But this subject has at present a more than historical interest. The paragraph referring to Scotland and its urgent educational needs in the Queen's Speech at the opening of this Session, followed by the immediate introduction of a bill by the Lord Advocate, which was promptly opposed by his political opponents, on the ground that it confessedly cuts off the parish schools from any connection with the Established Church, reminds us of perhaps the most cruel chapter in the whole history of suffering in 1843. The parish school-masters of Scotland have always been a most meritorious but very ill-remunerated set of men; and it might have been hoped that whatever severities a mistaken sense of duty might have led those in power to exercise towards the ministers and leaders of the Church after 1843, these humbler members not being themselves ecclesiastical officials, might have been allowed to remain in the possession of their hearths and homes. But it was not so. Many of the schoolmasters were elders of the Church. All of them were to a certain extent educated men, and took an interest in the questions raised as to the Church's right to be free from patronage and from civil dictation generally. The consequence was, that not a few of them came out along with the other laymen who followed the ministers in 1843, prepared to take their share of the pecuniary burdens which were thus brought upon the community. But this milder lot was not allowed them. They, too, like the ministers, had their Bartholomew's Day. They would gladly have clung to their humble daily work in the school-house, and more gladly still to the little home built generally at the end of it, during the week, with bare liberty on the Sabbath to join with either congregation in worship; but it was not to be. Throughout Scotland, every schoolmaster who joined with the Church in fulfilling its pledge of 1842, was at once ejected from his small house, and deprived of his smaller income; and the consequences to them and to their families were in many cases misery, approaching almost to starvation. The result to education was not disadvantageous; for the Free Church, having thrown upon it the burden of so many men deprived of bread, for no other crime than their attachment to itself, was in no mood to shrink from the duty. It at once added to the rest of its organization an education scheme. Homes were gradually built for the ousted schoolmasters, and in as many places as possible they continued to teach the same children of the same hamlets where they had previously dwelt. The Free Church has now, or had very recently, 620 schools and 645 teachers, and taught upwards of 60,000 of the youth of Scotland, many of whom were in the most remote and destitute parts; while its normal schools are reported by her Majesty's inspectors as the most efficient in Scotland. Yet for a proper national scheme, such as has for many years been desired in Scotland, the Free Church would at once be ready to give up an organization so interesting in its origin, and so powerful in its results. Some years ago, in the midst of the keenest opposition by the Conservative party and the Established Church, the choice of a teacher of any denomination was allowed to the heritors; and next year, whatever else is done on this most important subject, it is plain that the last strands of exclusive connection will be parted.
The remaining matter which may come before Parliament during the next session is one in which the other Voluntary and Presbyterian Churches of Scotland are quite as much interested as that which dates from 1843. It is the proposal to transfer the patronage of the churches from the few existing possessors, partly to the landowners, and partly to the communicants of the Established Church, but excluding other parishioners. A Committee was appointed in 1869 by the General Assembly, to watch over a legislative measure to this effect, and their first step was to go to the Prime Minister. In answer to Mr. Gladstone's questions, they explained that the chief reason for the sudden change of sentiment on the part of a body which had hitherto been distinguished by its uncompromising defence of the present rights of patrons, was a desire to conciliate the Presbyterians outside by a deference to their well-known views. On this point, and on the proposal generally, Mr. Gladstone requested that a formal memorial might be drawn up, not only 'because it is desirable that the Government should have in their hands some statement with some degree of authority,' but also to instruct 'the Parliament of the three kingdoms' in a matter which Scotchmen alone can be expected accurately to know.
