SCOTLAND.
Lord Dalmeny visited Stirling, after his interview with the electors of Dunfermline, and was more favourably received than at the latter place. Resolutions approving of the conduct of Lord Dalmeny, and of his colleagues in the Ministry, were agreed to.
The Edinburgh Evening Post says that Lord Melgund, and not Cap- tain Elliot, will be the Whig candidate for Roxburghshire.
A barrister, a notorious trimmer, mentioned its the Parliament-
house that he had ordered a ticket for Sir Robert Peel's dinner; on which a decided Conservative said, " The Whigs must be in a bad way ; you were the last to join them, and are the first to leave them." ...Scotsman.
A great Church-extension meeting was held in Edinburgh on Mon- day, in the Assembly Rooms ; the Lord Provost in the chair. The object was to excite the community of Scotland to subscribe additional sums for building churches in cor.nexion with the Establishment ; it being the intention of the General Assembly to petition Government
for endowments for these places of worship when erected. A good many facts respecting the destitution of church-accommodation for the poor were brought forward. Dr. Simpson, of Kirknewton, stated that, although "every place of worship in Glasgow, of every denomination, were filled, there would still remain a lack of church-sittings for 61,000 individuals." In Glasgow, he said, there existed "eighteen thousand fa- milies, not one individual of whom was connected with any Christian con gregation, or came in contact with any Christian pastor, and who were at present in as complete a state of heathenism, and as ignorant of the things which belong to their peace, as if they were thousands of miles semovedfrom a Christian shore." If this statement could be relied on as literally true, it would afford motives for strenuous exertions to remove so great an evil; but we see the statistics of the Church directly contradicted in many instances by the Dissenters, and we are not able to decide be- tween them. Besides, we observe that the organs of the Scottish Church embrace every opportunity of denying that Unitarians are Christians, and of representing the Roman Catholics as in the broad way that leads to destruction ; and we are not certain that these 18,000 families, or at least many of them, may not consist of well-educated, moral, and religious Catholics and Unitarians, who may be thus paraded by these exclusive sectarians as men "in a complete state of heathen- ism." The Doctor then alluded to the juggling system of figures, by which the scheme of church-extension has been opposed, and the still worse juggle of calculating the Roman Catholic and Socinian churches, in the amount of the accommodation afforded to a Protestant commu- nity. He felt (he said) shame, indignation, and scorn, at such special pleadings, and such niggardly practice in dealing out bread to hungry souls. The juggle lies with the Church. It persists in reckoning the Catholics and Unitarians among the parties who are destitute of church-accommodation, and refuses to count their places of worship as means of supplying it for them.—Courier.
At a meeting of Dissenters of different denominations, held in the
Broughton Place Session-house, it was unanimously resolved to call a public meeting, for the purpose of petitioning Parliament for the total abolition of English Church-rates ; and a committee was ap- pointed to make arrangements. We believe that the Central Board have resolved to recommend Dissenters throughout Scotland to follow the same course, and are preparing an address on the subject. We have no doubt they will obtain the cooperation of many Liberal Church- men in all parts of the country.—Scotsman.
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