expect to strike the best compromise between virtue and vice-whose love of popularity and servile disposition, they think, will lead him rather to disguise the asperities of religion, and to connive at their laxity of morals, than to labour, " in season and out of season," to convince them of sin. It is

in such a parish as this that the Veto, will be most generally and most unscrupulously exercised, by men who, from obtuseness of moral perception, and the absence of religious habits and feelings, are least of all qualified to judge of the fitness of a minister, even if they were disposed to enquire and consider what is conducive to their own present and eternal welfare. The unacceptableness, therefore, of a presentee, may in certain cases be the very best evidence of his fitness to minister to the people who steadfastly reject him. But here let us speak in the language of one who treats the subject with the dignity and the candour of a true philosopher:- *

"Acceptableness is not a quality in the presentee at all, either absolutely, as connected with the duties of a pastor in general, or relatively, as regards the discharge of those duties in the particular parish to which he is presented. He may be perfectly able for the performance of those duties in the most efficient and edifying way he may be peculiarly suited to that congregation, and yet he may be very unacceptable-perhaps on that very account the more unacceptable. When the Apostles first preached at Ephesus they were by no means acceptable; and it was not a majority of the male heads of families there who objected. We are told that the whole city rose and rushed into the theatre, threatening them with personal violence. If an apostle had preached one hundred years ago in some parishes on the coast of Orkney or Shetland against plundering wrecks, or if he had preached fifty years ago in any one of half the parishes in the north of Scotland against illicit distillation, he would probably have experienced a similar reception. Paul afterwards became very popular at Ephesus; and we know that many presentees, who were settled in Scotland with the assistance of a troop of dragoons, became useful ministers, and obtained the love and veneration of their parishioners. Acceptableness per se is a matter not within the province of collation at all, though collators may enquire whether

the want of it has arisen from a good and sufficient cause."

Acceptableness, therefore, is an element in the choice of a minister which, even if it could be recognised and given effect to in all cases without difficulty, is not in itself a thing so absolutely desirable, or so necessary as some men have chosen to assume.

But the "act and regulations" for carrying out the principle of the Veto, are, in our opinion, productive of much direct and immediate evil to the people themselves. We cannot pause at present to describe or illustrate the animosities and heartburnings, the wranglings, and the struggle for personal power and influence, between the factions in a parish who severally support two rival candidates for the office of the ministry. We need not picture the pernicious moral effects of such a contest-effects which cannot fail long to survive the contest itself, necessarily rendering the successful competitor, even after his induction, an object of hostility or jealousy to the defeated minority of his parishioners. The General Assembly have themselves assumed that the Veto may be exercised improperly, that the persons dissenting may be " actuated by factious and malicious motives;" and it would be idle for us to argue, because it cannot be disputed, that the malicious exercise of this petty tyranny must be productive of the most demoralizing influence on the hearts of the people. It may be said, indeed, that the right of dissent is confined to communicants, and that this affords a security against the abuse of the right. But such is not the opinion of the General Assembly, who think it necessary to provide against the operation of factious and malicious motives" among this very class. He must be a partial and inattentive observer of human nature, who puts his faith in such a check as this. The enfranchisement of communicants exclusively, may lead some men to the communion table from a desire for power, who would never have appeared there from better motives; but it is too much to expect of the common people, that the mere circumstance of having joined in the celebration of the Sacrament should render them proof against the influence of evil passions, and should enable them successfully to resist the temptation to the indulgence of those passions, which the Church has been guilty of throwing in their way. This is to attribute to the Sacrament the character and effects of a quack medicine, rather than of a religious ordinance. Our readers, therefore, cannot be surprised to be informed that the practical working of the Veto Act, during the few years which have elapsed since it was passed, has in most instances realized our worst anticipations; and that, in more than one parish, the exercise of the people's new-born power led to scenes which might have rivalled the horrors of a contested election in the most corrupt and degraded constituency in Great Britain. But if such be the pernicious influence which the working of the Veto Act is calculated to exercise, both directly and indirectly, on the moral and religious habits of the people; if, at the same time, the situation of the patron-the honest and conscientious patron anxious to discharge his duty in such a manner as at once to secure an efficient and worthy minister, and to gratify the reasonable wishes of the people if his situation also be one of hardship and difficulty, tending to estrange his sympathy and to alienate his affections from the Established Church -what shall be said of the influence of this great constitutional change on the views, and feelings, and habits, and pursuits, of the probationers of the Church, and through them on the character of the whole clergy of Scotland? This is a most momentous enquiry, and, within our limits, it is altogether impossible to do justice to the subject. We must content ourselves with a mere statement of the casewith shadowing forth certain views and topics which invite and will repay much after thought.

