TORIES AND LIBERALS ON THE KIRK.
AMORE indecent spectacle of mingled anger and terror than is presented by the first article of Blackwood this month has seldom been seen. Presbyterianism—above all, Scottish Presbyterianism—has usually been a toughly self-re- liant system, not very much afraid of inquiry on the one hand, and not too grateful for the interposition and protection of by- standers on the other. No one who knows the membership of the Established Church in Scotland can doubt that it has its share of this strong fibre, as well as its sister communities. Yet no sooner has the Liberal party in Scotland committed itself—not by any means to Disestablishment—but to thorough inquiry how the present anomalous position of all the sections of the Kirk can be rectified, than an outcry is raised as if all was over. "The whole questions," say Mr. Gladstone and Lord Hartington, "of Establishment, or Disestablishment, must be left to the deliberate judgment and wish of the Scottish people themselves." Straightway from the Tory organ, assuming to speak for the Church of Scotland, comes an ejaculation like that of Guido,— . Who are these you have let descend my stair? Is it ' Open,' they dare bid you ? Treachery ! Abate,—Cardinal,—Christ,—Maria,—God ! . . Pompilia, will you let them murder me ?"
Of course, this state of mind is incoherent, as well as inde- corous. The elaborate delineation of Mr. Gladstone is char- acterised by a singular want of perceptiveness, in a region now familiar enough to intelligent observers of every school. Nothing but blind anger or blinder fear can account for the profound view of his "underlying" character as a statesman. that "educated at Eton and at Oxford, the late leader of the Liberals is yet something of a tradesman ca heart." And not even these can excuse the amazing statement which follows, also italicised so as to catch the eye of that populace to whose views Mr. Gladstone at present notoriously truckles. " Numbers are his test of excellence, the casual opinion of the majority his best sign of wisdom !" It is difficult to see any attempt at truth in this sort of writing, and in most of the other state- ments made there is a very remote relation to it attained. " There is not an institution in the country, we honestly believe, that is dear to him for any other than utilitarian purposes." It would be much nearer the fact to say that the institutions dearest to Mr. Glad- stone—say, for example, the Church of England—are valued by him and are dear to him for other than utilitarian purposes to an extent absolutely unprecedented among our public men, living or dead. But indeed the statement is flatly contradicted on the same page, in order to make another accu- sation equally one-sided. Mr. Gladstone, it is said, " has cared for Universities and Churches," not as natural growths, " but only as they seemed, to his own narrow judgment, good or bad ; in other words, according as he judged them to teach the Truth, or not." And this is the man for whom the judg- ment of the majority is the test of excellence, and to whom Aothing is dear except for utilitarian purposes In the very next sentence indeed we are told that he has always gone pas- sionately with minorities, and has been the admiration of ens thusiasts, rather than of the prudent and utilitarian many. " It is this sort of talk about ' the truth ' which has made him the idol at once of the High-Church bigot and the Dissenting dogmatist, and even of the omniscient Positivist." It does not seem to be suggested that these three parties coincide in their view of what truth is, or that Mr. Gladstone, with his immense respect for majori- ties, has managed to agree with them all. The fact is, the writer is thinking not of these, but of another minority, the Presbyterians of Scotland, from whom Mr. Gladstone also differs and has always differed, but whose admiration he has gained by his lifelong conviction that such a thing as truth exists, combined with a profound respect for modes of seeking it which differ from his own. Nor do we see that the analyst is much more in earnest in the only other assertion he throws out,—that Mr. Gladstone is "singularly destitute of historic insight or imagination." Mr. Gladstone's historic imagination, like that of Burke, is a mighty though often a turbid flood, and its volume and pressure are doing much to stir the stag- nant faculty in the minds of his countrymen. But his historic insight into Scottish matters is precisely the thing which Blackwood dreads, and which that side of politics has much reason to dread. Thirty years ago, he offended the dignitaries of his own old communion, the Scottish Episcopal, by recommending them never to look forward to re-establish- ment, but rather to deal with the Presbyterian majority on equal terms of persuasion and conciliation. Ever since, alike in office and out of it, his dealings with that majority, and his utterances on the subject in Parliament, have been char- acterised by a detailed knowledge of their traditions, and a respectful sympathy with their feelings, which smaller states- men, even when born beyond the Tweed, have been unable to understand. And indeed this has been the case down to the present moment, and on the question now raised. lime ince lacrynr. Had Mr. Gladstone pronounced for Disestablish- ment in Scotland, the line for Bindweed and its supporters would have been simple. But he has not done so, and the Liberal party have not done so. No statesman knows so well as he that such a measure is only possible at the instance of Scotland itself, and that the pressure there for simple Dis- establishment must have time to be met by proposals or ex- periments of conciliation, before it can be accepted as the mind of a country which always insists upon knowing its own mind. But the truth is, Mr. Gladstone on this particular matter has been temperate and conciliatory throughout, and it is the Tory magazine which has lost its head, and would have the Church of Scotland throw away its cards.
