ge, which, from the time of
Queen Anne, had allowed a determinate preponderance to the rights of
property in the person of the patron. Those, indeed, who take the
former view, contending that it enacts a new principle of law, very
much circumscribing the old right of patronage, insist upon it that
the bill virtually revokes the decision of the Lords in the
Auchterarder case. Technically and formally speaking, this is not
true; for the presbytery, or other church court, is now tied up to a
course of proceeding which at Auchterarder was violently evaded. The
court cannot now peremptorily challenge the nominee in the arbitrary
mode adopted in that instance. An examination must be instituted
within certain prescribed limits. But undoubtedly the contingent power
of the church court, in the case of the nominee not meeting the
examination satisfactorily, is much larger now, under the new bill,
than it was under the old practice; so that either this practice must
formerly have swerved from the letter of the law, or else the new law,
differing from the old, is really more than declaratory. Yet, however
this may be, it is clear that the jurisdiction of the church in the
matter of patronage, however ample it may seem as finally ascertained
or created by the new bill, falls far within the extravagant outline
marked out by the seceders. We argue, therefore, that it could not
have prevented their secession even as regards that part of their
pretensions; whilst, as regards the monstrous claim to decide in the
last resort what shall be civil and what spiritual--that is, in a
question of clashing jurisdiction, to settle on their own behalf where
shall fall the boundary line--it may be supposed that Lord Aberdeen
would no more countenance their claim in any point of practice, than
all rational legislators would countenance it as a theory. How,
therefore, could this bill have prevented the rent in the church, so
far as it has yet extended? On the other hand, though apparently
powerless for that effect, it is well calculated to prevent a second
secession. Those who are at all disposed to follow the first seceders,
stand in this situation. By the very act of adhering to the
Establishment when the _ultra_ party went out, they made it abundantly
manifest that they do not go to the same extreme in their
requisitions. But, upon any principle which falls short of that
extreme being at all applicable to this church question, it is certain
that Lo