he opportunity of
stating--for there has been misrepresentation on the point--what our
interest in the teachers of Scotland and of the Free Church really is.
Certainly not indifferent to their comfort as men, or to the welfare
of their profession, as one of the most important and yet worst
remunerated in the community, we frankly confess that we look to
something greatly higher than either their comfort or the professional
welfare in general. They and their profession are but _means_; and it
is to the _end_ that we mainly look,--that end being the right
education of the Scottish people, and their consequent elevation in
the scale, moral and intellectual. We would deal by the teachers of
the country in this matter as we would by the stone-cutters of
Edinburgh, were we entrusted with the erection of some such exquisite
piece of masonry as the Scott Monument, or that fine building recently
completed in St. Andrew Square. Instead of pitching our scale of
remuneration at the rate of labourers' wages, we would at once pitch
it at the highest rate assigned to the skilled mechanic; and this not
in order, primarily at least, that the masons engaged should be
comfortable, but in order that they should be masters of their
profession, and that their work should be of the completest and most
finished kind. For labourers' wages would secure the services of only
bungling workmen, and lead to the production of only inferior masonry.
And such is the principle on which we would befriend our poor
schoolmasters,--not so much for their own sakes, as for the sake of
their work. Further, however, it is surely of importance that, when
engaged in teaching religion, they themselves should be enabled, in
conformity with one of its injunctions, to 'provide things honest in
the sight of all men.' Nay, of nothing are we more certain, than that
the Church has only to exert herself to the extent of the liabilities
already incurred to her teachers, in order to be convinced of the
absolute necessity which exists for a broad national scheme. Any
doubts which she may at present entertain regarding the question of
the _necessity_, are, in part at least, effects of her lax views
respecting the question of the _liability_, and of her consequent
belief that _anything well divided_ is sufficient to discharge it. At
the same time, however, it would be perhaps well that at least our
better-paid schoolmasters should be made to reflect that the
circumstances of th