It enables us, in some sort, to
anticipate regarding it the decision of posterity. The list of cases
of protection afforded by the civil court will of itself form a
curious climax in the page of some future historian. Swindling will
come after drunkenness in the series, theft will follow after
swindling, and the miserable catalogue will be summed up by an offence
which we must not name. And it will be remarked that all these gross
crimes were fenced round and protected in professed ministers of the
gospel by the interference of the civil courts, just because a
majority of the judges were men so defective in judicial genius that
they lost sight of the very first principles of their profession, and
held that 'justice is _not_ to be kept up at all times.' But we leave
our readers to follow up the subject. Some of the principles to which
we have referred may serve to throw additional light on the remark of
Lord Ivory, when recalling the interdict in the Southend case. 'Even
were the objection against the competency of _quoad sacra_ ministers
to be ultimately sustained,' said his Lordship, 'I am disposed to hold
that the judicial acts and sentences of the General Assembly and its
Commission, _bona fide_ pronounced in the interim, should be given
effect to notwithstanding.'

AN UNSPOKEN SPEECH.

We enjoyed the honour on Wednesday last of being present as a guest
at the annual soiree of the Scottish Young Men's Society, and derived
much pleasure from the general appearance of the meeting, and the
addresses of the members and their friends. The body of the great
Waterloo Room was crowded on the occasion with a respectable,
intellectual-looking audience, including from about a hundred and
fifty to two hundred members of the Society, all of them young men
banded together for mutual improvement, and most of them in that
important decade of life--by far the most important of the appointed
seven--which intervenes between the fifteenth and the five-and-twentieth
year. The platform was equally well filled, and the Sheriff of
Edinburgh occupied the chair. We felt a particular interest in the
objects of the Society, and a deep sympathy with its members; for, as
we listened to the various speakers, and our eyes glanced over the
intelligent countenances that thronged the area of the apartment, we
thought of past difficulties encountered in a cause similar to that
which formed the uniting bond of the Society, and of not a few wre