THE CLERICAL CASTE IN SCOTLAND.
THE deaths, a short time ago, of such prominent leaders of the Free Church' of Scotland as Dr. Begg and Sir Henry Moncreiff must have suggested this, among many ques-
tions,—Is it not the Clerical rather than the Aristocratic caste that really governs, and long has governed, the Scotch Democracy ? Dr. Begg belonged to the class familiarly and affectionately known in the North as "Sons of the Manse."
Although Sir Henry Moncreiff was only the grandson of the Manse, his father having been an eminent Judge, the bluest clerical blood in Scotland flowed in his veins. His grandfather, popularly known as "Sir Harry," was in his time re- cognised as the stoutest advocate of the special doctrines of Andrew Melville ; spiritual independence viewed as an
ecclesiastical dogma, rather than as a party rallying-cry, is less identified with the name of Chalmers than with his. The late leader of Free-Church Conservatism was the seventh Mem- ber and the third baronet of his house who has devoted himself to the work of the Presbyterian ministry. His father and his brother, whose successful legal careers seem, at first sight, inroads upon the Moncreiff clerical tradition, belong to the order of laymen— laymen in the popular sense, not the academic—who are more ecclesiastical than ecclesiastics themselves. The elder judge played a great part in the "Ten Years' Conflict "that led to the formation of the Free Church ; the younger has long exercised a guiding influence in that Church, which has now reached middle- age. So far as appearances show, too, the leadership of the Free Church is likely to remain with this caste. Principal Rainy, the successor both of Cunningham and Candlish, and whom the deaths of Dr. Begg and Sir Henry Moncreiff have left with- out a rival for the leadership of the Assembly of his denomina- tion, is a grandson of the Manse. Dr. Robertson Smith, who led the New Learning or young Free-Church Party till he was ejected from his Chair, and Professor Candlish, who has taken his place, are sons of the Manse. The influence of the clerical caste in Scotland is not confined to the Free Church. Probably no names of clergymen of the present-day Church of Scotland are better known on this side of the Tweed than those of the late Dr. Norman Macleod, Principal Tnlloch, and Dr. Herbert Story, the biographer of "Cardinal" Carstares ; all three are sons of the Manse. Broad-Churehism in the second 9f the Dissenting bodies of Scotland, the United Presbyterian Church, suggests the names of two clergymen, also clergymen's sons, Mr. George Gallen and Mr. David Macrae. Nor is it in the Church alone that the son of the Manse attains a position of eminence or leadership. The present Lord-Advocate and Soli- citor-General, at once th 3 chief Scotch officers of the Crown and the.leaders of the Scotch Commons in Parliament, are sons of ministers of the Church of Scotland. So is the Lord President of the Court of Session, the first Judge in Scotland. So are some of his colleagues ; of the second Judge, the Lord Justice- Clerk, it is enough to say that he is the brother of Sir Henry' Moncreiff. So is the representative of Scotland in the Court of Appeal, who also held the office of Lord-Advocate before his appointment. The legal power in Scotland, which at one time was firmly lodged in such old families as the Hopes, the Boyles, and the Dundases, would almost seem to have passed into the hands of the sons of the Manse.
