82 FAMOUS SCOTS 



unalterable preservation of her ecclesiastical system. 

 But five years witnessed the most shameless breach of 

 public faith, by an Act which had the most ruinous 

 effects, political and religious, upon the people. The 

 Tories had come into power on the crest of the 

 Sacheverel wave, and in 1712 Bolingbroke proceeded 

 to carry out his scheme of altering the succession and 

 securing the return of the Pretender. An Act of 

 Toleration was passed for the Episcopalian dissenting 

 sect in Scotland, and an oath of abjuration sought to be 

 imposed upon the Scottish Church for the sake of 

 exciting confusion. An Act restoring patronage was 

 rushed through the House by the Tory squires, who 

 composed five-sixths of the House of Commons. 

 Against this the Whigs and Carstares protested vigor- 

 ously, and appealed to the Treaty of Union, but appeal 

 was lost upon the ignorant class, who were not over- 

 drawn in the Squire Western of Fielding's novel. For 

 a hundred years this Act bore evil fruits. The nobility 

 of the land were only too ready to seize upon the poor 

 spoils of the national endowment in order to renew 

 their waning power in the country, and in so doing 

 they managed to set themselves and their descendants in 

 hereditary opposition to the great mass of the people. 

 The English peerage has done much for the English 

 people. In Scotland, it may be asked, which of the 

 four Scottish Universities has had a farthing of the 

 money of the nobility, and what have they done for the 

 Church in any one of her branches ? 



