, the principle of this Church, that no minister shall be intruded into any parish contrary to the will of the congregation." Now, here is an entire abandonment of the historical accuracy of the Second Book of Discipline. If it had been true-if the General Assembly of 1736 could safely and honestly have maintained that previous to the Reformation, in the golden age pointed at in the Second Book of Discipline, when the "Kirk was not corrupted by Antichrist," the voice of the people was allowed to defeat or to control the choice of the patron, why introduce these limiting words "since the Reformation?" Why not adhere to the position assumed by their predecessors in 1578? The necessity of limiting the proposition to the period following the Reformation, is conclusive against the veracity of the Second Book of Discipline. The Churchmen of the eighteenth century thus virtually gave the lie to Andrew Melville and his coadjutors; but they are not one whit more accurate themselves, if the principle of the Act 1736 be interpreted to be, that the dissent of the congregation shall be given effect to without the presbytery judging of the grounds of objection. We have been altogether wasting our time, if we have not established that neither before nor since the Reformation, in no one of the various systems devised for the election and settlement of ministers, was an absolute and unexplained Veto ever

confided to or exercised by the people. But if there be any who still maintain that the principle of the Act 1736 is identical with that of 1834, we challenge them to produce a single instance in which such a principle was acted upon, either before or after the year 1736. The bare assertion, in the Second Book of Discipline, of a principle in some respects analogous to this, founded on a gross and palpable mistatement of historical fact, is but slender authority; and the re-assertion of the principle in 1736, accompanied with a new and equally glaring mistatement, would not make matters much better for the Church, supposing this construction of the Act 1736 to be correct. But we should not be doing justice to the General Assembly of 1736, were we to disguise our firm conviction, that nothing was farther from their minds than to confer on the people a privilege antagonist to, or destructive of the right of the patron. The direction to presbyteries is to have a due regard to the principle announced in the declaratory part of the Act, and with that view to "be at pains to bring about harmony and unanimity in congregations, and to avoid every thing that may excite or encourage unreasonable exceptions in people against a worthy person that may be proposed to be their minister." If this be the working of the non-intrusion principle, our objections to its legality and its expediency are both equally at an end. If this be the duty of presbyteries in the maintenance of that principle, we contend that it has ever been the sacred and peculiar duty of presbyteries, as statutory functionaries, as officers of the Church, as spiritual teachers. If this be the fundamental law maintained by the Church, the Act and Regulations of 1834, waiving for the present the consideration of their mischievous tendency, were, on this ground alone, idle, useless, uncalled-for, and absurd. The fundamental non-intrusion law, as thus explained, required no reenactment; it was neither obsolete nor neglected, but still in viridi observantia. But the non-intrusion Act of 1834, differs in its essence from that of 1736. It is illegal, because it arrogates a power to the Church which was not dreamt of by the Churchmen of the last century: it is at once illegal and inexpedient, because it bestows on the people a privilege for which no warrant is to be found within the four corners of the Act of 1736; in place of bringing about "harmony and unani mity in congregations," it is eminently calculated to "excite and encourage unreasonable exceptions in people against a worthy person that may be proposed to be their minister."

What then becomes of the fundamental law? What is the result of the appeal to history? The people's dissent without cause shown the simple negative-the unreasoning rejection-the enfranchisement of the popular caprice, is an invention of the present age, unknown to the ecclesiastical constitution of Scotland, unheard of in the history of any other Christian Church.

But what is new is not for that reason necessarily bad; the principle of an institution or an enactment may be defended on other grounds than its antiquity or its fundamental character. We are not such exclusive and unreasoning lovers of the time that is past, as to refuse our assent to this proposition. But our readers must not forget the argument from antiquity, or the result of our researches. The induction, no doubt, might have been made much fuller and more complete, and we are deeply conscious that greater learning and greater talent might, with advantage, have been brought to bear on the subject. But we sincerely trust that our enquiries have been as impartial as they have been diligent. We at least shall be believed when wesay, that so far from being actuated by a feeling of hostility to the Church, the sole end of our endeavours is to contribute to her present welfare, and to the extension of her usefulness. In the spirit of reverence and grateful affection, which becomes us both as members of the Church and as Scotchmen, but with the independence of thought which the Reformation has secured to all men, we have spoken boldly and candidly, because we feel that, on a subject of such vital importance, to withhold the expression of opinions deliberately formed and confirmed by every day's after consideration and experience, would have been an unpardonable dereliction of duty. Again, therefore, we say, let our readers bear in mind that the first proposition in

