sted mainly on the treaty of union, which provides that, in
default of express stipulations to the contrary, "there shall be a
communication of all rights and privileges, and advantages." In the
spirit of this clause, the presbyterian ministers stationed in India
were recognised and placed by law under the presbytery of Edinburgh, in
the same act which authorised diocesan episcopacy. Thus again the
legislature had implied a parity of rights in the foreign port act,
which required the consul to appropriate funds for the erection of
churches, and on the same terms, when demanded by the members of either
establishment. The writer appealed, with great ardour and effect, to the
national history of his countrymen: their courage in fight, their
patience in suffering, and their sagacity in council. He inferred, alike
from their piety and their patriotism--their pride as Scotchmen, and
their earnestness as christians--that when they sanctioned the
legislative union, the dignity of the church, the first object of their
affections, would be the last they would be likely to compromise or to
forget. But the actual position of the colonial presbyterians rendered
the argument for the present unavailing.

It was obvious, that whatever ecclesiastical arrangements were
guaranteed by the treaty of union, pertained only to the national
church. The clergy of the establishment would have been even less
disposed than the crown to allow a seceding ministry to share in their
legal heritage. Yet the church at Hobart Town, founded by a seceder, was
under his care. The government sometimes called the congregation Scotch,
and at others presbyterian; but never an established church. The grant
of money was expressly to the accommodation of the inhabitants "in
connexion with the church by law established in Scotland;"[213] but the
deed drafted by the managers proposed to secure the building to the
dissenting incumbent, and to a congregation holding the Scotish
standards, and it recognised no presbyterial control. This description
was deemed dangerously defective. A meeting, summoned by Messrs. James
Thomson, Thomas Young, and others, passed a resolution to establish an
indisputable connexion with the national section of the presbyterian
church.[214] Against the legality of this meeting, the managers and
several of the congregation offered an unavailing protest. It was
asserted that, for the most part, they were dissenters from the national
church, and