III. Having now stated WHAT was done, as well as HOW it was done, let us estimate the CONSEQUENCES of these acts; under this present, or third section, reviewing the immediate consequences which have taken effect already, and under the next section, anticipating the more remote consequences yet to be expected.
In the spring of 1834, as we have sufficiently explained, the General Assembly ventured on the fatal attempt to revolutionize the church, and (as a preliminary towards that) on the attempt to revolutionize the property of patronage. There lay the extravagance of the attempt; its short-sightedness, if they did not see its civil tendencies; its audacity, if they did. It was one revolution marching to its object through another; it was a vote, which, if at all sustained, must entail a long inheritance of contests with the whole civil polity of Scotland.
"Heu quantum fati parva tabella vehit!"
It might seem to strangers a trivial thing, that an obscure court, like the presbytery, should proceed in the business of induction by one routine rather than by another; but was it a trivial thing that the power of appointing clergymen should lapse into this perilous dilemma—either that it should be intercepted by the Scottish clerical order, and thus, that a lordly hierarchy should be suddenly created, disposing of incomes which, in the aggregate, approach to half a million annually; or, on the other hand, that this dangerous power, if defeated as a clerical power, should settle into a tenure exquisitely democratic? Was that trivial? Doubtless, the Scottish ecclesiastical revenues are not equal, nor nearly equal, to the English; still, it is true, that Scotland, supposing all her benefices equalized, gives a larger average to each incumbent than England, of the year 1830. England, in that year, gave an average of £299 to each beneficiary; Scotland gave an average of £303. That body, therefore, which wields patronage in Scotland, wields a greater relative power than the corresponding body in England. Now this body, in Scotland, must finally have been the clerus; but supposing the patronage to have settled nominally where the Veto Act had placed it, then it would have settled into the keeping of a fierce democracy. Mr Forsyth has justly remarked, that in such a case the hired ploughmen of a parish, mercenary hands that quit their engagements at Martinmas, and can have no filial interest in the parish, would generally succeed in electing the clergyman. That man would be elected generally, who had canvassed the parish with the arts and means of an electioneering candidate; or else, the struggle would lie between the property and the Jacobinism of the district.
In respect to Jacobinism, the condition of Scotland is much altered from what it was; pauperism and great towns have worked "strange defeatures" in Scottish society. A vast capital has arisen in the west, on a level with the first-rate capitals of the Continent—with Vienna or with Naples; far superior in size to Madrid, to Lisbon, to Berlin; more than equal to Rome and Milan; or again to Munich and Dresden, taken by couples: and in this point, beyond comparison with any one of these capitals, that whilst they are connected by slight ties with the circumjacent country, Glasgow keeps open a communication with the whole land. Vast laboratories of encouragement to manual skill, too often dissociated from consideration of character; armies of mechanics, gloomy and restless, having no interfusion amongst their endless files of any gradations corresponding to a system of controlling officers; these spectacles, which are permanently offered by the castra stativa of combined mechanics in Glasgow and its dependencies, (Paisley, Greenock, &c.,) supported by similar districts, and by turbulent collieries in other parts of that kingdom, make Scotland, when now developing her strength, no longer the safe and docile arena for popular movements which once she was, with a people that were scattered, and habits that were pastoral. And at this moment, so fearfully increased is the overbalance of democratic impulses in Scotland, that perhaps in no European nation—hardly excepting France—has it become more important to hang weights and retarding forces upon popular movements amongst the labouring classes.
This being so, we have never been able to understand the apparent apathy with which the landed body met the first promulgation of the Veto Act in May 1834. Of this apathy, two insufficient explanations suggest themselves:—1st, It seemed a matter of delicacy to confront the General Assembly, upon a field which they had clamorously challenged for their own. The question at issue was tempestuously published to Scotland as a question exclusively spiritual. And by whom was it thus published? The Southern reader must here not be careless of dates. At present, viz. in 1844, those who fulminate such views of spiritual jurisdiction, are simply dissenters; and those who vehemently withstand them are the church, armed with the powers of the church. Such are the relations between the parties in 1844. But in 1834, the revolutionary party were not only in the church, but (being the majority) they came forward as the church. The new doctrines presented themselves at first, not as those of a faction, but of the Scottish kirk assembled in her highest court. The prestige of that advantage, has vanished since then; for this faction, after first of all falling into a minority, afterwards ceased to be any part or section of the church; but in that year 1834, such a prestige did really operate; and this must be received as one of the reasons which partially explain the torpor of the landed body. No one liked to move first, even amongst those who meant to move. But another reason we find in the conscientious scruples of many landholders, who hesitated to move at all upon a question then insufficiently discussed, and in which their own interest was by so many degrees the largest.
