promise seems every way satisfactory. The Jacobinical and precipitous
assaults of the Non-intrusionists upon the rights of property are
summarily put down. A great danger is surmounted. For if the rights of
patrons were to be arbitrarily trampled under foot on a pretence of
consulting for the service of religion; on the next day, with the same
unprincipled levity, another party might have trampled on the
patrimonial rights of hereditary descent, on primogeniture, or any
institution whatever, opposed to the democratic fanaticism of our age.
No patron can now thrust an incompetent or a vicious person upon the
religious ministrations of the land. It must be through their own
defect of energy, if any parish is henceforth burdened with an
incumbent reasonably obnoxious. It must be the fault of the presbytery
or other church court, if the orthodox standards of the church are not
maintained in their purity. It must be through his own fault, or his
own grievous defects, if any qualified candidate for the church
ministry is henceforth vexatiously rejected. It must be through some
scandalous oversight in the selection of presentees, if any patron is
defeated of his right to present.

Contrast with these great services the menaces and the tendencies of
the Non-Intrusionists, on the assumption that they had kept their
footing in the church. It may be that, during this generation, from
the soundness of the individual partisans, the orthodox standards of
the church would have been maintained as to doctrine. But all the
other parties interested in the church, except the church herself, as
a depositary of truth, would have been crushed at one blow. This is
apparent, except only with regard to the congregation of each parish.
That body, it may be thought, could not but have benefited by the
change; for the very motive and the pretence of the movement arose on
their behalf. But mark how names disguise facts, and to what extent a
virtual hostility may lurk under an apparent protection. Lord
Aberdeen, because he limits the right of the congregation, is supposed
to destroy it; but in the mean time he secures to every parish in
Scotland a true and effectual influence, so far as that body ought to
have it, (that is, _negatively_,) upon the choice of its pastor. On
the other hand, the whole storm of the Non-intrusionists was pointed
at those who refused to make the choice of a pastor altogether
popular. It was the people, considered as a congr