282 EDITOR. 



once. The scheme in view is simply that of a censor- 

 ship ; and the Censor, assisted by the nice taste and 

 tact of the Parliament-House Editor, is to be Dr Cand- 

 lish. 



' There are important questions on which the Doctor 

 and I entirely differ ; and one of these I must be per- 

 mitted to adduce, that it may be at once seen how such 

 a censorship would work. The opening article in Loives 

 Magazine for the present January, that on the " Duty 

 of Electors," is, I have the most direct means of know- 

 ing, from the pen of Dr Candlish ; and it contains an 

 advice, entirely practical in its nature, to the Free 

 Churchmen of Scotland. It earnestly urges them, if they 

 wish effectually to prevent the endowment of Popery, 

 to join the Voluntaries in a vigorous attack on all the 

 existing religious Establishments of the empire. 



' Now, this advice I deem so singularly unwise and 

 dangerous, that on no account could I be induced to 

 second it in the Witness. Whether right or wrong in 

 my convictions, I am at least thoroughly convinced that 

 it would have the effect, if acted upon, of placing the 

 great Protestant front of the empire in a fatally false 

 position, and would, besides, be peculiarly injurious to 

 the Free Church. In the first place, a war with Estab- 

 lishments would have the inevitable effect of cutting 

 off the earnest Protestantism of our own body from 

 the earnest Protestantism of the English and Irish 

 Churches ; and, be it remembered, that in these 

 Churches, notwithstanding their signal faultiness as 

 Establishments, there are very many truly excellent men 

 who are doing what the Voluntaries have long since for- 

 gotten to do, honestly maintaining a consistent protest 

 against Popery, In the second place, it would have the 

 effect of arraying on the side of Popish endowment a 