The influence of the Clerical caste in Scotland is not an affair of to-day, though, perhaps, it never was so marked or so widely extended as it is to-day. The Cooks and Hills of a generation or two generations ago were as influential as the Macleods and Tullochs are now ; by sheer intellectual force they stormed the best endowed pulpits, secured the best Chairs, and, obtaining the Clerkships of the General Assembly, acquired a preponderating share in the government of their Church. There was a grim truth as well as a sly humour in the pun attributed by tradition to the poor licentiate who, finding that his professional fate virtually depended on a member of the ruling clerical family of the time, before whom he had to preach, "gave out " as the first psalm of his service, that beginning," I to the Hills will lift mine eyes, from whence doth come mine aid." The Free Church is too young a body to have its clerical families ; the Moncreiffs belong to the ante-Disruption period. But Presbyterian secession boasts, and justly boasts, of its generations of erudite and Evangelical Browns, that flowered into the delicate humour and pathos of the author of "Rab and his Friends" and "Marjorie Fleming." Even the Scotch Episcopal Church has had its Forbeses ; John Skinner, besides giving his country "Tullochgoram," gave his Church two Bishops of note. Among Scotch clerical families, that of the Erskines held a remarkable place. Different branches of it figured both in the Church and in the Dissenting bodies, agreeing, however, in holding fast by Evangelical theology ; and they were connected by blood with the legal and aristocratic brothers, Thomas and Henry Erskine, who were not only the leaders of the English and Scotch Bars in their time, but Liberals and Reformers before their time. Finally, the Erskines found their way into litera- ture; the subtle spirituality of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen is quite as remarkable a product of Scotch Evangelicalism as the humour and the pathos of John Brown. The sons of the Manse of fifty or a hundred years ago did not, perhaps, so dis- tinguish themselves at the Bar as they do now, although, to mention one remarkable case of such success, the son of Blair of "The Grave" became Lord President of the Court of Session. But they played a prominent part in literature, philosophy, science, in whatever, indeed, gave Scotland a special reputation in their day and generation. Thomas Reid, the true representative, in spite of Hamilton, of the Scottish school of philosophy, was a son of the Manse. So was Thomas Brown, the pioneer of Dr. Bain and the cerebro-psychologists of our day. Dugald Stewart, the friend of Burns and preceptor of Russell and Palmerston, was a grandson of the Manse. Robertson, the historian, and leader of the Moderate Party in the Church of Scotland, was the son of a clergyman. Through his niece he gave a little, though all too little, of the tradition and tone of the Manse to Henry Brougham. Sir David Brewster was of good clerical blood, and was educated with a view to the Scotch ministry. Tithe word " adventurer " could- by any possibility be used in the proper and honourable and not in the popular and odious sense, we should say that as adventurers the Scotch sons of the Manse occupy, and long have occupied, a position of "undoubted paramountcy" among a community which history, and social and even physical con- ditions have made, to the extent of four-fifths, a nation of adventurers.
The success of the son of the Manse is easily explained. His father is, as a rule, a man of humble origin, who by natural force has made his merits known and rewarded. His grandfather the peasant—of whom the father of the late Dr. Duff may be considered a type—has saved and pinched to make his son a minister, not only that he may help to advance the religion which has proved his own support and solace, but that he may give his successors a position in his country which he has found unattainable by himself. Every Presbyterian minister is, or may be, as Chalmers puts it, "a tribune of the people ;" and it costs less to make a son a tribune of the people in Scotland than to make him a barrister or a doctor. "Why did you send me into the Church?" rather
querulously asks the Scotch minister of his plebeian father, in the novel, when he finds himself afflicted with theological "doubt." "I saw no other way of making you a gentleman," retorts the peasant, who snorts contemptuously at "doubt," because, like Dryden's "unlettered Christian," he
"Believes in gross, Plods on to Heaven, and ne'er is at a loss."
The peasant's son, having become "a gentleman," in virtue of a professional position attained by ability, generally marries into a middle-class family ; not unfrequently, indeed, he marries the daughter of another clergyman. His wife brings middle- class notions into his household, and instils middle-class ambi- tions into her children. But as a rule, there is not much luxury in the manse, while there is oftener than not a large family. Its head may be able to command " gentility " when he marries, but seldom a fortune. He has to pinch himself to educate his eons, while "keeping up appearances "quite as much as his father before him, although on a less humble scale. Like Wallace at Falkirk, he can bring his young men to the ring of the profes- sions ; they must do the dancing themselves. But one thing he can do for them ; he can see to it that they get the best pos- sible education attainable in their position. To this, there- fore, he devotes himself, and as a rule successfully ; Scotch ministers may be sometimes bad fathers, but they are almost invariably good "coaches." The sons of the Manse, being put on their mettle, being as inevitably adventurers as their fathers, are as industrious as their plebeian rivals, and much more industrious than scions of the well-to-do middle- class ; while they have a refinement and a social status that the representatives of their fathers' original class are without, and which always tell in the long-run, if other things are equal. The continued ascendancy of a clerical family in Scotland is explained by the fact that while sire may be- queath to son education, natural ability, even standing of a special kind, he cannot, in virtue of his position, bequeath him wealth or power. The one is unattainable in a poor Church; the other is attainable by natural capacity alone in a democratic Church. There is no evidence, on the surface .of things, that the Clerical caste is on the decline in Scotland. If such evidence could be furnished, it would prove either that the position of a Presbyterian clergyman in the North is no longer what it was, or that the peasant's ideal of power, from being a moral, has become a material one.
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