The education required in a candidate for the ministry in the Church of Scotland-required by the letter of the law, and rigidly exacted in practiceis more laborious and more comprehensive than is known or demanded in any other of the liberal professions. Seven years of a university life are indispensable, of which the last four are devoted exclusively to theological learning, forming altogether a curriculum of study, which, unless the stu

dent have wasted or misapplied his time, must ensure qualifications of no small excellence. But this is a matter too important to be presumed from the mere lapse of time, or from the circumstance of the candidate for the ministry having enjoyed sufficient opportunities of cultivating his talents and disciplining his mind. The presbytery, therefore, carefully try his qualifications by personal examination, before they license him to preach; and again, on his presentation to a benefice, a second trial takes place, for the purpose of ascertaining whether his qualifications continue to be as unexceptionable as before, and whether they have not fallen to decay from want of exercise. The Veto Act, however, is not content with this ordeal. It is not enough now, that a man should be qualified in the sense in which our ancestors from the earliest ages have understood qualification-he must be acceptable also to the people. But the science of acceptableness is not taught at the university; and the presentee is therefore not prepared by his education to practice the necessary art. And yet this is a condition precedent of his induction. Unless he can overcome the unstated and unexplained objections of the majority of male heads of families, he must be rejected; and it is too true that the rejected of one parish will probably become the rejected of every other to which he is presented. The young student, who is preparing himself for the office of the ministry with a zeal and an industry beyond all praise, anxiously enquires what is necessary to render himself acceptable, and what are the objections of the people, independent of qualification, to which the Church gives such fatal effect. Is it eloquence that the people demand, or the cultivation of a more polished style? Let him, in the name of justice, be told so, that he may spend more of his time with the elocutionist and the rhetorician. If the use of written sermons be generally distasteful or unpopular, and if the Church allow the people to dissent on such grounds, he can improve his memory by more assiduous exercise, and learn to dispense even with notes. No! acceptableness is something which he cannot acquire, because it is "not a quality in the presentee at all;" or, if it be part of qualification, then is the curriculum prescribed by the Church imperfect, and the enactment of the Veto rule ought to have been accompanied by a corresponding change in the course of education required for the ministry. Admittedly, every man is exposed to the exercise of the Veto, however well qualified; and admittedly, also, the best qualified minister may be rejected from "factious or malicious motives." But, though there is no depth of learning, no soundness of doctrine, no purity of life and conversation, which can exempt a presentee from the danger of having having his hopes blasted and his prospects sacrificed by the caprice of a mob-though years of laborious and expensive study, of anxious moral and intellectual discipline, may thus at once be thrown away, lest the "factious and malicious" among the people should lose an opportunity of giving vent to their spleen, or of avenging their quarrel with the patron-though qualifications and merit are comparatively worthless under the fundamental law, yet there is a school in which the probationer may be taught how to avoid the brand of unacceptableness; he will soon perceive by experience, without the help of any other teacher, that if he would ensure the favour of the mob-of those who, on all occasions, press forward the most eagerly to wield their newly acquired power, and to triumph in the destruction of its victim, he must have recourse to cunning sycophancy, to servile and unprincipled flattery-he must pander to the prejudices and vices of the mob -he must prefer the applause of man to the approval of God and his own conscience.