The desired 'Statement on the Law of Church Patronage' has accordingly now been issued and transmitted to the Government, and will doubtless be laid on the table of the House. It is a very remarkable document, giving the ecclesiastical history of Scotland with great fairness until it comes down to quite recent times, but making it in consequence quite impossible for any Legislature with the least sense of justice to reconstitute church endowments in the way desired. It narrates how patronage was abolished in Scotland at the Revolution settlement; and how its restoration by an Act in 1711 (protested against by the Free Church in 1843 as altering a thing reserved from the jurisdiction of the Union Parliament) was 'one of the acts of a conspiracy for the purpose of bringing back the Stuart dynasty to the throne.' The Assembly of 1735 stated in an address to the King, 'That it was done in resentment against the Church of Scotland.' Bishop Burnet, present at the passing of the Act, says it was intended to 'weaken and undermine' the Church of Scotland. The 'Statement' then goes on to show how it was not merely the Free Church that protested against the outrage: the Assembly of 1812 protested that 'the Act abolishing patronage must be understood to be a part of our Presbyterian constitution secured to us by the Treaty of Union forever;' and for seventy years in succession thereafter the Assembly yearly instructed its Committee to attempt to get redress. Gradually, however, as the cold eighteenth century crept on, a party began to dominate in the Church which took the same view of patronage which was afterwards formulated by Dr. Mearns and Dr. Cook, and by the aid of the civil courts became finally triumphant in 1843. And thus followed the first secession. Ebenezer Erskine, a great name in those northern regions in that dark century, protested publicly that 'those professed Presbyterians who thrust men upon congregations without, and contrary to, the free choice their king had allowed them, were guilty of an attempt to jostle Christ out of his government.' He and three other ministers were thereupon deposed in 1733, and 'appealed unto the first free, faithful, and reforming General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.' The second secession, in 1752, was a still more exact parallel to the third great schism of 1843, for the founders of the Relief Church in 1752 were driven out, like Dr. Chalmers and his friends, because they refused to take a personal part in ordaining those whom the patron had presented, but whom the people refused to receive. These circumstances are very fairly narrated in the Statement, which farther refers to the evidence given before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Law of Patronage in 1834, as giving 'the best summary of the historical and legal aspects of the question which we possess.' That Committee, it is stated, came to no definite finding, because the necessity for doing so was superseded by the Act of the previous General Assembly, giving the people a veto against an unacceptable presentee—an Act which was 'not passed without a full assurance from the law officers of the Crown in Scotland that it was quite within the power of the Church.' Within a year thereafter, however, a question arose as to this, and a narrow majority of the Scotch judges, backed by the House of Lords, held that it was not within their power. The Church at once took steps to appeal to the Legislature to correct the anomaly, and concede the power which was questioned; asking only that in the meantime the courts should not force them to take a part in violating with their own hands those rights of the Christian people which they had affirmed. The refusal to allow this brought on the disruption. The 'Statement' winds up with pointing out how 'the non-intrusion controversy thus passed into that of spiritual independence;' and 'it was on a question thence arising in regard to the respective provinces of the ecclesiastical and civil courts that the secession of 1843 actually took place.' They add, however, that though in 1836 the Church refused to condemn patronage altogether, and was satisfied with the supposed security of the Veto Act, in 1842 this as well as other matters came to maturity, and the General Assembly resolved, 'That patronage is a grievance; has been attended with much injury to the cause of true religion in this Church and kingdom; is the main cause of the difficulties in which the Church is at present involved; and that it ought to be abolished.' Far from conciliating opponents, however, this resolve was made part of the reason by the courts and the moderate party for driving its authors into disruption.
The candour and fairness of the earlier historical part of this memorial will always give it importance; but the gross inadequacy of the practical measures proposed has subjected it in Scotland to an unfair amount of ridicule. Dr. Cook, as the head of the moderate party, the proper representative of those who stayed in in 1843, at once protested against it, asserting that patronage is essential to the stability of the Church of Scotland. Dr. Tulloch, of St. Andrew's, as representing the broad section of the Church, repudiated it two days after. Mr. Story, the biographer of Dr. Lee, and Dr. Wallace, who is Dr. Lee's successor in Edinburgh, made haste to attack it also. The great difficulty within the Church seems to be the proposed refusal to admit all parishioners to vote for the parish minister. So long as he was appointed by a single laird or nobleman, who might be a stranger altogether, that difficulty was not felt. The people were excluded, but they were excluded equally. It is now proposed, however, that the minister should be paid by the whole country, but should be appointed by the communicants of the Established Church alone, excluding the members of the older and properly anti-patronage bodies, who have all the same creed, but whose principles of Church polity the Established Church, itself a minority of the nation, is only now adopting. It is clearly the vague sense of injustice and wrong thus caused which is at the root of the dissatisfaction everywhere expressed with the proposed measure, even by members and ministers of the Scottish Establishment itself. But another more important result has been the clear recognition that there is no chance of thereby 'conciliating' the older anti-patronage Presbyterians or uniting the Church. Last year we expressed the belief that any fair proposals or endeavours on the part of the Establishment would have the effect of at least producing a pause in the projected union of the voluntary Presbyterians outside. The 'Statement' to be laid before Parliament has had decidedly the effect of consolidating that union, and there is no doubt now that it will go on, though probably in the meantime rather by way of mutual co-operation. A very short time will see the Free Church, the United Presbyterian Church, and the Reformed Presbyterian Church—all the large Presbyterian communities who have protested against patronage, and whose leading principle is the liberation of religion from State control—absolutely united in their work, and partitioning Scotland between them. It need not be said how hopeless is the proposal to choose this time for asking Parliament to reconstitute the endowment of a minority of the Scotch people at the expense of the whole, or how fatal to the Church the success of the scheme would be, even if it could be expected to succeed.
