at most two
exceptions, all the newspapers which she had patronized declared against
her, and were throughout the struggle the bitterest and most abusive of
her opponents. The Voluntaries, too, joined with redoubled vehemence in
the cry raised to drown her voice, and misinterpret and misrepresent her
claims. The general current of opinion ran strongly against her. My
minister, warmly interested in the success of the Non-Intrusion
principle, has told me, that for many months past I was the only man in
his parish that seemed thoroughly to sympathize with him; and I have no
doubt that the late Dr. George Cook was perfectly correct and truthful
when he about this time remarked, in one of his public addresses, that
he could scarce enter an inn or a stage-coach without finding
respectable men inveighing against the utter folly of the
Non-Intrusionists, and the worse than madness of the Church Courts.

Could I do nothing for my Church in her hour of peril? There was, I
believed, no other institution in the country half so valuable, or in
which the people had so large a stake. The Church was of right theirs--a
patrimony won for them by the blood of their fathers, during the
struggles and sufferings of more than a hundred years; and now that her
better ministers were trying, at least partially, to rescue that
patrimony for them from the hands of an aristocracy who, as a body at
least, had no spiritual interest in the Church--belonging, as most of
its members did, to a different communion--they were in danger of being
put down, unbacked by the popular support which in such a cause they
deserved. Could I not do something to bring up the people to their
assistance? I tossed wakefully throughout a long night, in which I
formed my plan of taking up the purely popular side of the question; and
in the morning I sat down to state my views to the people, in the form
of a letter addressed to Lord Brougham. I devoted to my new employment
every moment not imperatively demanded by my duties in the bank office,
and, in about a week after, was able to despatch the manuscript of my
pamphlet to the respected manager of the Commercial Bank--Mr. Robert
Paul--a gentleman from whom I had received much kindness when in
Edinburgh, and who, in the great ecclesiastical struggle, took decided
part with the Church. Mr. Paul brought it to his minister, the Rev. Mr.
Candlish of St. George's (now Dr. Candlish), who, recognising its
popular character, urged