mended by the interest and the pride in them which it gives to our landed proprietors, and the opportunity which it affords of consulting their liberal views, their refined tastes, and their pious feelings in the form of them. It is clearly from this cause that, in the more wealthy parts of Scotland, our parishes now begin to vie with each other in the architectural character of our churches, and in some instances of our parsonages also; and that the meagre, rectangular, barn-like structures in which the glory of God was evidently the last thing in the builders' thoughts are gradually giving way to edifices in which we are presented as with the fairest feature of an English landscape. This is a view of the subject which seems to us to extend in many ways far beyond the regions of mere taste and refinement: Nor do we think that there is any subject connected with this question on which, in its various aspects, the eye of true devotion will dwell with higher interest.

Neither must we omit to mention that, as a necessary consequence of the abolition principle, the system which has so long been the peculiar pride and boast of Scotland-we mean our system of parochial education-must fall likewise; for we are not aware of a single circumstance with regard to the mode in which a parish schoolhouse is supported, which should exempt it from any objection which can be urged with respect to the maintenance of the Church and parsonage. Our school-houses may, in truth, be regarded to a certain extent at least -as a part of our ecclesiastical establishment; and if it be a grievance that a Dissenter should be bound to contribute to the support of a Presbyterian Church, we should like to know the grounds on which it can be argued that the obligation to maintain a Presbyterian school-house can be imposed on him without injustice.

It may possibly be thought by some that these views as to the operation of the Church-rate abolition-principle in Scotland are rather speculative and overstrained; but we confess that they appear to us to be not only the natural, but the necessary result of that "equal justice" to both countries, which is the favourite theme of our opponents. If it be just that the Church-rates should be abolished in England, we cannot

comprehend how it can be just that burdens which thus correspond so nearly with them should be suffered to remain here. We do not say that the English Church-rates, and the legal provisions of the same description of which we have spoken with reference to our own country, are, in all respects, identical. There are, no doubt, some matters of mere form, or of mere detail, in which they differ; but we affirm, without the smallest fear of contradiction, that they are not distinguishable in any circumstance which would afford even a pretext for refusing to apply the same principle of reform-if such it must be called to both of them. If, then, we are to be told that there is no reason to apprehend that this principle of reform will, in the present instance, extend beyond England, we can only answer that we have not been able to discover, either in the nature of the case, or in our recent political history, or in the temper of the present times, any good ground of assurance on this point; and that, for our own part, we should just as soon believe that any other pestilence, moral, political, or physical, would be bounded by the ideal line which separates the two kingdoms.

But this is not all; for it can hardly fail to be observed by any one who has attended to this subject, that if there is really a grievance in the payment of Church-rates, or any burthen which may correspond to them, it is a grievance which presses with far greater weight, or, at least, which exists to a far greater extent in this country than in England. We have no accurate information as to the number of English rate-payers who dissent from the Established Church; but we believe it bears but a small proportion to the number of those" who belong to it. But how is it in Scotland? We are sure that we are within bounds when we say that one-half of the property which contributes to the maintenance of our parish churches is in the hands of Episcopalians. It may no doubt be said with perfect truth, and it surely never can be said but to their honour, that this class of proprietors have not yet discovered that they are subjected to any hardship in thus supporting the established religion of the country; and though no doubt Dis

senters, they will be admitted on all hands to have ever been the most strenuous opponents of that voluntary principle which lies at the root of the present question. But if the Dissentters of England are really aggrieved in this matter, here is obviously a grievance of far greater magnitude; and it is for our adversaries to explain why it has not hitherto been brought into view, and if their arguments have any foundation-on what principle it can continue unredressed.

From this plain statement of this question, as it bears on our own Church Establishment, two considerations, seem to arise, which, in our humble judgment, cannot be pressed too strongly, the first of them, on the notice of our legislators, and the second on the attention of certain would-be legislators for the English Church, in this part of the kingdom.

