the Member for Leith, to act as his substitute on this occasion. I am
truly sorry that any substitute should be necessary. I am truly sorry
that he is not among us to take charge of the bill which he not long ago
introduced with one of the most forcible and luminous speeches that I
ever had the pleasure of hearing. His audience was small; but the few
who formed that audience cannot have forgotten the effect which his
arguments and his eloquence produced. The Ministers had come down to
resist his motion: but their courage failed them: they hesitated: they
conferred together: at last they consented that he should have leave
to bring in his bill. Such, indeed, was the language which they held on
that and on a subsequent occasion, that both my honourable and learned
friend and myself gave them more credit than they deserved. We really
believed that they had resolved to offer no opposition to a law which it
was quite evident that they perceived to be just and beneficial. But
we have been disappointed. It has been notified to us that the whole
influence of the Government is to be exerted against our bill. In such
discouraging circumstances it is that I rise to move the second reading.
Yet, Sir, I do not altogether despair of success. When I consider what
strong, what irresistible reasons we have to urge, I can hardly think
it possible that the mandate of the most powerful administration can
prevail against them. Nay, I should consider victory, not merely
as probable, but as certain, if I did not know how imperfect is the
information which English gentlemen generally possess concerning Scotch
questions. It is because I know this that I think it my duty to depart
from the ordinary practice, and, instead of simply moving the second
reading, to explain at some length the principles on which this bill has
been framed. I earnestly entreat those English Members who were not so
fortunate as to hear the speech of my honourable and learned friend, the
Member for Leith to favour me with their attention. They will, I think,
admit, that I have a right to be heard with indulgence. I have been sent
to this house by a great city which was once a capital, the abode of a
Sovereign, the place where the Estates of a realm held their sittings.
For the general good of the empire, Edinburgh descended from that high
eminence. But, ceasing to be a political metropolis, she became an
intellectual metropolis. For the loss of a Court, of a Privy Council, of
a Parliament, she found compensation in the prosperity and splendour of
an University renowned to the farthest ends of the earth as a school of
physical and moral science. This noble and beneficent institution is now
threatened with ruin by the folly of the Government, and by the violence
of an ecclesiastical faction which is bent on persecution without having
the miserable excuse of fanaticism. Nor is it only the University of
Edinburgh that is in danger. In pleading for that University, I plead
for all the great academical institutions of Scotland. The fate of all
depends on the event of this debate; and, in the name of all, I demand
the attention of every man who loves either learning or religious
liberty.
The first question which we have to consider is, whether the principles
of the bill be sound. I believe that they are sound; and I am quite
confident that nobody who sits on the Treasury Bench will venture to
pronounce them unsound. It does not lie in the mouths of the Ministers
to say that literary instruction and scientific instruction are
inseparably connected with religious instruction. It is not for them to
rail against Godless Colleges. It is not for them to talk with horror of
the danger of suffering young men to listen to the lectures of an Arian
professor of Botany or of a Popish professor of Chemistry. They are
themselves at this moment setting up in Ireland a system exactly
resembling the system which we wish to set up in Scotland. Only a few
hours have elapsed since they were themselves labouring to prove that,
in a country in which a large proportion of those who require a liberal
education are dissenters from the Established Church, it is desirable
that there should be schools without theological tests. The right
honourable Baronet at the head of the Government proposes that in the
new colleges which he is establishing at Belfast, Cork, Limerick, and
Galway, the professorships shall be open to men of every creed: and
he has strenuously defended that part of his plan against attacks from
opposite quarters, against the attacks of zealous members of the Church
of England, and of zealous members of the Church of Rome. Only the day
before yesterday the honourable Baronet the Member for North Devon (Sir
Thomas Acland.) ventured to suggest a test as unobjectionable as a test
could well be. He would merely have required the professors to declare
their general belief in the divine authority of the Old and New
Testaments. But even this amendment the First Lord of the Treasury
resisted, and I think quite rightly. He told us that it was quite
unnecessary to institute an inquisition into the religious opinions of
people whose business was merely to teach secular knowledge, and that it
was absurd to imagine that any man of learning would disgrace and ruin
himself by preaching infidelity from the Greek chair or the Mathematical
chair.
