THE MODERATES. 189 



manuscript his reply to the philosopher. A finer proof 

 of a desire to deal fairly with an opponent, and of an 

 absolute rejection of every weapon of personal or vituper- 

 ative controversy, cannot be imagined. But the Moderate 

 party of the Scottish Church can claim not only Camp- 

 bell, Reid, and Robertson, but one who would now be 

 placed by many higher than either of the three, the 

 author of The Wealth of Nations. Smith's Theory of 

 Moral Sentiments is a thoroughly Moderate book, 

 moderate in its eloquent and high-toned moralizing, 

 moderate in its lucidity and logical coherence, and also 

 perhaps in its want of intensity, enthusiasm, and pene- 

 trating, exhaustive power. It was under the genial 

 auspices of the Moderate party that the Scottish Uni- 

 versities attained to such renown that young Palmerston 

 and Russell went from England to study in their halls. 

 It was under the auspices of the Moderate party that 

 Edinburgh became the Weimar of Great Britain, that 

 the most important publications of the time in Europe, 

 the Edinburgh Review and Blackwood and the Quarterly, 

 arose. When John Murray conceived the scheme of the 

 Quarterly, his first step was to start for the North, to 

 confer with Scott and the literati of Edinburgh. The 

 leaders of Moderation showed a wise and a nobly patriotic 

 spirit in never trying to exclude Seceders from the 

 Universities. They indulged the shrewd preference of 

 the Scottish commonalty for ' college-bred ministers/ 

 and spared their country the stunted and acrid growths 

 of illiterate Dissent. It may doubtless be argued that 

 Moderatism was itself but part of a wider phenomenon, to 

 wit, the prevalence and predominance, throughout society, 

 not Scottish and English alone, but European, during 

 the eighteenth century, of literary and scientific tastes 

 and ambitions as contrasted with those of a religious 