We shall be told, perhaps, that this picture is overdrawn, and that no evils of such magnitude can reasonably be apprehended as the result of the Veto Act. Would that it were so! But, granting this for the sake of argument, it is at least undeniable that the evil consequences of the Veto Act, as affecting the character of the clergy, are of the kind which we contemplate. A system of ecclesiastical polity which tends to foster worldly wisdom and ambition among the ministers of the Churchwhich seems altogether to disregard the unobtrusive but not less estimable virtues of the clerical character-to neglect and disparage learning, whe

ther sacred or profane, and to discourage or rudely to check firmness and independence of mind-such a system surely is, of all others, the most to be condemned, and yet such is the tendency at least of the fundamental law. Far different were the principles of that church government which produced and nurtured the pious and single-minded, the energetic and useful race of clergy who taught our fathers; the advantages and consolations of whose ministry we ourselves experienced, ere yet the church had been distracted by the present mischievous and unjustifiable agitation. In those happy days it was learning, and piety, and a spotless life, that secured to the pastor the respect and the love of his flock. His time and his talents were consecrated to their service, and to the service of his God; his thoughts unbroken by any dream of ambition, his heart uncorrupted by the imagination, or the practice of deceit. "Unskilful he to fawn or seek for power, By doctrines fashion'd to the varying hour;

Far other aims his heart had learn'd to prize,

More bent to raise the wretched than to rise.

And

as a bird each fond endearment tries,

To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies, He tried each art, reproved each dull delay, Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way."

As regards presbyteries, the Veto Act is not less objectionable. It involves a delegation of the duty committed to them by the Church, and by the statute law, to take trial of the qualifications of presentees, and, according to their own judgment of these qualifications, to admit or reject. There is superinduced on the former useful and intelligible system a power which overrules the presbytery - the exercise of which the presbytery can neither review nor control which can command the rejection of a presentee contrary to the judgment of the presbytery, or which at least can authoritatively forbid the presbytery to take the necessary steps for forming an opinion on his qualifications.

There is, no doubt, one case in which the presbytery are still, as formerly, made the sole judges of qualification, where the right of presentation falls to them jure devoluto; and it is not a little remarkable, that though the nonintrusion principle seems to contemplate the tripartite division of influence between the patron, and the people, and the Church, as likely to be productive of the most salutary effects, yet, wherever the jus devolutum arises, there is concentrated in the presbytery alone the powers and privileges of the whole three. For the regulations of 1834 provide, "that if no presentation shall be given within the limited time, to a person from whose settlement a majority on the roll do not dissent, the presbytery shall then present jure devoluto;" and "that cases of presentation by the presbytery jure devoluto, shall not fall under the operation of the regulations in this and the relative Act of Assembly, but shall be proceeded in according to the general laws of the Church applicable to such cases." Here, therefore, the Church court nominates, examines, and inducts with

out the possibility of any other party interfering. This is the most absolute and uncontrolled exercise of patronage which it is possible to conceive a right more absolute and more uncontrollable than any patron ever pretended to possess, or attempted to enforce-far more absolute and far more uncontrollable than that exercise of patronage which the Church declared to be so intolerable a grievance as to demand the harsh and sweeping remedy of the Veto law. It is certainly not a little curious to observe, "that while the Veto is a wall of brass against the patron, it is a web of gossamer against the presbytery."* We are told it is a fundamental law of the Church, that no minister shall be intruded into a parish who is unacceptable, from any cause, to a majority of the male heads of families. For the vindication of this principle we have already seen what the Church has done, and what she is yet prepared both to do and to suffer. The violation of this principle, even in a single instance, is looked upon as a most serious calamity-the omission by a presbytery, upon any presentation by a lay patron, to ascertain whether a majority of the congregation dissent, or the refusal to give effect to

their dissent, is described as a cowardly and inexcusable abandonment of the Church's duty to the people. And yet, in those cases where all power comes to be vested in the presbyterywhere the Veto Act might be carried into the fullest operation without interfering with the civil rights of any patron-where they themselves are the patrons, they will not even listen to the people's voice, they will not deign to enquire whether their presentee be acceptable or no, or whether a majority of the male heads of families do not object to his induction. They are to proceed, forsooth, "according to the general laws of the Church." Is the fundamental law of non-intrusion not one of the "general laws of the Church?" Has the General Assembly not distinctly pledged itself to the maintenance of this proposition, that giving effect to the unexplained dissent of the congregation is not only warranted but enjoined by the laws of the Church? But the laws of the Churchthe fundamental principle of non-intrusion the interests of the peoplethe Church's consistency, and every thing else, must be sacrificed rather than interfere, in the slightest degree, with the uncontrolled exercise by the presbytery of that patronage which, so long as it remained in other hands, was denounced as inexpedient, immoral, unscriptural, tyrannical. This is the most unaccountable inconsistency, the most impolitic and useless deceit; for the congregations of the Church and the people at large, cannot fail to pierce the thin veil which is intended to hide the workings of clerical ambition.

