But
circumstances have greatly changed. The Free Church is no longer in
any danger from the principle which would have rejected Government
assistance. There is now a territorial scheme brought full before the
view of the country; and, further, the Government grants have wholly
failed to preserve our Educational Scheme from the state of extreme
pecuniary embarrassment which we too surely anticipated. Salaries of
L15 and L20 per annum are greatly less than adequate for the
support and remuneration of even the lower order of teachers,
especially in thinly-peopled districts of country, where pupils are
few and the fees inconsiderable. But at these low rates it was
determined, in the programme of the Free Church Educational Scheme,
that about three-fourths of the Church's teachers should be paid; and
there are scores and hundreds among them who regulated their
expenditure on the arrangement. For at least the last two years,
however, the Education Committee has been paying its L15 salaries at
the reduced rate of L10, and its L20 salaries at the rate of L13,
13s. 4d.; and those embarrassments, of which the reduction was a
consequence, have borne with distressful effect on the Committee's
_employes_. However _orthodox_ their creed, their circumstances
have in many instances become _Antinomian_; nor, while teaching
religion to others, have they been able in every instance to
conform to one of its simplest demands--'Owe no man anything.'

There were several important items, let us remark, in which we
over-estimated the amount of assistance which the Scheme was to
receive from the Government; and this mainly from our looking at the
matter in the gross, as a question of proportion--so much granted for
so much raised--without taking into account certain conditions
demanded by the Minutes of Council on the one hand, and a certain
course of management adopted on the part of our Education Committee on
the other. The grant is given in proportion to salary of one to two
(we at present set aside the element of fees): a _salary_ of thirty
pounds is supplemented by a _grant_ of fifteen pounds,--a salary of
forty pounds by a grant of twenty,--a salary of fifty by a grant of
twenty-five,--and so on; and we were sanguine enough to calculate,
that an aggregate sum of some ten or twelve thousand pounds raised by
the Church for salaries, would be supplemented by an aggregation of
grants from the Government to the amount of some five or six thou