led ruling elders)
accompany the clerical elders. Consequently 490 new members were
introduced at once into that particular class of courts (presbyteries)
which form the electoral bodies in relation to the highest court of
General Assembly. The effect of this change, made in the very teeth of the
law, was twofold. First, it threw into many separate presbyteries a
considerable accession of voters--_all owing their appointments to the
General Assembly_. This would at once give a large bias favourable to
their party views in every election for members to serve in the Assembly.
Even upon an Assembly numerically limited, this innovation would have told
most abusively. But the Assembly was _not_ limited; and therefore the
whole effect was, at the same moment, greatly to extend the electors and
the elected.

Here, then, was the machinery by which the faction worked. They drew that
power from Scotland rekindled into a temper of religious anxiety, which
they never could have drawn from Scotland lying torpid, as she had lain
through the 18th century. The new machinery, (created by Parliament in
order to meet the wishes of the Scottish nation,) the money of that nation,
the awakened zeal of that nation; all these were employed, honourably in
one sense, that is, not turned aside into private channels for purposes of
individuals, but factiously in the result, as being for the benefit of a
faction; honourably as regarded the open _mode_ of applying such
influence--a mode which did not shrink from exposure; but most
dishonourably, in so far as privileges, which had been conceded altogether
for a spiritual object, were abusively transferred to the furtherance of a
temporal intrigue. Such were the methods by which the new-born ambition of
the clergy moved; and that ambition had become active, simply because it
had suddenly seemed to become practicable. The presbyteries, as being the
effectual electoral bodies, are really the main springs of the
ecclesiastical administration. To govern _them_, was in effect to govern
the church. A new scheme for extending religion, had opened a new avenue
to this control over the presbyteries. That opening was notoriously
unlawful. But not the less, the church faction precipitated themselves
ardently upon it; and but for the faithfulness of the civil courts, they
would never have been dislodged from what they had so suddenly acquired.
Such was the extraordinary leap taken by the Scottish clergy, into a po