But we have done. Our warnings and our remonstrances will probably have but little influence with those who seem to have assumed to themselves the lead in all cases in the General Assembly; and yet we would once more earnestly entreat them to pause, and for a moment to consider the condition of the Church. They have resolved to go to Parliament. But have they considered in what tone they are to address the Legislature-what it is that they propose to ask, and on what conditions? An acute observer has said, "that if we cannot obtain every vain thing we ask, our next business is to take pet at the refusal."* Are they altogether sure that their present course has not been adopted in some such spirit as this, and therefore without proper deliberation? If it be not so if they will not avail themselves of this apology-we say without hesitation that they have been guilty of the most unaccountable rashness and absurdity, and that they will too soon be made to understand the indecorous and mischievous position in which they have placed themselves and the Church.

In approaching Parliament, they have either given up the claim to independent jurisdiction, or they have not. If they are prepared to abandon this high ground, and to acknowledge the supremacy of the civil court in the interpretation of statutes, they may no doubt obtain the abolition or modification of the law of patronage, provided they can make out a sufficient case to justify the measure. But then this would be at once admitting their error, and sacrificing their boasted independence-it would be in effect an acknowledgment that they had pertinaciously and dishonestly maintained a doctrine which now they cannot justify to Parliament or to themselves it would be a late and ungracious submission to the civil power, but a submission which would bind them for ever. They could never again be heard to question the power of the Court of Session to define and enforce the duties imposed on presbyteries by statute: nay, their new Act of Parliament, the reward of their submission, would necessarily be subject to the construction of that Court-the charter, which they had sacrificed their theoretical independence to obtain, would not renderthem practically one whit more free. And then, what becomes of the case of Mr Young and his intrusion into the parish of Auchterarder? They must proceed to intrude him, for they would then have admitted that his exclusion was illegal. But, on the other hand, if they still maintain their claim to independent jurisdiction, and contend that, the interference of the Court of Session being unwarranted by the constitution, its judgment is an absolute nullity in this case they cannot, of

course, ask Parliament to repeal the existing law, because they say it is already sufficient for them, and they must therefore demand a declaratory enactment. Now, to ask Parliament to declare that a court of law is mistaken in its interpretation of statute, is to make Parliament a court of appeal-it is to confound the legislative function (jus dare) with the judicial (jus dicere)-an anomaly in constitutional law obvious to any schoolboy. They would be asking Parliament to reverse the judgment of the House of Lords, the Court of last resort - asking the House of Lords, as a branch of the legislature, to declare that it had committed ini. quity in its judicial capacity. It is easier to conceive than describe the reception which such a proposal would inevitably and most deservedly meet with in that august assembly-the calm and dignified rebuke from the Woolsackthe withering scorn of Lord Brougham or Lord Lyndhurst-the sorrowing, commiserating, but conscientious and distinct negative of the Church's best friends, Lord Haddington and Lord Aberdeen-the manly and overwhelming denunciation, by the Duke of Wellington, of those whom he would not scruple to brand as lawbreakers and rebels. Is this a spectacle which the Church would wish to realize ? Is the bare risk, the possibility of such a result, not enough to make the rashest and most reckless pause? But suppose that even this hostility might be disarmed, and this difficulty surmounted-suppose the House of Lords calmly to listen to the insolent plea, that as a court of law they have committed error, what is the nature of the statute which the Church must then obtain? To effect the avowed object of the Church, it must be different from every other in the Statute Book-it must not be subject to the interpretation of the civil court; the same law which recognises the propriety of the Church's present attitude of resistance, must constitute Church Courts their own interpreters of statutes, and must arm them with secular power to resist the encroachments of co-ordinate, or rather of what would then be rival jurisdictions. What the Church demands is not a repeal or alteration of

NO. CCXC, VOL. XLVI,

3F