A QUESTION FROM SCOTLAND. [To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Lord Colin Campbell will have a nearer difficulty than that to which your correspondent refers. When the Duke of Argyll, in 1877, protested against Lord Hartington's pledge to do justice to the disestablished Scotch Presbyterians—justice,. if need be, by separating the case of Scotland from that of England, and instituting the experiment of religious equality across the Border—he was asked, "But what are you to do with your old friends of the Free Church ?" And his answer was, if I mistake not, that he still maintained the claim of right of the Free Church.
Does Lord Colin propose, like his father, that Parliament shall maintain the claim of the Church of Dr. Chalmers to ba- the Church of Scotland, or is his motion in favour of the exclu- sive rights of the other body, which in June, 1843, formally expunged the claim to which the noble lord's father had urged the disestablished Presbyterians to cling ? And if the Free Churchmen are now content with their independence, and merely want the equality of Disestablishment in money matters,. how can those refuse the lesser justice who were willing to give- the greater ?
I am glad to see that as I write the Highland ministers, one- half, or nearly one-half, of whom have hitherto resisted the- desire of Free-Church laymen everywhere to settle this matter by immediate Disestablishment, are coming round to the same view with the people. The number who desire to be the pen- sioned hangers-on of the Establishment which they will not enter may be counted on a man's fingers.—Lam, Sir, &e., A HIGHLANDER-
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