Some members of this House certainly held very different language: but
their arguments made as little impression on Her Majesty's Ministers as
on me. We were told with the utmost earnestness that secular knowledge,
unaccompanied by a sound religious faith, and unsanctified by religious
feeling, was not only useless, but positively noxious, a curse to the
possessor, a curse to society. I feel the greatest personal kindness and
respect for some gentlemen who hold this language. But they must pardon
me if I say that the proposition which they have so confidently laid
down, however well it may sound in pious ears while it is expressed in
general terms, to be too monstrous, too ludicrous, for grave refutation.
Is it seriously meant that, if the Captain of an Indiaman is a Socinian,
it would be better for himself, his crew, and his passengers, that he
should not know how to use his quadrant and his chronometers? Is it
seriously meant that, if a druggist is a Swedenborgian, it would
be better for himself and his customers that he should not know the
difference between Epsom salts and oxalic acid? A hundred millions of
the Queen's Asiatic subjects are Mahometans and Pagans. Is it seriously
meant that it is desirable that they should be as ignorant as the
aboriginal inhabitants of New South Wales, that they should have no
alphabet, that they should have no arithmetic, that they should not know
how to build a bridge, how to sink a well, how to irrigate a field? If
it be true that secular knowledge, unsanctified by true religion, is
a positive evil, all these consequences follow. Yet surely they are
consequences from which every sane mind must recoil. It is a great evil,
no doubt, that a man should be a heretic or an atheist. But I am quite
at a loss to understand how this evil is mitigated by his not knowing
that the earth moves round the sun, that by the help of a lever, a small
power will lift a great weight, that Virginia is a republic, or that
Paris is the capital of France.
On these grounds, Sir, I have cordially supported the Irish Colleges
Bill. But the principle of the Irish Colleges and the principle of the
bill which I hold in my hand are exactly the same: and the House and the
country have a right to know why the authors of the former bill are the
opponents of the latter bill. One distinction there is, I admit, between
Ireland and Scotland. It is true that in Scotland there is no clamour
against the Union with England. It is true that in Scotland no demagogue
can obtain applause and riches by slandering and reviling the English
people. It is true that in Scotland there is no traitor who would dare
to say that he regards the enemies of the state as his allies. In every
extremity the Scottish nation will be found faithful to the common cause
of the empire. But Her Majesty's Ministers will hardly I think, venture
to say that this is their reason for refusing to Scotland the boon which
they propose to confer on Ireland. And yet, if this be not their reason,
what reason can we find? Observe how strictly analogous the cases are.
You give it as a reason for establishing in Ireland colleges without
tests that the Established Church of Ireland is the Church of the
minority. Unhappily it may well be doubted whether the Established
Church of Scotland, too, be not now, thanks to your policy, the Church
of the minority. It is true that the members of the Established Church
of Scotland are about a half of the whole population of Scotland; and
that the members of the Established Church of Ireland are not much more
than a tenth of the whole population of Ireland. But the question now
before us does not concern the whole population. It concerns only the
class which requires academical education: and I do not hesitate to say
that, in the class which requires academical education, in the class for
the sake of which universities exist, the proportion of persons who
do not belong to the Established Church is as great in Scotland as in
Ireland. You tell us that sectarian education in Ireland is an evil. Is
it less an evil in Scotland? You tell us that it is desirable that the
Protestant and the Roman Catholic should study together at Cork. Is it
less desirable that the son of an elder of the Established Church
and the son of an elder of the Free Church should study together at
Edinburgh? You tell us that it is not reasonable to require from a
Professor of Astronomy or Surgery in Connaught a declaration that
he believes in the Gospels. On what ground, then, can you think it
reasonable to require from every Professor in Scotland a declaration
that he approves of the Presbyterian form of church government? I defy
you, with all your ingenuity, to find one argument, one rhetorical
topic, against our bill which may not be used with equal effect against
your own Irish Colleges Bill.
