PAMPHLET. 265 



decidedly the one side, and at least nineteen-twentieths 

 of the entire Church take as decidedly the other. 



' The scheme next originated for improving the 

 Witness, a scheme of uniting into one Edinburgh 

 paper both the Witness and Guardian, was still more 

 directly fraught with danger ; and the fact that it should 

 be at all entertained shows how thoroughly the disturb- 

 ing influence of the sort of cross eddy which Edinburgh 

 society in reality forms, prevents some of our leading 

 Free Churchmen, who live much in the whirl, fromS 

 taking note of the current outside. What would be the 

 first effect of an union of the two Papers ? At present 

 the proceedings of the Edinburgh Presbytery are re- 

 ported at great length in the Witness, and those of the 

 Glasgow Presbytery in the Guardian ; but in no single 

 paper could both be published in a manner equally full. 

 Even had the Edinburgh Paper a reporter at Glasgow, 

 for the special purpose of giving the Glasgow Presby- 

 tery as much attention as it now receives, no set of 

 newspaper readers would bear, after they had perused 

 some three or four columns of the proceedings of 

 the one Presbytery, to set themselves to peruse some 

 three or four columns more of the proceedings of the 

 other. The Glasgow Presbytery would assume, in con- 

 sequence of the curtailment in its. .reports, unavoidable 

 in the circumstances, a secondary and provincial cha- 

 racter ; and one mighty step towards the dreaded cen- 

 tralization would be accomplished. The Church would 

 come to have its Archbishop Presbytery, associated 

 with its centre of secular influence. Such was the view 

 which I could not avoid taking of the intended union of 

 the Witness and Guardian. I had received very direct 

 information regarding the matter, but it had not been 

 formally proposed to me ; an union of the Scottish Re- 



