he presbytery, should proceed in the business of induction by one routine
rather than by another; but was it a trivial thing that the power of
appointing clergymen should lapse into this perilous dilemma--either that
it should be intercepted by the Scottish clerical order, and thus, that a
lordly hierarchy should be suddenly created, disposing of incomes which,
in the aggregate, approach to half a million annually; or, on the other
hand, that this dangerous power, if defeated as a clerical power, should
settle into a tenure exquisitely democratic? Was _that_ trivial? Doubtless,
the Scottish ecclesiastical revenues are not equal, nor nearly equal, to
the English; still, it is true, that Scotland, supposing all her benefices
equalized, gives a larger _average_ to each incumbent than England, of the
year 1830. England, in that year, gave an average of L299 to each
beneficiary; Scotland gave an average of L303. That body, therefore, which
wields patronage in Scotland, wields a greater relative power than the
corresponding body in England. Now this body, in Scotland, must finally
have been the _clerus_; but supposing the patronage to have settled
nominally where the Veto Act had placed it, then it would have settled
into the keeping of a fierce democracy. Mr Forsyth has justly remarked,
that in such a case the hired ploughmen of a parish, mercenary hands that
quit their engagements at Martinmas, and _can_ have no filial interest in
the parish, would generally succeed in electing the clergyman. That man
would be elected generally, who had canvassed the parish with the arts and
means of an electioneering candidate; or else, the struggle would lie
between the property and the Jacobinism of the district.

In respect to Jacobinism, the condition of Scotland is much altered from
what it was; pauperism and great towns have worked "strange defeatures" in
Scottish society. A vast capital has arisen in the west, on a level with
the first-rate capitals of the Continent--with Vienna or with Naples; far
superior in size to Madrid, to Lisbon, to Berlin; more than equal to Rome
and Milan; or again to Munich and Dresden, taken by couples: and in this
point, beyond comparison with any one of these capitals, that whilst
_they_ are connected by slight ties with the circumjacent country, Glasgow
keeps open a communication with the whole land. Vast laboratories of
encouragement to manual skill, too often dissociated from consideration of
character