This day was commenced a newspaper in Edinburgh, the first that succeeded in thoroughly planting itself in Scotland, so as to obtain more than an ephemeral existence. It was the adventure of James M‘Ewen, bookseller in Edinburgh, and came out under |1718.| the title of The Edinburgh Evening Courant. The paper appeared in virtue of a formal authority from the magistrates and town-council, to whom M‘Ewen was to be answerable for what he should print and publish; and, that this rule might be enforced, he was, ‘before publication, to give ane coppie of his print to [the] magistrates.’[[526]] The Courant was announced as to contain ample accounts of foreign occurrences, and these derived, not through London prints, but directly from foreign journals. It was intended as a decidedly Whig print, in this respect differing from the Caledonian Mercury, which was not long after started in the Jacobite interest.

The Courant was from the first successful. James M‘Ewen, writing from Edinburgh, January 17, 1719, to the Rev. Mr Wodrow, says: ‘As to our newspaper, it thrives so far as to be very well liked by all, excepting the violent Jacobites, who hate it, for no other reason but because it is a true and impartial paper. Several gentlemen who were to have had the London papers sent them, have laid them aside, because this contains the substance not only of them, but of the foreign post also.’

In looking over, as it has been my fate to do, the early volumes of the Courant, one cannot but groan over the long, dry ‘advices’ from nearly all parts of Europe, and the wretched meagreness of the department of home intelligence, whole months often elapsing without so much as an obituary notice, or a ship’s arrival at Leith. The reason of this unfortunate peculiarity was no other than the civic censorship under which the paper, as we see, was from the beginning placed. Even intelligence in the interest of the government was not in every instance safe. In the course of February 1723, the magistrates seized all the copies of a particular number of the paper, in which there had been an apparently simple paragraph. It regarded Mr Patrick Halden, then under trials before the judges of the Court of Session as presentee of the crown for a seat on the bench—he being a mere creature of the ministry unfit for the position. Fired at the words: ‘We do not hear of any great discoveries yet made to his prejudice,’ the judges inflicted this punishment upon the publisher, M‘Ewen, who then announced the suppression of his paper, ‘that our customers in the country may know why they cannot be served with that day’s Courant, as also why we have been so sparing all along of home news.’

It is at the same time evident that the meagreness of the |1718.| home news was in part caused by mere difficulty of obtaining authentic accounts of such matters. A rumour as to the death of a person of importance at a distance would arrive. Owing to the sluggishness of posts, its verity could not readily be ascertained. Inserting it on trust, the journalist too often found, in the course of a few days, that the announcement was unfounded. Such is a fair specimen of the way in which false intelligence occasionally got into circulation; and every such case, of course, operated as a motive to caution in future. The publishers, moreover, could not afford to keep sub-editors to go about and ascertain the verity of rumours. As an illustration of the difficulties hence arising—the Caledonian Mercury of March 3, 1724, contained the following paragraph: ‘We hear that my Lord Arniston, one of the ordinary Lords of Session, is dead;’ which was followed in the next number by: ‘It was by mistake in our last that my Lord Arniston was dead, occasioned by the rendezvous of coaches, &c., hard by his lordship’s lodging, that were to attend the funeral of a son of the Right Honourable the Earl of Galloway; wherefore his lordship’s pardon and family’s is humbly craved.’

It affords a pleasing idea of the possible continuousness of sublunary things, that the then Whig, but now Conservative Edinburgh Evening Courant, which began its career in 1718, and its then Tory, but since liberal rival, the Caledonian Mercury, which originated about two years later, are still published in Edinburgh.

The enjoyment during thirty years of ‘position’ as an establishment, combined with the progressive ideas of the age, was now working some notable changes in the spirit of the Scottish Church.

There was still, of course, a general maintenance of the old doctrines and habits; all was to appearance as it had been—places of worship attended, Sunday observed, discipline kept up; in particular outlying presbyteries, there would even be found a majority of men of the old leaven. When, however, any strenuous Dumfriesshire or Galloway pastor seemed animated by aught of the zeal of a past age, and thereby excited troubles which came under the attention of the General Assembly, he was sure to be snubbed, and, if contumacious, deposed. If a presbytery of the ancient orthodoxy, labouring under fears of backslidings and defections, ventured to reassert, in a public manner, a doctrine that was beginning to be unfashionable, the General |1718.| Assembly frowned on its forwardness. At the same time, Mr John Simson, professor of divinity at Glasgow, openly taught doctrines leaning to Arminianism, and even Arianism, and the same venerable court could not, for a number of years, be brought to do more than administer a gentle admonition.

It chanced, one day, that a worthy pastor, Mr Thomas Boston, found in a house which he was visiting a tattered treatise of the bright days of the civil war, written by one Edward Fisher, and entitled The Marrow of Modern Divinity. Turning over its leaves, he found it asserting orthodox Puritan doctrines with a simplicity and pathos all its own, particularly one which had lately been condemned by the General Assembly—namely, that, Christ being all in all, a forsaking of sins was not necessary ‘to reinstate us in covenant with God.’ Here seemed the proper remedy for the alarming rationalism of the church, and very soon there appeared a new edition of the Marrow, under the care of Mr Thomas Hogg, minister of Carnock. The book immediately got into wide circulation, and produced a very decided impression on the public mind, insomuch that the General Assembly felt called upon to issue a prohibition against its being recommended or read.

Thus arose a once famous conflict generally recognised as the Marrow Controversy. Dissatisfied with the pronouncement of the church, twelve ministers, including Boston and Hogg, came forward with a Representation, in which they remonstrated in very free terms with the General Assembly, expressing themselves as grieved in an especial manner to find any disfavour shewn to that freedom from the covenant of works which true believers felt to be the chief branch of the precious liberty which Christ had given them, and ‘in which the eternal salvation of souls is wrapped up.’ For sending this paper, the twelve brethren were taken in hand by the Assembly’s commission, condemned, and ordered to stand a rebuke (1723); but, while submitting, for the sake of peace, they took care to utter a protest, which left no room for doubt that they remained unshaken in their opinions. The entire proceedings are far too voluminous for modern patience; but the importance of the affair is undoubted. The ‘Twelve Marrow Men’ may be said to have formed the nucleus of the dissent which was a few years after matured under the name of the Secession.[[527]]

1719. Jan. 29.