These reasons, however, though sufficient for suspense, seem hardly sufficient for not having solemnly protested against the Veto Act immediately upon its passing the Assembly. Whatever doubts a few persons might harbour upon the expediency of such an act, evidently it was contrary to the law of the land. The General Assembly could have no power to abrogate a law passed by the three estates of the realm. But probably it was the deep sense of that truth, which reined up the national resistance. Sure of a speedy collision between some patron and the infringers of his right, other parties stood back for the present, to watch the form which such a collision might assume.
In that same year of 1834, not many months after the passing of the Assembly's Act, came on the first case of collision; and some time subsequently a second. These two cases, Auchterarder and Marnoch, commenced in the very same steps, but immediately afterwards diverged as widely as was possible. In both cases, the rights of the patron and of the presentee were challenged peremptorily; that is to say, in both cases, parishioners objected to the presentee without reason shown. The conduct of the people was the same in one case as in the other; that of the two presbyteries travelled upon lines diametrically opposite. The first case was that of Auchterarder. The parish and the presbytery concerned, both belonged to Auchterarder; and there the presbytery obeyed the new law of the Assembly: they rejected the presentee, refusing to take him on trial of his qualifications; And why? we cannot too often repeat—simply because a majority of a rustic congregation had rejected him, without attempting to show reason for his rejection. The Auchterarder presbytery, for their part in the affair, were prosecuted in the Court of Session by the injured parties—Lord Kinnoul, the patron, and Mr Young, the presentee. Twice, upon a different form of action, the Court of Session gave judgment against the presbytery; twice the case went up by appeal to the Lords; twice the Lords affirmed the judgment of the court below. In the other case of Marnoch, the presbytery of Strathbogie took precisely the opposite course. So far from abetting the unjust congregation of rustics, they rebelled against the new law of the Assembly, and declared, by seven of their number against three, that they were ready to proceed with the trial of the presentee, and to induct him (if found qualified) into the benefice. Upon this, the General Assembly suspended the seven members of presbytery. By that mode of proceeding, the Assembly fancied that they should be able to elude the intentions of the presbytery: it being supposed that, whilst suspended, the presbytery had no power to ordain; and that, without ordination, there was no possibility of giving induction. But here the Assembly had miscalculated. Suspension would indeed have had the effects ascribed to it; but in the mean time, the suspension, as being originally illegal, was found to be void: and the presentee, on that ground, obtained a decree from the Court of Session, ordaining the presbytery of Strathbogie to proceed with the settlement. Three of the ten members composing this presbytery, resisted; and they were found liable in expenses. The other seven completed the settlement in the usual form. Here was plain rebellion; and rebellion triumphant. If this were allowed, all was gone. What should the Assembly do for the vindication of their authority? Upon deliberation, they deposed the contumacious presbytery from their functions as clergymen, and declared their churches vacant. But this sentence was found to be a brutum fulmen; the crime was no crime, the punishment turned out no punishment: and a minority, even in this very Assembly, declared publicly that they would not consent to regard this sentence as any sentence at all, but would act in all respects as if no such sentence had been carried by vote. Within their own high Court of Assembly, it is, however, difficult to see how this refusal to recognise a sentence voted by a majority could be valid. Outside, the civil courts came into play; but within the Assembly, surely its own laws and votes prevailed. However, this distinction could bring little comfort to the Assembly at present; for the illegality of the deposal was now past all dispute; and the attempt to punish, or even ruin, a number of professional brethren for not enforcing a by-law, when the by-law itself had been found irreconcilable to the law of the land, greatly displease the public, as vindictive, oppressive, and useless to the purposes of the Assembly.
Nothing was gained except the putting on record an implacability that was confessedly impotent. This was the very lunacy of malice. Mortifying it might certainly seem for the members of a supreme court, like the General Assembly, to be baffled by those of a subordinate court: but still, since each party must be regarded as representing far larger interests than any personal to themselves, trying on either side, not the energies of their separate wits, but the available resources of law in one of its obscurer chapters, there really seemed no more room for humiliation to the one party, or for triumph to the other, than there is amongst reasonable men in the result from a game, where the game is one exclusively of chance.
From this period it is probably that the faction of Non-intrusionists resolved upon abandoning the church. It was the one sole resource left for sustaining their own importance to men who were now sinking fast in public estimation. At the latter end of 1842, they summoned a convocation in Edinburgh. The discussions were private; but it was generally understood that at this time they concerted a plan for going out from the church, in the event of their failing to alarm the Government by the notification of this design. We do not pretend to any knowledge of secrets. What is known to every body is—that on the annual meeting of the General Assembly, in May 1843, the great body of the Non-intrusionists moved out in procession. The sort of theatrical interest which gathered round the Seceders for a few hurried days in May, was of a kind which should naturally have made wise men both ashamed and disgusted. It was the merest effervescence from that state of excitement which is nursed by novelty, by expectation, by the vague anticipation of a "scene," possibly of a quarrel, together with the natural interest in seeing men whose names had been long before the public in books and periodical journals.