RAMBLES OF A. GEOLOGIST. 393 



Scottish Establishment at least nine-tenths of the Dissenters of 

 the kingdom, its Secession bodies, its Relief body, and, final- 

 ly, its Free Church denomination, comprising in their aggre- 

 gate amount a great and influential majority of the Scotch 

 people. Our older Dissenters, a circumstance inevitable to 

 their position as such, have been thrown into the movement 

 party : the Free Church, in her present transition state, sits 

 loose to all the various political sections of the country; but 

 her natural tendency is towards the movement party also ; 

 and already, in consequence, do our Scottish aristocracy pos- 

 sess greatly less political influence in the kingdom of which 

 they owe almost all the soil, than that wielded by their breth- 

 ren the Irish and English aristocracy in their respective di- 

 visions of the empire. Were the representation of England 

 and Ireland as liberal as that of Scotland, and as little in- 

 fluenced by the aristocracy, Conservatism, on the passing of 

 the Reform Bill, might have taken leave of office for ever- 

 more. And yet neither the English nor Irish are naturallv 

 so Conservative as the Scotch. The patronate wedge, like 

 that appropriated by Achan, has been disastrous to the peo- 

 ple, for it has lost to them the great benefits of a religious 

 Establishment, and very great these are ; but it threatens, as 

 in the case of the sons of Carmi of old, to work more serious 

 evil to those by whom it was originally coveted, " evil to 

 themselves and all their house." As I approached the Free 

 Church, a squat, sun-burned, carnal-minded " old wee wifie," 

 who seemed passing towards the Secession place of worship, 

 after looking wistfully at my gray maud, and concluding for 

 certain that I could not be other than a Southland drover, 

 came up to me, and asked, in a cautious whisper, " Will ye 

 be wantin' a coo ?' I replied in the negative ; and the 

 wee wifie, after casting a jealous glance at a group 'of grave- 

 featured Free Church folk in our immediate neighbourhood, 

 who would scarce have tolerated Sabbath trading in a Sece- 



