; first that of the Court of
Session in March 1838, and next that of the House of Lords in May 1839;
and then, with the original Auchterarder case of collision, I saw that
of Lethendy and Marnoch mixed up; and, as one entanglement succeeded
another, confusion becoming worse confounded. It was only when the
Church's hour of peril came that I learned to know how much I really
valued her, and how strong and numerous the associations were that bound
her to my affections. I had experienced at least the average amount of
interest in political measures whose tendency and principles I deemed
good in the main--such as the Reform Bill, the Catholic Emancipation
Act, and the Emancipation of the Negroes; but they had never cost me an
hour's sleep. Now, however, I felt more deeply; and for at least one
night, after reading the speech of Lord Brougham, and the decision of
the House of Lords in the Auchterarder case, I slept none.

In truth, the position of the Church at this time seemed critical in the
extreme. Offended by the usage which she had received at the hands of
the Whigs, in her claims for endowments to her new chapels, and startled
by their general treatment of the Irish Establishment, and the
suppression of the ten bishoprics, she had thrown her influence into the
Tory scale, and had done much to produce that reaction against the
Liberal party in Scotland which took place during the Ministry of Lord
Melbourne. In the representation of at least one county in which he was
all-potent--Ross-shire--she had succeeded in substituting a Tory for a
Whig; and there were few districts in the kingdom in which she had not
very considerably increased the votes on the Tory, or, as it was termed,
Conservative side. The people, however, though they might, and did,
become quite indifferent enough to the Whigs, could not follow her into
the Tory ranks. They stood aloof--very suspicious, not without reason,
of her new political friends--no admirers of the newspapers which she
patronized, and not in the least able to perceive the nature of the
interest which she had begun to take in supernumerary bishops and the
Irish Establishment. And now, when once more in a position worthy of her
old character, and when her Tory friends--converted at once into the
bitterest and most ungenerous of enemies--were turning upon her to rend
her, she had at once to encounter the hostility of the Whigs, and the
indifferency of the people. Further, with but one, or