178 EDITOR. 



The case was elaborately and very ably argued in the 

 Court of Session. Eight of the judges were of opinion 

 that the rejection of Mr Young by the Presbytery was 

 illegal. Five were of opinion that the Church had a 

 right to reject the presentee, and among these were 

 Cockburn, Jeffrey, Moncreiff, and Glenlee. The decision 

 of the Court against the Church was pronounced on the 

 10th of March, 1838. In May, 1839, it was confirmed 

 by the House of Lords, and on this occasion Lord 

 Brougham delivered his famous speech on the Scottish 

 Church question. He dismissed, as wholly untenable, 

 the proposition that congregations of the Scottish Church 

 had a right to choose their pastors. 



' Could I do nothing/ writes Hugh Miller in de- 

 scribing his feelings at the time, ' for my Church in her 

 hour of peril ? There was, I believed, no other in- 

 stitution in the country half so valuable, or in which 

 the people had so large a stake. The Church was of 

 right theirs, a patrimony won for them by the blood of 

 their fathers, during the struggles and sufferings of more 

 than a hundred years ; and now that her better ministers 

 were trying, at least partially, to rescue that patrimony 

 for them from the hands of an aristocracy who, as a body 

 at least, had no spiritual interest in the Church, 

 belonging, as most of its members did, to a different 

 communion, they were .in danger of being put down, 

 unbacked by the popular support which in such a cause 

 they deserved. Could I not do something to bring up 

 the people to their assistance ? I tossed wakefully 

 throughout a long night, in which I formed my plan of 

 taking up the purely popular side of the question ; and 

 in the morning I sat down to state my views to the 

 people, in form of a letter addressed to Lord Brougham. 

 1 devoted to my new employment every moment not 



