20 OCTOBER 1866, Page 1

In his speech at the breakfast given to him on

Wednesday, Mr. Bright made one really original remark. He said that one reason why Scotland sent up so much larger a proportion of Liberal members than England, was to be found in the republican form of government of her established Church. "The established Church of England is in point of fact, with of course a multitude of exceptions, the Tory party of England." It is ,probably true that the Presbyterian form of the Church organization in Scotland has given a great stimulus to independence of thought, even among the Scotch people who could scarcely be anything else than inde- pendent. Still, in the main it is probably more true to say that the Scotch Church is Presbyterian because the Scotch people could not endure the popular passivity required by episcopacy, than that the Scotch people owe their activity of mind to the Presbyterian form of Church government.