lied hard, with an eye to the
prostration and ejection of its political opponents the Whigs,
then in office; and not much pleased to see the Church which we
loved and respected so transmuted and so wielded, we solemnly
determined that, so far at least as our modicum of influence
extended, no tool-making politician, whatever his position, should
again convert it unchallenged into an ignoble party utensil. With
God's help, we have remained true to our determination; and so
assured are we of being supported in this matter by the sound-hearted
Presbyterian people of the Free Church, that we have no fear
whatever, should either the assertors among us of the unimpeachable
consistency of the Conservatives, or of the immaculate honesty of the
Whigs, start against us an opposition vehicle to-morrow, that in
less than a twelvemonth we would run it fairly off the road, and
have some little amusement with it to boot, so long as the contest
continued. The _Witness_ is not, and, as we have shown, cannot be,
the organ of the Free Church; but it is something greatly better:
it is the trusted representative--against Whig, Tory, Radical, and
Chartist--against Erastian encroachment and clerical domination--of
the Free Church people. There lies its strength,--a strength which
its political Free Church opponents are welcome to test when they
please.

We must again express our regret that the article on the Duke of
Buccleuch, which has proved the occasion of so much remark, spoken and
written, should have ever appeared in our columns; and this, not, as
the agent of the Duke asserts, because it has been _exposed_, but
because of the unhappy unsolidity of its facts, and because of that
diversion of the public attention which it has effected from cases
such as those of Canobie and Wanlockhead, and from such a death-bed as
that of the Rev. Mr. Innes. Our readers are already in possession of
our explanation, and have seen it fully borne out by the incidental
statement of Mr. Parker. We would crave leave to remind them that the
_Witness_ is now in the ninth year of its existence; and that during
that time the Editor stated many facts, from his own observation,
connected with the refusal of sites, and other matters of a similar
character. He saw congregations worshipping on bare hill-sides in the
Highlands of Sutherland, and on an oozy sea-beach on the coast of
Lochiel; he sailed in the Free Church yacht the _Betsey_, and
worshipped among the isl