ors or patrons, who might appoint any minister they wished, without
consulting the congregation. Needless to say, as a free-born American
citizen, and never having had a heritor in the family, my blood easily
boiled at the recital of such tyranny. In 1834 the Church had passed a
law of its own, it seems, ordaining that no presentee to a parish should
be admitted, if opposed by the majority of the male communicants. That
would have been well enough could the State have been made to agree,
though I should have gone further, personally, and allowed the female
communicants to have some voice in the matter.

The Friar took me into a particularly chilly historic corner, and,
leaning against a damp stone pillar, painted the scene in St. Andrew's
when the Assembly met in the presence of a great body of spectators,
while a vast throng gathered without, breathlessly awaiting the result.
No one believed that any large number of ministers would relinquish
livings and stipends and cast their bread upon the waters for what many
thought a 'fantastic principle.' Yet when the Moderator left his
place, after reading a formal protest signed by one hundred and twenty
ministers and seventy-two elders, he was followed first by Dr. Chalmers,
and then by four hundred and seventy men, who marched in a body to
Tanfield Hall, where they formed themselves into the General Assembly
of the Free Church of Scotland. When Lord Jeffrey was told of it an
hour later, he exclaimed, 'Thank God for Scotland! there is not another
country on earth where such a deed could be done!' And the Friar
reminded me proudly of Macaulay's saying that the Scots had made
sacrifices for the sake of religious opinion for which there was no
parallel in the annals of England. On the next Sunday after these
remarkable scenes in Edinburgh there were heart-breaking farewells,
so the Friar said, in many village parishes, when the minister, in
dismissing his congregation, told them that he had ceased to belong to
the Established Church and would neither preach nor pray in that pulpit
again; that he had joined the Free Protesting Church of Scotland, and,
God willing, would speak the next Sabbath morning at the manse door to
as many as cared to follow him. "What affecting leave-takings there must
have been!" the Friar exclaimed. "When my grandfather left his church
that May morning, only fifteen members remained behind, and he could
hear the more courageous say to the timid ones, 'Tak