'What signifies his barren shine
Of moral powers and reason?
His English style, and gestures fine
Are a' clean out o' season.
Like Socrates or Antonine,
Or some old pagan heathen,
The moral man he does define,
But ne'er a word of faith in,
That's right this day.'
But the spirit of Moderatism was to be fully seen in the debate upon Missions in 1796. It was moved in the General Assembly by Robert Heron, the unfortunate friend of Burns, and deeply shocked was old Jupiter Carlyle. It wounded the feelings for the proprieties of the old man. For half a century, said he, had he sat as a member, and he was happy to think that never till now had he heard such revolutionary principles avowed on the floor of the house! Clergymen of lax life, and whose neglect of parochial duties was notorious, were unanimous in declaring that charity should begin at home. The spectre of Tom Paine rose before them. Never, they maintained, while still there remained at home one man under the influence of attack from the Age of Reason, should such a visionary overture be entertained. But there was worse behind this. The missionary societies were united with various corresponding centres; accordingly, in the days of the Dundas dynasty, when Burns during this very year was reminded that it was his place to act and not to think, when the Alien and Traitorous Correspondence Act of 1793 and the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in 1794 had revived the worst of obsolete and feudal enactments, a wily use of this reign of terror was made to defeat missions by an attack on their supposed insidious and political designs. The lawyer who was afterwards to sit on the bench as Lord President Boyle, rose and said: 'The people meet under the pretext of spreading Christianity among the heathen. Observe, sir, they are affiliated, they have a common object, they correspond with each other, they look for assistance from foreign countries, in the very language of many of the seditious societies. Already, it is to be marked, they have a common fund. Where is the security that the money of this fund will not, as the reverend Principal [Hill of St. Andrews] said, be used for very different purposes? And as for those Missionary Societies, I do aver that, since it is to be apprehended that their funds may be in time, nay, certainly will be, turned against the Constitution, so it is the bounden duty of this House to give the overtures recommending them our most serious disapprobation, and our immediate, most decisive opposition.' The legal mind is not often remarkable for profundity, but the fine violation of reasoning in the 'nay, certainly will be,' is just on a par with Jonathan Tawse's 'clean perversion of the constitutional law,' which we have seen before. The detection of treason, too, lurking in the apparently harmless missions fairly rivals Serjeant Buzfuz in Pickwick, with his exposure of the danger underlying the 'chops and tomato sauce' of the defendant. Such had been the unhappy legacy of Robertson. Such was the legal spirit infused from the bar to the bench that was to act in decisions against the true interests of the Church during the Ten Years' Conflict.