to the old patrons those rights which had been
taken away in 1690. A bill was brought into this House, the history
of which you may trace in our Journals. Some of the entries are very
significant. In spite of all remonstrances the Tory majority would not
hear of delay. The Whig minority struggled hard, appealed to the act of
Union and the Act of Security, and insisted on having both those Acts
read at the table. The bill passed this House, however, before the
people of Scotland knew that it had been brought in. For there were then
neither reporters nor railroads; and intelligence from Westminster
was longer in travelling to Cambridge than it now is in travelling
to Aberdeen. The bill was in the House of Lords before the Church
of Scotland could make her voice heard. Then came a petition from a
committee appointed by the General Assembly to watch over the interests
of religion while the General Assembly itself was not sitting. The first
name attached to that petition is the name of Principal Carstairs, a man
who had stood high in the esteem and favour of William the Third, and
who had borne a chief part in establishing the Presbyterian Church in
Scotland. Carstairs and his colleagues appealed to the Act of Union, and
implored the peers not to violate that Act. But party spirit ran high;
public faith was disregarded: patronage was restored. To that breach
of the Treaty of Union are to be directly ascribed all the schisms that
have since rent the Church of Scotland.

I will not detain the House by giving a minute account of those schisms.
It is enough to say that the law of patronage produced, first the
secession of 1733 and the establishment of the Associate Synod, then the
secession of 1752 and the establishment of the Relief Synod, and finally
the great secession of 1843 and the establishment of the Free Church.
Only two years have elapsed since we saw, with mingled admiration and
pity, a spectacle worthy of the best ages of the Church. Four hundred
and seventy ministers resigned their stipends, quitted their manses, and
went forth committing themselves, their wives, their children, to the
care of Providence. Their congregations followed them by thousands, and
listened eagerly to the Word of Life in tents, in barns, or on those
hills and moors where the stubborn Presbyterians of a former generation
had prayed and sung their psalms in defiance of the boot of Lauderdale
and of the sword of Dundee. The rich gave largely of