Is there any peculiarity in the academical system of Scotland which
makes these tests necessary? Certainly not. The academical system of
Scotland has its peculiarities; but they are peculiarities which are not
in harmony with these tests, peculiarities which jar with these tests.
It is an error to imagine that, by passing this bill, we shall establish
a precedent which will lead to a change in the constitution of the
Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. Whether such a change be or be not
desirable is a question which must be decided on grounds quite distinct
from those on which we rest our case. I entreat English gentlemen not to
be misled by the word University. That word means two different things
on the two different sides of the Tweed. The academical authorities at
Cambridge and Oxford stand in a parental relation to the student. They
undertake, not merely to instruct him in philology, geometry, natural
philosophy, but to form his religious opinions, and to watch over his
morals. He is to be bred a Churchman. At Cambridge, he cannot graduate,
at Oxford, I believe, he cannot matriculate, without declaring himself
a Churchman. The College is a large family. An undergraduate is lodged
either within the gates, or in some private house licensed and regulated
by the academical authorities. He is required to attend public worship
according to the forms of the Church of England several times every
week. It is the duty of one officer to note the absence of young men
from divine service, of another to note their absence from the public
table, of another to report those who return home at unseasonably late
hours. An academical police parade the streets at night to seize upon
any unlucky reveller who may be found drunk or in bad company. There are
punishments of various degrees for irregularities of conduct. Sometimes
the offender has to learn a chapter of the Greek Testament; sometimes
he is confined to his college; sometimes he is publicly reprimanded:
for grave offences he is rusticated or expelled. Now, Sir, whether this
system be good or bad, efficient or inefficient, I will not now inquire.
This is evident; that religious tests are perfectly in harmony with such
a system. Christ Church and King's College undertake to instruct every
young man who goes to them in the doctrines of the Church of England,
and to see that he regularly attends the worship of the Church of
England. Whether this ought to be so, I repeat, I will not now inquire:
but, while it is so, nothing can be more reasonable than to require from
the rulers of Christ Church and King's College some declaration that
they are themselves members of the Church of England.
The character of the Scotch universities is altogether different. There
you have no functionaries resembling the Vice-Chancellors and Proctors,
the Heads of Houses, Tutors and Deans, whom I used to cap at Cambridge.
There is no chapel; there is no academical authority entitled to ask a
young man whether he goes to the parish church or the Quaker meeting, to
synagogue or to mass. With his moral conduct the university has nothing
to do. The Principal and the whole Academical Senate cannot put any
restraint, or inflict any punishment, on a lad whom they may see lying
dead drunk in the High Street of Edinburgh. In truth, a student at a
Scotch university is in a situation closely resembling that of a medical
student in London. There are great numbers of youths in London who
attend St George's Hospital, or St Bartholomew's Hospital. One of these
youths may also go to Albermarle Street to hear Mr Faraday lecture on
chemistry, or to Willis's rooms to hear Mr Carlyle lecture on German
literature. On the Sunday he goes perhaps to church, perhaps to the
Roman Catholic chapel, perhaps to the Tabernacle, perhaps nowhere. None
of the gentlemen whose lectures he has attended during the week has the
smallest right to tell him where he shall worship, or to punish him for
gambling in hells, or tippling in cider cellars. Surely we must all feel
that it would be the height of absurdity to require Mr Faraday and Mr
Carlyle to subscribe a confession of faith before they lecture; and
in what does their situation differ from the situation of the Scotch
professor.
In the peculiar character of the Scotch universities, therefore, I find
a strong reason for the passing of this bill. I find a reason stronger
still when I look at the terms of the engagements which exist between
the English and Scotch nations.
Some gentlemen, I see, think that I am venturing on dangerous ground. We
have been told, in confident tones, that, if we pass this bill, we shall
commit a gross breach of public faith, we shall violate the Treaty
of Union, and the Act of Security. With equal confidence, and with
confidence much better grounded, I affirm that the Treaty of Union and
the Act of Security not only do not oblige us to reject this bill, but
do oblige us to pass this bill, or some bill nearly resembling this.
