276 EDITOR. 



portant position. The Free Church, ever since the Disrup- 

 tion, has been giving significant indications of her strength; 

 and, fairly broken loose from the moorings of party, she is 

 in circumstances either considerably to damage or consider- 

 ably to strengthen the cause politic which she may oppose 

 or adopt. And so, if the Whig lawyers possess much in- 

 fluence with the Free Church, they must of necessity, on 

 that account, possess much influence with the Govern- 

 ment also. For through them exclusively, and some one 

 or two Free Churchmen high in rank, can the Whigs 

 alone expect to manage the Free Church, either by 

 rendering it subservient to Government designs, or by 

 neutralizing its influence against Government measures.. 

 The only other mode of conciliating our Church is a mode 

 which the present Ministry are obviously not to adopt. 

 They might endear themselves to us on the broad ground 

 of principle ; but the withdrawal of the Sites Bill, 

 which certainly would not have been withdrawn were the 

 Whigs, as a party, disposed to support it, demonstrates 

 too surely that that course they are not prepared to try. 

 I can well understand how, with reference to these 

 grounds, the Witness should be an exceedingly obnoxious 

 paper to our Whig Free Churchmen of the Parliament 

 House, and how it happens that some of the more in- 

 fluential among them have of late indignantly thrown 

 it up. Whigs as they are, and to Whiggism Tory- 

 ism is naturally opposed, it must be more decidedly 

 a rock a-head than all the Tory newspapers of the 

 kingdom put together. It comes between them and 

 the Free Church people. It abides firm by the Old 

 Whiggism, but it warns its constituency against the de- 

 signs of the New. It prefers Protestantism to Macaulay ; 

 and might be found exerting a damaging influence on 

 the coming elections. Hence a large amount of Parlia- 