Still less justifiable is the protest against Lord Hartington and the party generally. It seems admitted that the words in which he has alluded to this matter have been studiously moderate, and that he has taken it up as a peculiar and separate question, to be dealt with on separate and Scottish grounds. The only suggestion made is that he should not have taken it up at all, and that to do so was gratuitous. But that is great nonsense. If it were simply an expression of vexation that in this matter the Liberals have forestalled the Conservatives, it would be intelligible ; for sooner or later the Conservatives must have taken it up, and they would have attempted to repair their fatal blunder in 1874. (That blunder was not, as Blackwood, with all the unteachableness of its party, still insists, abolishing Patronage ; it was the refusal to recognise or consult the Anti-Patronage Presbyterians.) But on the Liberal side, the case is enormously stronger. In truth, the question of doing justice to Scotland in Church matters has been to the Liberal party a succession and an in- heritance ; it has descended upon us, instead of our going out of our way to seek it. Forty years ago and more, the pressure of Voluntaryism in Scotland upon the Liberal party was tremendously strong. The events of 1843 brought in new element• of an intense nationalism and concentration, which, to the surprise of most men, held themselves aloof from active politics for a while, but which all intelligent Scotchmen have for twenty years known to be accumulating for an explosion. Of all men in the world, Lord Hartington is least to be blamed for the form in which it has at last come upon him. Lord John Russell's motion in 1843, and Mr. Baxter's in 1874, were both motions for inquiry, and both were refused by Conservatives. Since the last refusal, what was formerly a pressure upon the Liberals for inquiry has been changed in Scotland into a pressure for disestablishment. We do not congratulate Lord Hartington or the Liberals upon the change, but neither are responsible for it. The elements of it were present all along, and they were thoroughly Scottish. The article we criticise closes with an unwise attempt to make it appear that it is the English Liberation Society which has created this demand in Scotland,—a quite desperate idea to suggest to any one who has lived across the Border. We have before us the documents of large and powerful " Scottish" Disestablishment Associations, which appear to have sprung into existence mainly because their promoters, the members of the Free Church, decline to go in for universal disestablishment on theoretical grounds, and refiise to complicate their national question with that of the Church of England. Some of the same Church, like Sir Henry Moncreiff, seem to hold that though the exclusive con- nection between the State and the part of the Kirk now estab- lished must " take end," there may be a reconstruction, or some- thing like re-establishment, of the whole by the State. But while the great pressure on the part of the Scottish Noncon- formists is now for simple disestablishment, we must remember that this is a new form of old forces which, in that country, have been very familiar to Liberalism. And while Lord Hartington's way of waving off Disestablishment, by referring it to the more deliberate judgment of the people themselves, was unquestionably the wise and cautious course to take, he had no right, as the newly accepted chief of the Liberal party —it would have been political suicide to do it—to waive aside the whole question of the Scottish Kirk. It is hopeless to contend, as this article seems to do, that elements of national life which have been historically connected in Scotland with Liberalism, but which have in them so much that is intensely conservative (there never has been such a magnificent illustra- tion of the Parochial system as the Free Church construction and expansion in and after 1843), should be simply not recognised. If the line thus indicated is to be the line of Scotch Toryism, so much the better. No fuller justification of both Mr. Glad- stone and Lord Hartington could be desired. But it would be an immense mistake for the Church of Scotland, or for any part of it—even that which sympathises with Conservatism— to take the same course. The policy which, in the person of Mr. Malcolm of Poltalloch, has just been condemned in Argyle- shire,—that there must be "no interference with the existing state of Church matters in Scotland,"—is a policy of despair. It is unfortunate that while from the one side the Liberal majority in Scotland are pressed with magnificent promises of self-reliant Church organisation, consolidation, and expansion, the only voices that come from the other side have in them so little hopefulness of suggestion, and so much unreasoning outcry.
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