PAMPHLET. 275 



from the Editorship, and a Parliament-House Editor 

 (with perhaps a Committee of Control in the distance), is 

 to take my place. A word or two here on the Parlia- 

 ment House, and the peculiar position of the Free Church 

 portion of it. In all my remarks, however, I must be 

 held to except at least one Edinburgh lawyer. I need 

 not name him. It may be enough for me to say, that of 

 almost all the men I ever knew, he possesses a mind the 

 most exquisitely disinterested and honourable. The 

 step which I have now taken will, I fear, greatly grieve, 

 mayhap offend him, a consideration which would have 

 so weighed with me against it, could any consideration 

 not founded in absolute principle have done so, that I 

 would have adopted, for the sake of his friendship alone, 

 a more timid and submissive course. 



' The adherents of the Free Church may be safely 

 divided into two classes, the people who belong to the 

 Parliament House, and the people who do not ; and in 

 at least matters political, when Whiggism is in office, 

 there is, I am afraid, no such thing as urging the duties 

 of the one class without running counter to the interests 

 of the other. I need scarce say, that there exists no 

 body of men among whom political feeling is more vi- 

 vacious than among our Edinburgh lawyers ; nor that 

 peculiarly on "the legal profession in Scotland the dew of 

 Government patronage descends, like the dews of heaven 

 on the fleece of Gideon, when all often is dry around. 

 Por almost all the higher civil appointments of the coun- 

 try, gentlemen of the law alone are eligible ; and it must 

 be admitted at least as a fact, that of these our Parlia- 

 ment-House friends have, in proportion to their number, 

 got a competent share. Now, be it remembered, that 

 these legal Pree Churchmen occupy at the present time, 

 with reference to the Whig Government, a singularly im- 



