264 EDITOR. 



and directed. Mr M'Cosh's centralization scheme would 

 be fraught with danger, not only to the Free Church 

 from its inevitable tendency to foment and exaggerate a 

 feeling to a certain extent inevitable in the Church's 

 peculiar circumstances, and which every means should 

 be taken to sooth and allay, but with danger also to the 

 press which it would centralize. It is peculiarly unsafe 

 to fasten an undecked skiff to a central pier in a tide- 

 way, against which it is the tendency of the current to 

 run strong. Let the stream but reach a certain mo- 

 mentum, and the skiff is sure always to founder at its 

 moorings. 



' I may remark in the passing, that as the Witness is 

 already tied down to principle by legal document, the 

 arrangement suggested by Mr M'Cosh could have but 

 the effect of tying it down to policy also. So long as 

 the Paper rests on its present independent basis, the 

 Editor stands alone. He is an insulated individual, 

 possessed of no other influence than what he owes to the 

 degree of confidence reposed by his readers in the 

 integrity of his principles or the soundness of his judg- 

 ment. He is not the mere convenient pendicle of a cen- 

 tralization scheme ; he is a felt check on it rather ; and, 

 considering the nature of the danger, not wholly useless 

 in that capacity. If he take a false step, the error is 

 that of an individual; and its effects, if it have any, are 

 easily neutralized. But a false step taken by a news- 

 paper which represented a central body of management 

 would be in reality the false step of the body itself, and, 

 in consequence, a greatly more serious affair. What, for 

 instance, would be the position of the Witness, if thus 

 tied down, were some such controversy as that of the 

 year 1837 to arise now ? a controversy in which a great 

 majority of the central Edinburgh body would take 



