SCOTLAND.
A letter has been addressed by the Scottish Roman Catholic Bishop Gillis to the Earl of Arundel and Surrey, which embodies the protest and arguments of the "Catholic Bishops Vicars-Apostolic in Scotland" against the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. Bishop Gillis reviews Lord John Russell's letter and the Queen's Speech, to show that the gravamen of the offence to be combated by the bill was an alleged invasion of the spiritual supremacy of the Queen, and interference with the rights of the Established Church of England. But in Scot- land the rights of the Church of England cannot be interfered with ; and neither in Scotland can there be any invasion of the supremacy of the Crown. The former proposition is evident from the terms of the
statement ; the latter, Bishop Gillis supports by weighty logic. "There is in Scotland no body of Christians of any kind or description, acknow- ledging the spiritual supremacy of the Queen; there is none which does not emphatically protest against it." The law of the land abolished it in 1689, when, in the words of the historian Guthrie, "the King had chim- ney-money granted him instead of his supremacy " ; that abolition was confirmed by the articles or Union in 1707; and the QUO= swam at her coronation to respect these statutes. So that, in the absence of any other evidence on the fact, we have the evi- dence of her Majesty's own solemn oath to prove the non-existence of the supremacy, against which it is now alleged there has been an offence. But, passing on to another stage of argument, Bishop Gillis asks, how in any event the "aggression." has come from Scotian d ; and how in any event it can therefore be just to pass a measure of penalties against the poor unoffending Roman Catholics in Scotland ? He demands, as bare justice, that Scotland be not included in a measure to meet an exigency which has arisen in England and Wales; or if legislation be persisted in, that it be upon such grounds as are not derogatory to the rights secured to Scotland by the articles of the Union, or to the sacred- ness of the coronation-oath.
The consecration of the Reverend Robert Eden, Bishop-elect of Moray and Ross, is fixed to take place on the first Sunday in Lent, in St. Paul's Chapel, in Edinburgh. We regret to state that we have receivedintelli- gence that the Bishop of Brechin is lying dangerously ill of typhus fever, caught in the hospital at Dundee.—Guardian.
The agitation against the Mercantile Marine Act has extended North of the Tweed. At Leith, the ship-owners, masters, and seamen, acting with characteristic Northern coolness and management, have united in public meeting and appointed a committee to criticize the act and report on it. On Monday last, the general united body reassembled, and heard the re- port of the committee. It declares the fees unjust, and the detailed ar- rangements full of interruption, delay, and expense, and such as to put foreign ships on a better position for freights than British ships. It ap- proves of the examination of masters and mates, but holds that before the examination was made compulsory, the Government should have esta- blished navigation-schools. The act should be suspended till a succinct naval and merchant code be prepared.
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