Sir Robert Peel has little doubt that a serious crisis in the History of the Church of Scotland is at hand, and that the result of it will be greatly to be lamented; but still he could not advise your Majesty to seek to avert it by the acquiescence in demands amounting to the abrogation of important civil rights and to the establishment in Scotland of an ecclesiastical domination independent of all control....
He is very confident that your Majesty will feel that in the present state of the controversy with the Church of Scotland, there is peculiar reason for taking the greatest care that every minister presented to a Crown Living should be not only above exception, but should, if possible, be pre-eminently distinguished for his fitness for a pastoral charge.
Footnote 118: John Abercrombie (1780-1844), one of the chief consulting physicians in Scotland, and a great medical writer. He left the Established Church.
Footnote 119: Sir George Sinclair (1790-1868), M.P. for Caithness-shire, was a supporter of the Anti-Patronage Society, and joined the Free Church.
Viscount Melbourne to Queen Victoria.
HISTORICAL READING
Brocket Hall, 30th December 1842.
Lord Melbourne presents his humble duty to your Majesty. He has been much delighted this morning by receiving your Majesty's letter of the 28th. He was the more gratified, as he had begun to be a little annoyed at being such a very long time without hearing from your Majesty.
Lord Mahon has sent Lord Melbourne his book.120 Lord Melbourne has not yet read it, but he has read the review of it in the Quarterly, which seems to be a sort of abstract or abridgment of the book. The effect of writing it in French has naturally been to direct all attention and criticism from the merits of the work to the faults of the French. People who have read the work speak of it as entertaining, and the times are curious and interesting. The characters engaged in them, striking and remarkable. Lord Melbourne is very glad to hear that Pottinger's conduct is so universally approved. He always appeared to Lord Melbourne to be a man of great ability, resolution and discretion, and Lord Melbourne much rejoices that he has turned out so.