62 FAMOUS SCOTS 



He saw with anxiety the decisions go against the Church 

 in March 1838, and of the Lords in May 1839, the 

 victory of his case by the presentee to Auchterarder, 

 and the declaration of the illegality of the Veto Act of 

 1834. 'Now,' he says, 'I felt more deeply; and for 

 at least one night after reading the speech of Lord 

 Brougham and the decision of the House of Lords in 

 the Auchterarder case I slept none.' Could he not, 

 he reasoned with himself, do something in the hour of 

 danger to rescue the patrimony of his country out of 

 the hands of an alien aristocracy, which since 1712 had 

 obstinately set itself in hereditary opposition to the 

 people? In the morning he wrote a letter addressed 

 to Lord Brougham, the grandson of the historian 

 Robertson, to which we shall have occasion later on to 

 refer in detail. This admirable piece of reasoning and 

 clever statement the result of a week's work was sent 

 to Robert Paul, the manager of the Commercial Bank 

 in Edinburgh. By him its value was quickly seen, and 

 by the strenuous advice of Dr. Candlish it was at once 

 put in print. Four editions in the course of well-nigh 

 as many weeks proved its excellence ; and it was fortu- 

 nate enough to secure encomiums from two men so 

 different in their leanings as Daniel O'Connell and 

 Mr. Gladstone. 



The writer who could at such a critical position pro- 

 duce a pamphlet of this nature was, of course, a 

 marked man. The leaders of the Evangelical party of 

 the Church in Edinburgh had been engaged in a scheme 



