f the patronage law of Queen
Anne, as an unconstitutional encroachment on those privileges of the
Church and those rights of the Scottish people which the Treaty of Union
had been framed to secure. But the half century which had passed, since
through the act of a Moderate majority the protest had been dropped,
had produced the natural effect. By much the greater part of even the
better ministers of the Church had been admitted into their offices
through the law of patronage; and, naturally grateful to the patrons who
had befriended them, they hesitated to make open war on the powers that
had been exerted in their own behalf. According to Solomon, the "gift"
had to a certain extent "destroyed the heart;" and so they were prepared
to take up merely a half-way position, which their predecessors, the old
popular divines, would have liked exceedingly ill. I could not avoid
seeing that, fixed in a sort of overtopped hollow, if I may so speak,
between the claims of patronage on the one hand, and the rights of the
people on the other, it was a most perilous position, singularly open to
misconception and misrepresentation on both sides; and as it virtually
stripped the patrons of half their power, and extended to the people
only half their rights, I was not a little afraid that the patrons might
be greatly more indignant than the people grateful, and that the Church
might, in consequence, find herself exposed to the wrath of very potent
enemies, and backed by the support of only lukewarm friends. But however
perilous and difficult as a post of occupation, it was, I could not
avoid believing, a position conscientiously taken up; nor could I doubt
that its grounds were strictly constitutional. The Church, in a case of
disputed settlement, might, I believed, have to forfeit the
temporalities if her decision differed from that of the law courts, but
only the temporalities connected with the case at issue; and these I
deemed worth risking in the popular behalf, seeing that they might be
regarded as already lost to the country in every case in which a parish
was assigned to a minister whom the parishioners refused to hear. It
rejoiced me, too, to see the revival of the old spirit in the Church;
and so I looked with an interest on the earlier stages of her struggle
with the law courts, greatly more intense than that with which any mere
political contest had ever inspired me. I saw with great anxiety
decision after decision go against her