Scottish nation was extended to this clergy, which too certainly
has been abused.

In the years 1824-5, Parliament had passed acts "for building additional
places of worship in the highlands and islands of Scotland." These acts
may be looked upon as one section in that general extension of religious
machinery which the British people, by their government and their
legislature, have for many years been promoting. Not, as is ordinarily
said, that the weight of this duty had grown upon them simply through
their own treacherous neglect of it during the latter half of the
eighteenth century; but that no reasonable attention to that duty _could_
have kept pace with the scale upon which the claims of a new manufacturing
population had increased. In mere equity we must admit--not that the
British nation had fallen behind its duties, (though naturally it might
have done so under the religious torpor prevalent at the original era of
manufacturing extension,) but that the duties had outstripped all human
power of overtaking them. The efforts, however, have been prodigious in
this direction for many years. Amongst those applied to Scotland, it had
been settled by parliament that forty-two new churches should be raised in
the highlands, with an endowment from the Government of L.120 annually for
each incumbent. There were besides more than two hundred chapels of ease
to be founded; and towards this scheme the Scottish public subscribed
largely. The money was entrusted to the clergy. _That_ was right. But mark
what followed. It had been expressly provided by Parliament--that any
district or circumjacent territory, allotted to such parliamentary
churches as the range within which the incumbent was to exercise his
spiritual ministrations, should _not_ be separate parishes for any civil
or legal effects. Here surely the intentions and directions of the
legislature were plain enough, and decisive enough.

How did the Scottish clergy obey them? They erected all these
jurisdictions into _bona fide_ "parishes," enjoying the plenary rights (as
to church government) of the other parishes, and distinguished from them
in a merely nominal way as parishes _quoad sacra_. There were added at
once to the presbyteries, which are the organs of the church power, 203
clerical persons for the chapels of ease, and 42 for the highland
churches--making a total of 245 new members. By the constitution of the
Scottish church, an equal number of lay elders (cal