the Act of 1834, the groundwork of the whole system, is an historical untruth-that the rejection of a presentee on the ground of the people's unexplained dissent is not warranted by any previously existing law of the Church.

The expediency of the Veto Act is a separate question; but the supporters of that Act, bereft of the aid which they hoped to derive from history, must now undertake the task of showing good and sufficient cause for the fundamental change which they advocate for the introduction of a new principle into the constitution of the Church. On all fair rules of argument the burden lies with them. It is not enough that a Reformer should defend the innovation which he proposes against the objections of his antagonist. He must show at least some reasonable prospect of benefit, present or future, otherwise he has made out no sufficient case to justify the change. But it is not the least remarkable feature in the present controversy, that, neglecting the task of furnishing materials for the direct support of their new principle-instead of showing at once the importance of the end which they seek to achieve, and the adequacy of the means employed-the advocates of the Veto principle act exclusively on the defensive-they appear to find sufficient employment for their logic and their ingenuity in endeavouring to answer the numerous and varied objections of detail to which it is exposed. They maintain, indeed, in general terms, that it is in the highest degree expedient, and almost indispensable to edification, that a minister should be acceptable to his flock. But they have provided no standard by which to measure this expediency; and they have furnished no test by the application of which we may distinguish between that acceptableness which meets the reasonable desires and spiritual wants of the people, and that which is content with satisfying their caprice, or which possibly may promise to indulge their vicious habits or to give scope to their irreligious propensities.

It is the difficulty to which we now advert, that appears to constitute the most fundamental and the most fatal objection to the principle of the Veto Act. There are certain well-known qualifications which ought to be possessed by every minister, and the absence of any of these may naturally and reasonably render a presentee unacceptable. But if any man be inducted into a parish, who is truly disqualified, from insufficiency of talent or attainments, from heresy, or from a sinful and god. less life, the Church herself is deeply responsible for this calamity; for to her is committed the duty of examination, and every minister of a parish has twice undergone trials by a Church court, first, when he was licensed to preach, and a second time previous to his induction to the benefice which he holds. The people, too, by the existing law, are privileged to oppose, and will successfully oppose, the settlement of any man against whom they can esta blish objections, founded on such disqualifications as those of which we now speak. This is the ordeal to which every minister in the Church is subjected; it is the duty of the presbytery both to enquire and to judge, and it is the privilege of the congregation, if they see fit, to direct and assist the enquiries of the presbytery by the statement of objections. In this state of the law two things are clear, 1st, That the presbytery are the sole judges in the matter of qualification; and, 2d, That the grounds of objection competent to the people are limited to certain classes, definite and ascertained. But the new system reverses these rules; for the Act of 1834 proceeds on the assumption, that there is a certain class of objections of which the people and not the presbytery ought to be the judges; and so far from attempting a definition or even a description of this class, it commits to the people a power of absolute rejection, on any ground which may be satisfactory to their own minds, although it is confessedly possible that their objection, if stated, might turn out to be frivolous or positively immoral.