In the first place, then, we would ask our legislators whether, in sanctioning this measure for the relief of the English Dissenters, they have duly weighed its effect on the Church Establishment of Scotland? We cannot, in the face of all experience on this point, flatter ourselves that our Scottish interests occupy a very large space in the august mind of Parliament: We have not yet, like our Irish friends, learned the secret of our own importance; but still we persuade ourselves that the maintenance or subversion of our National Church is not a matter of absolute indifference to any branch of the legislature. If, therefore, it can be proved-and we think the proof on this subject is complete that the measure for the abolition of the English Church-rates involves, in principle at least, the ruin of our Church Establishment, are we not entitled to ask the authors and the supporters of that measure how they reconcile this with their professions of friendship or at any rate, their disclamations of hostility-to the national religion? Have they ever considered whether the blow which is thus aimed at the Church of England would reach us at all? And if not, is it unworthy of them to enquire what, in that event, might be its consequences, and whether, from its destruction of the humbler fabric of Presbyterianism, it might not recoil with tenfold force on the more stately and imposing structure at which it was originally directed?

There may be those who will treat the apprehensions indicated in such questions as idle and chimerical: and we would hope that they are right in doing so. But if they are, it can only be from the forbearance of those who, on this side of the Border, possess an interest in the present question; and we have no scruple in saying that, if the demand of the English Dissenters shall be conceded, on this forbearance the legislature at least has no right to calculate. Neither, we think, ought they to calculate on it; for assuredly no man ever did or can calculate the consequences of legislating, not with a view to the removal of specific evils, but in furtherance of an attempt to extort the acknowledgment of abstract political principles.

In the second place, we would put it to such of our countrymen as may have joined, whether by petition or otherwise, in the present clamour against the English Church-rates, in the honest conviction that the law on this subject imposes a hardship on the English Dissenters, which is unknown in our part of the island, whether this view of the close similarity between the Church-rates, and our own legal provisions for the maintenance of parish-churches, ought not powerfully to influence their judgment with respect to this measure? We believe there are many of these persons who have never considered the burdens, which we have shown to correspond to the Church-rates of England, as the subject of the slightest complaint or objection; indeed, we are certain that the justice and propriety of them are fully acquiesced in by all who do not openly advocate the voluntary system, or, in other words, the total abolition of our National Church. By no other class of persons has the abolition of these burdens, for the relief of our Scotch Dissenters, ever been contemplated as within the range of possibility; for every Scotchman knows and feels that the existence of the Church Establishment depends as essentially on them as on the stipends of the clergy; and that, if they should be removed, there is no source from which the want could be supplied. This is so manifest-the destruction of the Establishment is here so plainly involved, that we are not aware that even the voluntaries themselves have ever hinted at the abolition of these provisions as a mea

sure distinct and separate from that ulterior design to which the abolition of the Church-rates has been artfully chosen as the preparative. This, then, brings the present question, so far as this country is concerned, within a narrow compass. Those among us who have advocated the abolition of the Church-rates as a peculiar grievance of the English Dissenters, have done so in error as to the true nature of the question, and its bearing on our own Church; and with respect to all others who have taken part in this matter, we are irresistibly led to the conclusion that they have made common cause with the English abolitionists for the destruction of all Church Establishments.

sure.

This last view of the matter is perhaps even more conclusively established by that other circumstance with regard to our Scottish agitators on this question, to which we alluded as a separate subject of consideration in the commencement of these remarks -we mean the total absence, on their part, of any other interest in this meaWe have said that one-half of the property liable to the burden of maintaining our parish churches belongs to persons who are not members of our Church Establishment, but of the Church of England; but that no complaint on this subject has ever yet been heard from them. We may truly add, that, with exceptions too trivial to be even named, these are the only class of Dissenters who possess such property. Is it, then, for their sake that our Scotch petitioners have busied themselves with this question? Credulous indeed must he be, within the precincts of whose belief such a notion has ever found a dwelling. Is it in sympathy with their Dissenting brethren of England that they have done so? This is their own account of the matter; and in one sense it is unquestionably the true one. But their sympathy (except perhaps in those few cases of error to which we lately referred) is not with the pretended grievance of their English brethren, but with their real grievance the intolerable grievance of a Church Establishment. We believe that of the English abolitionists themselves, there are but an inconsiderable proportion who are rate-payers; and it is difficult enough to believe that such persons, having

no immediate interest in the matter, should yet take part in it, without that more remote interest in it which seems to us to be the key to all the difficulties of this question. But it is absolutely incredible that any considerable number of persons in this country, without such immediate interest, should concern themselves with such a subject on any other view unless, indeed, they should do so merely in order to bolster up a Ministry, who, in introducing this measure in order to propitiate the enemies of the Church, have added another to their many claims to that contempt which is the sure portion of folly and meanness.

