Conclusion - Page 2

commercial and industrial growth, and the unequal distribution of its rewards) perhaps even more pronounced north than south of the Tweed. In 1820 "the Radical war" led to actual encounters between the yeomanry and the people. The ruffianism of the Tory paper 'The Beacon' caused one fatal duel, and was within an inch of leading to another, in which a person of the very highest consequence would have "gone on the sod." For the Reform Bill the mass of Scottish opinion, so long not really represented at all, was as eager as for the Covenant. So triumphant was the first Whig or Radical majority under the new system, that Jeffrey, the Whig pontiff, perceived that the real struggle was to be "between property and no property," between Capital and Socialism. This circumstance had always been perfectly clear to Scott and the Tories.

The watchword of the eighteenth century in literature, religion, and politics had been "no enthusiasm." But throughout the century, since 1740, "enthusiasm," "the return to nature," had gradually conquered till the rise of the Romantic school with Coleridge and Scott. In religion the enthusiastic movement of the Wesleys had altered the face of the Church in England, while in Scotland the "Moderates" had lost position, and "zeal" or enthusiasm pervaded the Kirk. The question of lay patronage of livings had passed through many phases since Knox wrote, "It pertaineth to the people, and to every several congregation, to elect their minister." In 1833, immediately after the passing of the Reform Bill, the return to the primitive Knoxian rule was advocated by the "Evangelical" or "High Flying" opponents of the Moderates. Dr Chalmers, a most eloquent person, whom Scott regarded as truly a man of genius, was the leader of the movement. The Veto Act, by which the votes of a majority of heads of families were to be fatal to the claims of a patron's presentee, had been passed by the General Assembly; it was contrary to Queen Anne's Patronage Act of 1711,--a measure carried, contrary to Harley's policy, by a coalition of English Churchmen and Scottish Jacobite members of Parliament. The rejection, under the Veto Act, of a presentee by the church of Auchterarder, was declared illegal by the Court of Session and the judges in the House of Lords (May 1839); the Strathbogie imbroglio, "with two Presbyteries, one taking its orders from the Court of Session, the other from the General Assembly" (1837-1841), brought the Assembly into direct conflict with the law of the land. Dr Chalmers would not allow the spiritual claims of the Kirk to be suppressed by the State. "King Christ's Crown Honours" were once more in question. On May 18, 1843, the followers of the principles of Knox and Andrew Melville marched out of the Assembly into Tanfield Hall, and made Dr Chalmers Moderator, and themselves "The Free Church