peculiar importance, in a time like the present, that the law of
toleration should be placed beyond the control of a hostile or
illiberal proprietary--so placed beyond their control, that they
may be as unable virtually to suspend its operation in any part of
the country, as they already are to suspend its operation in the
whole of the country. We are recommending, be it remembered, no wild
scheme of Chartist aggression on the rights of property--we would
but injure our cause by doing so: our strength in this question must
altogether depend on the soundness of the appeal which we can carry
to the natural justice of the community. We merely recommend that
that be done in behalf of the already recognised law of toleration,
which Parliament has no hesitation in doing in behalf of some railway
or canal, or water or dock company, when, for what is deemed a public
good, it sets aside the absolute control of the proprietor over at
least a portion of his property, and consigns it at a fair price to
the corporation engaged in the undertaking. The principle of the
scheme is already recognised by the Constitution, and its legislative
embodiment would be at once easy and safe. Property would be rendered
not less, but more secure, if, in every instance in which a
regularly-organized congregation of any denomination of Christians
to which the law of toleration itself extended, made application for
ground on which to erect a place of worship, the application would
be backed and made effectual, in virtue of an enacted law, by the
authority of the Constitution. There is no Scotch or English
Dissenter--no true friend of religious liberty in Britain or
Ireland--who would not make common cause with the Free Church in
urging a measure of this character on Parliament, when fairly
convinced, by cases such as that of Sutherland, how imperatively
such a measure is required.

Unavoidably, however, from the nature of things, the relief which
ultimately may be thus secured cannot be other than distant relief.
Much information must first be spread, and the press and the platform
extensively employed. Can there be nothing done for Sutherland through
an already existing political agency? We are of opinion there can.
Sutherland itself is even more thoroughly a _close_ county now, than
it was ere the Reform Bill had swamped the paper votes, and swept away
the close burghs. His Grace the Duke has but to nominate his member,
and his member is straightwa