We have sometimes heard it asked, what advantage that class of our Scotch Dissenters, who, without contributing in any form to the maintenance of our Establishment, thus concern themselves in this question, can contemplate as likely to accrue to them from the downfal of the English Church, and the consequent downfal of our own? They can scarcely hope in that event (it is said) for any new distribution of ecclesiastical revenues, in which they should be included: nay, they can scarcely hope to retain those gratuities which at present they are in some instances content to receive, not perhaps in the most perfect consistency with their own professed tenets. Those who argue thus, manifest a strange ignorance of the true sources of the voluntary principle. Our dissenting clergy who maintain this principle, have evidently just the same interest in the demolition of the Church Establishment which actuates any other description of levellers in the furtherance of their work of destruction. They imagine (whether justly or not is of little import) that the field of their ambition, and the sources of their profit, would be thus enlarged, so as to be bounded only by their own talents and enterprise: their views are in fact precisely the views of free trade, and they contend as against the obstructions of a great monopoly. are afraid, likewise, that there are not awanting among them various unequivocal symptoms of feelings of even a more questionable character:

We

feelings of enmity, which, deeprooted as they would seem to be, have yet apparently no better cause than

In the close of these few remarks, we would once more observe, that we have approached this question in order merely to point out some of its bearings on our own National Church, and to indicate the views of those among us who have engaged in the recent agitation of it; and that, as we have therefore abstained from entering into any of its details, we have refrained altogether from noticing the juggling and fraudulent scheme by which the Church-rates are proposed to be supplied. That scheme, both with respect to the English Church itself, and the lessees of its property, we regard as a scheme of confiscation in its worst and most corrupt form: And even if it were otherwise unobjectionable, we should strenuously protest against it, on the plain and obvious ground, that by throwing the maintenance of the fabric of the Church" on Church property, it directly aids the views of the enemies of the Establishment, by depriving it in so far of its proper national character. On this subject, however, we deem it unnecessary to enter; the more especially as it must be evident to all who are in the least degree conversant with the subject, that if the abolition principle were to be recognised, confiscation itself could not supply any similar fund for the support of our Scotch Churches.

Without therefore, detaining our readers by adverting either to this or any of the various other views of the subject, which have elsewhere been so ably illustrated, we would merely ask in conclusion, and with reference to those points to which we have endea voured to direct attention, whether it is possible for any rational being honestly to maintain, that the national religion would not be endangered by a measure which is so obviously demanded with a view to its destruction, and the extension of which, to this part of the kingdom, must in a few years render ours an Establishment without churches, and without residences for our clergy? We are convinced, that nothing, save the most

inveterate political prejudice, could induce any conscientious person in his right mind to hesitate for an instant in answering this question. We believe, moreover, that it is a question as to which even political prejudice is already fast giving way; and that the Ministry find to their cost, that in this portentous measure they have mistaken their influence with many of their own adherents. What course they may pursue in attempting to retrieve their error, we cannot presume to conjecture: We pretend not to calculate the resources of their dishonesty, or to fathom the depths of their degradation. We feel assured, however, that in this direction at least, their revolutionary progress must be arrested; and that neither force nor fraud will yet prevail in a contest where we have every thing to protect which a nation can value, and every thing to avert which it can fear. The security of our National Church is indeed "the question of questions;" and it is felt to be so, by that portion of our people which forms the true strength of the country. Assailed by the vulgar hatred of the obscene and grovelling herd of infidels, and the deeper enmity of Papists and "Voluntaries"-betrayed by a weak, sordid, self-seeking Government, and their obsequious and un-British majority of the House of Commons,-who shall yet doubt, that " a fortress at once, and a temple"-built on the sure foundation of a people's love-our Protestant Establishment will bid defiance to them all? In the humblest edifice which rears its modest form among the graves of their fathers, there is a charm in the sight of our simplest villagers-in" the sound of the churchgoing bell" there is a music to their inmost hearts, of which the motley and party-coloured tribe of churchreformers evidently know nothing ; nor perhaps has this ignorance of feelings, the oldest and the most changeless which bind us to our native land, ever been more clearly evinced than in the present measure.