from them; but," Do you approve of national justice, or can you vindicate national perjury ?" You should have considered those questions in regard to our forms of procedure, before you entered into union with a Presbyterian country; but having done so, and agreed to a solemn treaty which your ancestors cruelly violated, is it not fair, that you should undo that gross act of injustice, aggravated by national perjury, from which so many evils have obviously sprung? This argument is, of course, all the stronger, if the Church of Scotland only claims, as she is doing at present in the principle of non-intrusion, a portion of that, to the whole of which she is most justly entitled. This is the true state of the question between us, the patrons, and the English Parliament; and to attempt, as the Dean of Faculty has done, to mingle it up with general discussions in regard to England and the state of Church patronage there, for the purpose of raising up against our righteous claims the prejudices of a powerful people, is, besides its sordid cruelty, just to play over again the very game of the Jacobites, and blow the flame, which of old ended in general confusion and civil war.

IV. That the Act of Queen Anne was introduced by the open enemies and persecutors of the Presbyterian Church, for the avowed purpose of subverting it. Their object was, no doubt, frustrated by the kind providence of God; but it is unquestionable, that this act was first introduced into the statutebook with a similar object to that for which the barrels of gunpowder were introduced below the Houses of Parliament before the Gunpowder Plot. In both cases the plots were discovered just in time. But unfortunately in our case the elements of destruction have never been removed; and the first explosion, at the time of the Secession and Relief, although it did not carry off the roof from the house, certainly scattered and made sad havoc amongst the inmates and property, whilst we are now threatened with a second explosion from the same source, which may possibly lay the whole building in ruins. It is striking, when one thinks of the party by whose machinations of old all this evil was brought upon the Church of our fathers,—to see their lineal descendants, the Jacobites of the present day, creeping forth from their obscurity in all parts of Scotland, for the purpose of aiding the moderate clergy in their desperate struggle, and finishing what their ancestors commenced, by opposing the righteous demands of the Church of Scotland, even at the risk of laying prostrate every institution of the kingdom. They thus serve themselves heirs to the unholy deeds and designs of some of the basest men that this kingdom ever saw. Nay, they

even surpass the Jacobites of the beginning of last century. For all men were then so well convinced that the right of presenting ministers in Scotland had no better origin than the dark and deceitful plans of Queen Anne's ministry, whilst, at the same time, it was opposed to the Revolution Settlement and Treaty of Union, that patrons were often ashamed to take advantage of such an enactment. Preachers were ashamed of it; Church Courts unanimously considered it as inconsistent with the constitution of the Church of Scotland; and even during the whole reign of the wily Principal Robertson, and down till the year 1784, the Commission of the Assembly was annually instructed to adopt all proper means for getting rid of it altogether. In a word, two opinions did not exist on the subject, till two or three whole generations had gone to their graves. And it will indeed be strange, if, in such a time as the present, when our Church is more than ever instinct with spiritual life, and our nation boasts of its superior intelligence, its noblest institution, the Church of Scotland, shall, for the sake of a few hireling preachers, be attempted to be strangled before the eyes of an astonished world, with the same rope which the cunning and infamous Bolingbroke, 130 years ago, threw round her neck, and that too, by professed maintainers of the constitution of the kingdom.

Such mad attempts, persevered in, will infallibly lead soon to results which it is fearful to contemplate, shaking the nation to its centre, and perhaps leading the people of this kingdom to conclude that England has, with her own hand, torn asunder the link of union with Scotland, at the very time when she is threatened with violent dismemberment, by the millions of Ireland. May the Great Head of the Church avert all such evils, and lead to a righteous and peaceful settlement of all our grievances.

P.S.-It will be observed by those who have read the First Edition, that this one is much abridged, and in some places slightly altered.

LIST OF SCOTTISH PATRONAGES.

SOLE, HALFS, AND THIRDS,

Select Anti-Patronage Library.

AN

ACCOUNT OF LAY PATRONAGES IN SCOTLAND,

AND OF

THE FATAL DIFFERENCES THEY HAVE
OCCASIONED BETWIXT THE CHURCH
AND LAY PATRONS;

WITH OBSERVATIONS ON THE ARGUMENTS FOR
RESTORING THEM IN 1711.

BY SIR DAVID DALRYMPLE.

LAY Patronages are so far from being the ancient constitution of Scotland, that there is scarce a country in Christendom where ever they had so little footing; so that, if our Scotch patrons were put to justify their title by the old maxim of the canonists,

Patronum faciunt dos, ædificatio, fundus,

they would make but a very indifferent plea of it; for nothing is
plainer in our law, than that the tithes were the patrimony of
our church, as appears by Act 10, Parl. 1, James VI., held in
1567, and by many other acts.
It is likewise known to every
one, that tithes were settled by the Legislature; and that such
endowments as have at any time been made from the rents of
the crown, required the consent of Parliament to make them
good, since our princes could alienate nothing belonging to the
crown without their consent. And as to the Pope's canon law,
from whence patronages proceeded, it never obtained so far in
Scotland as to be much regarded. This is evident from many
of our laws, which forbid our being governed by any other, and
from the pragmatical sanctions betwixt the popes and the kings
of Scotland, who were always as inflexible in this matter, if not
more, than the kings of France.

No. 3.-Price 2d.]

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