THE GROUNDS OF DISPUTE. 173 



raent could secure it. To have refused the guarantee 

 would have been to encounter the risk of a war be- 

 tween the nations. As old Earl Crawford said at 

 the time, an army of twenty thousand men would not 

 have preserved the peace in Scotland if an attempt 

 had been made to trample on the Church. But the 

 Union was completed. A hundred and thirty years 

 passed away. Scotchmen learned to feel that the inter- 

 ests of Scotland had been drawn into the mighty current 

 of the interests of the British empire. Scotchmen, side 

 by side with Englishmen, had defended the common 

 cause on many a bloody field from Assaye to Waterloo. 

 Then the dispute between the Church of Scotland and 

 the Legislature of the empire for to that it soon came 

 arose. The Church interpreted the compact in one way, 

 the State in another. The representatives of Scotland 

 in the British House of Commons were, by a majority, 

 in favour of the claims of the Church. But the State, 

 with all the power of the empire at its back, insisted on 

 its view being taken ; resistance by the Scotch members 

 or their constituents was out of the question ; and the 

 Church, as represented by the party which had swayed 

 her councils for eight years, dissolved her connection 

 with the civil Government. 



The battle-field on which the conflict between 

 Church and State in Scotland was fought out was 

 exactly that which, since the battle had become inevit- 

 able, the Church would have chosen. Had the majority 

 in the General Assembly been checked by the civil 

 tribunals while engaged in the rigorous enforcement 

 of Calvinistic doctrine or of domestic morality, while 

 deposing some unfortunate Arminian preacher, or sus- 

 pending some genial divine who in his cups had 

 not been true to his moderate principles, the cry of 

 priestly oppression could hardly fail to have been raised 