The movement is more likely to be in quite another direction. Dr. Wallace, in his paper on 'Church Tendencies in Scotland,' and some other men not belonging to his party in the Kirk, have rather indicated that the Highlands of Scotland, with which a large part of our paper has dealt, should be handed over from their own body to that disestablished church which for the last twenty-five years has with increasing success taken charge of it. In July last, this subject came up in the House of Commons, in the discussion upon Mr. M'Laren's Church Rates Abolition Bill for Scotland, a measure which its able and energetic mover has withdrawn, upon receiving a promise from the Government to introduce one next year upon their own responsibility. On some matters raised by this bill differences of opinion were expressed. Mr. Graham, member for Glasgow, said that he knew from experience that 'a large number of his constituents—the enormous mass of the people of Scotland—bitterly resented these compulsory assessments;' while his colleague, Mr. Anderson, opposed the bill as premature, on the ground that 'if, as is very probable, in the course of a few years the House should think proper to disestablish and disendow that Church, its property will have to be handed over to the State.' But the special matter of the Highlands, a scandal which even the friends of the Establishment are desirous to see wiped out at any expense, was brought forward by Mr. Ellice, who 'agreed with the hon. member for Edinburgh, that in many parts of the country the Church of Scotland was but the caricature of a Church, and that the presence of the Established Church, in places where it was only represented by five or ten persons, was a reproach to the Legislature. He hoped the Lord Advocate, when dealing with the question, would also deal with those useless churches and manses which were a standing reproach to common sense, and ought no longer to be supported.' The Lord Advocate was cautious in his rejoinder to this appeal, restricting his observations to the Highland churches and manses 'provided by Parliament at a time when the Church numbered a larger portion of the population than it does now.' With regard to these—the annual payments in connection with which form, perhaps, the most offensive example of mere waste of public money at present existing—the Government officer said, 'So far as I have been able to ascertain, it would be in accordance with good sense to make provision whereby that accommodation, which is not profitable either to the kingdom or the Church, might close.' Any money saved in this direction will almost certainly be devoted to the education of Scotland; for the Free Church will refuse a concurrent endowment which would include Roman Catholics, and the long Conservative battle against a good Education Bill beyond the Tweed, cannot be successful for ever. When the Scotch Presbyterians form their Union (in which as Mr. Gordon pointed out in Parliament, there is no reason why the members of the present Established Church should not join), they will undertake a weighty responsibility for the religious good of Scotland. But the weight which they unite to bear will be easy, compared to that crushing load which fell upon one of them in 1843, and which yet became to it only such a burden 'as wings are to the bird.'
Art. IV.—The Romance of the Rose.
(1.) Le Roman de la Rose. Nouvelle Édition. Par Francisque Michel. Paris: Firmin Didot Frères. 1864.
The study of pre-Renaissance literature belongs especially to the present century. A few ballads had been previously rescued from oblivion; a few names unearthed from the rubbish of centuries; but the great mass of writers who lived and flourished in what men used to call the Dark Ages had been utterly forgotten, names as well as writings, until the labours of Ampère, Fauriel, Raynouard, and others in France, as well as those of our own antiquarian scholars in England, brought them again to light within the last fifty years.
The literature thus revived has a value of its own quite independent of any literary merit, though this is by no means contemptible. It reveals to us not only the manners and customs of the time, the mediæval daily life, but, which is more important, the mediæval conditions and modes of thought, within such limits—too narrow, alas!—as the conventional rules of poetry allowed. But artificial grooves cannot wholly prevent a vigorous mind from running off the beaten track, and in spite of conventionalism, the reader comes sometimes, in the midst of sandy deserts of commonplace morality, monotonous repetitions, and thirsty verbiage, upon oases of such exceeding brightness and splendour, cooled with fountains so sparkling and foliage so luxuriant, that he feels he is repaid for all his trouble. And the country is by no means explored. As in the great goldfields of Australia, the big nuggets have disappeared and been gathered up long since; nevertheless there remain, for those who have patience to dig, plenty of smaller pieces of virgin gold, which may amply serve to reward their toil. But because all have not the time or the opportunity for this work, and because, after all, it lies a good deal out of the beaten track of scholars, it may not be uninteresting to our readers to invite them to come with us and visit, sparing themselves the trouble of looking for them, certain oases which lie scattered about in a vast Sahara of verse called the 'Romance of the Rose.' 'Rien n'est agréable et piquant,' says Sainte Beuve, 'comme un guide familier dans les époques lointaines.'