Captain Marryatt once wrote that nothing could beat a London
sparrow for impudence except a midshipman, but the novelist had not the ill fortune of knowing the chair- man of the "Sabbath Alliance of Scotland." The Channel Fleet has been recently at Leith, and it appears that the vessels, like the shore, and the sea, and the green fields, and the river, and other things which God has made, may be seen by the public on Sunday. This greatly offended the Alliance and its chairman, a Mr. Blackadder, and he actually wrote by their order to Admiral Dacres requesting him to prohibit the public from going on board. The Admiral, in a very quiet but slightly scornful reply, pleaded his orders, and Mr. Blackadder, consequently, proceeded to issue his mandate to the Duke of Somerset, of all men on earth. There is this use in an aristocrat, at all events, that he has never the slightest idea of giving way to priestly impertinence, and accordingly the Alliance were calmly informed that his Grace "was not prepared to lessen the facilities at present afforded to the inhabitants of the ports at which the Channel Fleet touched," and declined to obey their ukase. Greatly aggrieved, the Alliance handed the correspondence to Dr. Begg, who read it aloud to the Assembly of the Free Church—who resolved to move all their presbyteries throughout Scotland to stir in the matter, with the view of coercing the Admiralty. In other words, Dr. Begg and his colleagues, irritated that their own eloquence does not succeed in inducing their own people to obey their favourite dogma, are determined to call in the secular arm. The difference between them and Catholic priests is that the latter are logical, and when preaching and Government orders fail, burn people to save their souls. D. Begg, being at heart a great deal better than his doctrine, stops short of effectual measures, and only exposes his wishes without enforcing his will. We wonder if he ever glanced at a rainbow on Sunday, or sent up a memorial that that oppor- tunity for "desecration by sight-seeing" might be removed.
