is true that, after the Committee had been relieved of this
hostile element, considerable and rapid progress was made. Hopes were
cherished for a time that the Union might yet be consummated, and
the determination was expressed to carry it through at all hazards.
But the Free Church minority, ably led and knowing its own mind,
stubbornly maintained its ground. Its adherents, who included perhaps
one-third of the ministers and people of the Church, were specially
numerous in the Highlands, where United Presbyterianism was
practically unrepresented.

Here most distorted views were held of the Voluntaryism which most of
its ministers and members professed. It was represented as equivalent
to National Atheism, and from this the transition was an easy one,
especially in districts where few of the people had even seen a United
Presbyterian, to the position that an upholder of National Atheism
must himself be an Atheist. It became increasingly clear, as the years
passed, that if the Union were to be forced through, there must be
a new Disruption, and a Disruption which would cost the Free Church
those Highland congregations which for thirty years it had been its
glory to maintain. Moreover, it was currently reported that the
Anti-Union party had taken the opinion of eminent counsel, and that
these had declared that, in the event of a Disruption taking place
on this question of Union, the protesting minority would be legally
entitled to take with them the entire property of the Church. The
conviction was forced on the Free Church leaders (and in this they
were supported by their United Presbyterian brethren) that the time
was not yet ripe for that which they so greatly desired to see, and
that even for Union the price they would have to pay was too great.
And so with heavy hearts they decided in 1873 to abandon the
negotiations which had been proceeding for ten years. All that they
felt themselves prepared to carry was a proposal that Free Church
or United Presbyterian ministers should be "mutually eligible" for
calls in the two Churches--a proposal that did not come to much.

Three years later, the Reformed Presbyterian Church united with the
Free Church, and in the same year (1876) the United Presbyterian
Church gave up one hundred and ten of its congregations, which united
with the English Presbyterian Church and thus formed the present
Presbyterian Church of England. The original idea, at least on the
United Presbyterian