e, and their dangerous neighbours of the same political
status kept out. There is yet a third very important class whom we
would fain see in possession of the educational franchise,--those
householders of Scotland who till the soil as tenants, whether
with or without leases, or whether the annual rent which they pay
amounts to three or to three thousand pounds. The tillers of the
soil are a fixed class, greatly more permanent, even where there
exists no lease, than the mere tenant householders; and they
include, especially in the Highlands of Scotland, and the poorer
districts of the low country, a large proportion of the country's
parentage. They are in the main, too, an eminently safe class, and
not less so where the farms are small and the dwellings upon them
mere cottages--to which, save for the surrounding croft or farm, no
franchise could attach--than where they live in elegant houses, and
are the lessees of hundreds of acres. And such are the three great
classes to which, as composing the solid body of the Scottish
nation--to the exclusion of little more than the mere rags that
hang loosely on its vestments--would we extend, did we possess the
power, the educational franchise.

In order, however, to render a franchise thus liberally restricted
more safe and salutary still, we would demand not only certain
qualifications on the part of the parents and ratepayers of the
country, without which they could not be permitted to _vote_, but
also certain other qualifications on the part of the country's
schoolmasters, without which they could not be _voted for_. We
would thus impart to the scheme such a twofold aspect of security as
that for which in a purely ecclesiastical matter we contended, when
we urged that none but Church members should be permitted to choose
their own ministers; and that none but ministers pronounced duly
qualified in life, literature, and doctrine, by a competent
ecclesiastical court, should they be _permitted_ to choose. There
ought to exist a teaching Faculty as certainly as there exists a
medical or legal Faculty, or as there exists in the Church what is
essentially a preacher-licensing Faculty. The membership of a Church
are unfitted in their aggregate character to judge respecting at
least the literature of the young licentiate whom, in their own and
their children's behalf, they call to the pastoral charge;--the
people of a district, however shrewd and solid, are equally
unqualified to de