y of Church petitions in
Edinburgh during the ten eventful years of the war brings out this
fact very significantly in the statistical form. From 1833, the year
of the Veto Act, to 1839, the year of the Auchterarder decision,
petitions to Parliament from Edinburgh on behalf of the struggling
Church were usually signed by not more than from four to five
thousand persons. In 1839 the number rose to six thousand. The people
began gradually to awaken, and to trust. Speeches in church courts
were found to have comparatively little influence in creating opinion,
or ecclesiastical votes in securing confidence; and so there were
other means of appealing to the public mind resorted to, mayhap not
wholly without effect: for in 1840 the annual Church petition from
Edinburgh bore attached to it thirteen thousand signatures; and to
that of the following year (1841) the very extraordinary number of
twenty-five thousand was appended. And, save for the result, general
over Scotland, which we find thus indicated by the Church petitions of
Edinburgh, the Disruption, and especially the origination of a Free
Church, would have been impossible events. How, we ask, was that
result produced? Not, certainly, by the votes of ecclesiastical
courts,--for mere votes would never have doubled the Cape Horn of the
Church question; but simply through the conviction at length
effectually wrought in the public mind, that our ministers were
struggling and suffering, not for clerical privileges, but for popular
rights,--not for themselves, but for others. And that conviction once
firmly entertained, the movement waxed formidable; for elsewhere, as
in the metropolis, popular support increased at least fivefold; and
the question, previously narrow of base, and very much restricted to
one order of men, became broad as the Scottish nation, and deep as the
feelings of the Scottish people. But as certainly as the component
strands of a cable that have been twisted into strength and coherency
by one series of workings, may be untwisted into loose and feeble
threads by another, so certainly may the majorities of our church
courts, by a reversal of the charm which won for them the element of
popular strength, render themselves of small account in the nation.
They became strong by advocating, in the Patronage question, popular
rights, in opposition to clerical interests: they may and will become
weak, if in the Educational one they reverse the process, and advocate