Some of the framers and supporters of the Veto Act are exceedingly indignant when they are charged with introducing into the Church the evils of popular election; and yet it is difficult to see the distinction, in principle or in substance, between a direct right of choice, and such a negative power as controls and nullifies the patron's choice, and ultimately leads to the gratification of the people's wish, by the appointment of their fa

vourite candidate. But we shall not dispute about words. Wecondemn the principle of the Veto, because it, in fact, makes the people the uncontrolled judges of the presentee's qualifications for the benefice of his fitness to minister to their spiritual necessities; while it is universally true that those who stand in need of spiritual aid are not only the very last to seek it, but are also the most incapable of understanding what kind of instruction, and admonition, and spiritual exercise and religious culture, is the best adapted to their own minds and hearts. We deprecate all free-trade notions in religion; we deny that the demand may safely be left to regulate the supply of spiritual instruction and pastoral superintendence; we therefore support civil establishments of religion, and for the very same reason we condemn the Veto Act. This analogy is close and obvious enough; and it is surprising, it is monstrous, that men, who, in defending the utility of church establishments, have, in the most eloquent and convincing language, demonstrated the absolute incapacity of the people to understand their own spiritual wants-who have argued in vindication of church establishments on the assumption, that the wishes and the wants of the people in spiritual matters are not only not identical or commensurate, but very often directly opposed that these men should so far forget their own principles - the grounds of their own argumentstheir own deliberate written opinions, as to maintain, in the present question, that this same people are the best judges of a presentee's fitness to minister to their spiritual wants that the preacher selected because he is the most acceptable to the people, and most completely meets and gratifies their wishes, will necessarily, or naturally, or probably, be also the most zealous and the most successful-the most peculiarly fitted to minister to their wants. If we are not mistaken, it was Dr Chalmers-now the keen partisan of the Veto Act, the author of the resolution, which, in support of that Act, and for the sake of the principle which it embodies, pledged the Church to her present unequal, unseemly, and mischievous contest with the civil power-it was he who first detected, or at least who first explained and exposed, the miserable fallacy of applying the rules of free trade to religion-the dangerous error of leaving the wishes, the demand of the people, to regulate the supply of religious instruction.*

"The spontaneous demand (says he) of human beings for religion, is far short of the interest which they actually have in it. This is not so with their demand for food, or raiment, or any article which ministers to the necessities of our physical nature. The more destitute we are of these articles, the greater is our desire after them. In every case where the want of any thing serves to whet our appetite, instead of weakening it, the supply of that thing may be left, with all safety, to the native and powerful demand for it among the people themselves. The sensation of hunger is a sufficient guarantee for there being as many bakers in a country as it is good and necessary for the country to have, without any national establishment of bakers.

"But the case is widely different when the appetite for any good is short of the degree in which that good is useful or necessary; and above all, when just in proportion to our want of it, is the decay of our appetite towards it. Now this is, generally speaking, the case with religious instruction. The less we have of it, the less we desire to have of it. It is not with the aliment of the soul as it is with the aliment of the body. The latter will be sought after; the former must be offered to a people whose spiritual appetite is in a state of dormancy, and with whom it is just as necessary to create a hunger, as it is to minister a positive supply."

Is it not a mockery to contend that the people, who, according to this reasoning, do not know when they want, or what they want, or how much they want, should yet be pronounced the best judges of the quality of the spiritual food most convenient for them that those whose religious desires are represented as decaying and becoming cold in proportion to the increase of their spiritual destitution, should, in the appointment of their pastor, be invested with the irresponsible and uncontrolled power of gratifying their slightest wish of indulging their caprice, however unreasonable? The glutton, or the drunkard, whose constitution has been impaired by excesses, may, by skilful

treatment, be restored to health; but the physician who undertakes his cure will not leave to such a patient the choice and regulation of his own diet.

