in that extensive district almost all the people
are Free Church. In the Scottish Highlands generally, nearly the same
result would be produced, from, of course, the existence of a similar
constituency. In Inverness, and onwards along the sea-coast to
Aberdeen, Montrose, St. Andrews, and the Frith of Forth, the element
of old dissent would be influentially felt: the great parties among
the people would be three--Establishment, Free Church, and Voluntary;
and whichever two of them united, would succeed in defeating the third.
And such unions, no doubt, frequently _would_ take place. The
Voluntaries and Free Churchmen would often unite for the carrying of
a _man_; and occasionally, no doubt, the Free Church and the
Establishment, for the carrying of a _principle_,--that principle of
religious teaching on which, in the coming struggle, the State Church
will be necessitated to take her stand. To the south of the Frith of
Forth on to Berwick, and along the western coast from Dumbarton to
the Solway, there would be localities parcelled out into large farms,
in which the Establishment would prevail; and of course, wherever it can
reckon up a majority of the more solid people, it is but right and
proper that the Establishment _should_ prevail; but who can doubt that
even in these districts the national teaching would be immensely
heightened by a scheme which gave to parents and ratepayers the
selection of their teachers, and restricted their choice to
intelligent and qualified men? Wherever there is liberty, there will
be discussion and difference; and the election of a schoolmaster would
not be managed quite as quietly under the anticipated state of
things, with the whole people of a parish for his constituency, as in
the present, by a minister and factor over a social glass. But the
objection taken by anticipation to popular heats and contendings in
such cases is as old as the first stirrings of a free spirit among
the people, and the first struggles of despotism to bind them down.
We ourselves have heard it twice urged on the unpopular side,--once
when the rotten burghs were nodding to their fall, and once when an
unrestricted patronage was imperilled by the encroachments of the
Veto. There will, and must be, difference; and difference too, Scotland
being what it is, in which the religious element will not fail to
mingle; but not the less completely on that account will the scheme
restore the Scottish schools to the Scottish