No doubt, we are told, that the Veto will generally be exercised with prudence and moderation, and that the mere existence of the power in the people will, of itself, work out the benefit contemplated by the Act, without the necessity of calling that power into active operation. Now, this is either a dishonest or a very shortsighted statement. The Veto is introduced, because the people's power of stating special objections was thought to be inefficient in preventing the intrusion of unqualified or unacceptable ministers. The purpose of the Veto is to give effect to a certain class of objections, which could not be stated, or would not be listened to under the former law. These can.. not, of course, be objections to the life, literature, or doctrine of the presentee, which would have been good without the help of the Veto. The form of objection is, that the presentee is unacceptable; but we enquire in vain for its grounds. He is a man of great talent and acquirements, of unquestioned character and orthodoxy; as a preacher, eloquent, impressive, convincing; in private life, distinguished by the most winning and agreeable manners; zealous and industrious in the performance of his duty, beloved and respected by all who know him; above all, he is in the judgment of the presbytery eminently qualified for performing the duties of a parish minister-yet such men as this may be rejected, ay, and have been rejected, under the operation of the Veto Act. We say nothing, in the mean time, of the hardship, or the pernicious influence of such an event. But the grounds of rejection are unexplained-no one but the objectors can tell why he is unacceptable; nay, it is contended that there may exist in the minds of the congregation, objections of too subtle a nature to admit of their being stated, and this is a favourite argument in support of the Veto Act. Objections which cannot be stated, seem to us marvellously like caprice; but let that also pass for the present. The Veto Act is intended to give effect to such objections, and, in consequence of them, the presentee is rejected in the case supposed. The patron had selected him as the most distinguished, and most eminently qualified man in the Church, and the presbytery applauded the patron's choice. But now the patron is called on to present another, and yet he is not informed for what reason the object of his former choice was unacceptable. However anxious he may be to consult the wishes of the congregation, (consistently with the exercise of his own right of choice,) they furnish him with no means of doing so. To all his anxious demands of explanation, the hard, dry, ungrateful, unreasoning, unchristianlike answer invariably is, "we won't have him." The patron, therefore, is compelled a second time to exercise his right of choice, and in so doing to execute a public trust involving a high responsibility, without any new light without any additional information. His conscience leads him to select the man whom he believes to be the best fitted for the office-his choice is, of necessity, regulated by the same considerations as formerly the second presentee will, therefore, naturally very much resemble the first, and for that reason will, in all human probability, be equally unacceptable with the first. Again, therefore, we say, that it argues either dishonesty or short-sightedness in any man to maintain, that the object of the General Assembly's Act will be gained by the mere existence of the power which it confers, without the necessity of its frequent exercise; for the right of Veto cannot possibly influence the patron's choice indirectly and ab ante, while the objections to which the Veto is intended to give effect are unexplained and unintelligible to the pa

tron.

The congregations in the Scotch Church have always, in the settlement of ministers, had the right and the power of scrutinizing the qualifications of the presentee, and, if they saw cause, of stating special objections found ed on the deficiency of these qualifications. This certainly, unlike the Veto, was a power more in posse than in esse; and the very existence of the right operated as a check at once on patrons and presbyteries, inducing more diligence and more deliberation

in the selection by the former of a qualified person, binding the latter to greater care and strictness in taking trial of the qualifications both of presentees to benefices, and of candidates for license. But such was the natural effect of the people's right, simply because the patron and the presbytery were made fully aware how the objections of the people might, with certainty, be anticipated and obviatedthey knew the precise line of duty prescribed to them by the Church, and, in particular, the duty implied in and necessarily arising out of the power vested in the people. analogy exists between this system and that proposed under the Veto Act. The dissent which the people are encouraged to tender by the Act of 1834, is not founded on objections to the qualifications of the presentee, but is the mere expression of dislike, arising from causes which, if they will bear the light of day at all, are, at least, in point of fact, neither stated nor explained.

No

After all, then, what is the precise value of acceptableness, apart from qualification? If the presentee be a sound theologian, and an excellent scholar, a man of unimpeachable moral character, of earnest and unassuming piety, active and industrious in his profession, mild and agreeable in his manners realize such a picture as this, and for our own part we care little whether on first acquaintance he be acceptable to the people or no, because it is impossible that such a man should be many days among them without conciliating the regards of the most prejudiced, and winning the esteem of all. Should it be otherwise, the phenomenon must be accounted for, not by the unfitness of the minister for his office, but by the present lamentable incapacity, or disinclination, of the people of that parish to profit by the instructions even of the most eminently qualified individual. Indulge the mere will of such a congregation-give way to their caprice, by arming them with the Veto, and the inevitable consequence must be, that they will reject every man who is highly qualified to reclaim them from their vicious and irreligious courses, and will at last choose him from whose apathy and indolence they anticipate the smallest amount of disturbance with whom they