This proposition seems to be regarded by the Ministers as paradoxical:
but I undertake to prove it by the plainest and fairest argument. I
shall resort to no chicanery. If I did think that the safety of the
commonwealth required that we should violate the Treaty of Union,
I would violate it openly, and defend my conduct on the ground of
necessity. It may, in an extreme case, be our duty to break our
compacts. It never can be our duty to quibble them away. What I say
is that the Treaty of Union, construed, not with the subtlety of a
pettifogger, but according to the spirit, binds us to pass this bill or
some similar bill.
By the Treaty of Union it was covenanted that no person should be a
teacher or office-bearer in the Scotch Universities who should not
declare that he conformed to the worship and polity of the Established
Church of Scotland. What Church was meant by the two contracting
parties? What Church was meant, more especially, by the party to the
side of which we ought always to lean, I mean the weaker party? Surely
the Church established in 1707, when the Union took place. Is then,
the Church of Scotland at the present moment constituted, on all points
which the members of that Church think essential, exactly as it was
constituted in 1707? Most assuredly not.
Every person who knows anything of the ecclesiastical history of
Scotland knows that, ever since the Reformation, the great body of the
Presbyterians of that country have held that congregations ought to have
a share in the appointment of their ministers. This principle is laid
down most distinctly in the First Book of Discipline, drawn up by John
Knox. It is laid down, though not quite so strongly, in the Second Book
of Discipline, drawn up by Andrew Melville. And I beg gentlemen, English
gentlemen, to observe that in Scotland this is not regarded as a matter
of mere expediency. All staunch Presbyterians think that the flock is
entitled, jure divino, to a voice in the appointment of the pastor, and
that to force a pastor on a parish to which he is unacceptable is a sin
as much forbidden by the Word of God as idolatry or perjury. I am quite
sure that I do not exaggerate when I say that the highest of our
high churchmen at Oxford cannot attach more importance to episcopal
government and episcopal ordination than many thousands of Scotchmen,
shrewd men, respectable men, men who fear God and honour the Queen,
attach to this right of the people.
When, at the time of the Revolution, the Presbyterian worship and
discipline were established in Scotland, the question of patronage was
settled by a compromise, which was far indeed from satisfying men of
extreme opinions, but which was generally accepted. An Act, passed
at Edinburgh, in 1690, transferred what we should call in England the
advowsons from the old patrons to parochial councils, composed of the
elders and the Protestant landowners. This system, however imperfect
it might appear to such rigid Covenanters as Davie Deans and Gifted
Gilfillan, worked satisfactorily; and the Scotch nation seems to have
been contented with its ecclesiastical polity when the Treaty of Union
was concluded. By that treaty the ecclesiastical polity of Scotland was
declared to be unalterable. Nothing, therefore, can be more clear
than that the Parliament of Great Britain was bound by the most sacred
obligations not to revive those rights of patronage which the Parliament
of Scotland had abolished.
But, Sir, the Union had not lasted five years when our ancestors were
guilty of a great violation of public faith. The history of that great
fault and of its consequences is full of interest and instruction. The
wrong was committed hastily, and with contumelious levity. The offenders
were doubtless far from foreseeing that their offence would be visited
on the third and fourth generation; that we should be paying in 1845 the
penalty of what they did in 1712.
In 1712, Sir, the Whigs, who were the chief authors of the Union, had
been driven from power. The prosecution of Sacheverell had made them
odious to the nation. The general election of 1710 had gone against
them. Tory statesmen were in office. Tory squires formed more than
five-sixths of this House. The party which was uppermost thought that
England had, in 1707, made a bad bargain, a bargain so bad that it could
hardly be considered as binding. The guarantee so solemnly given to
the Church of Scotland was a subject of loud and bitter complaint.
The Ministers hated that Church much; and their chief supporters, the
country gentlemen and country clergymen of England, hated it still more.
Numerous petty insults were offered to the opinions, or, if you please,
the prejudices of the Presbyterians. At length it was determined to go
further, and to restore to the old patrons those rights which had been
taken away in 1690. A bill was brought into this House, the history
of which you may trace in our Journals. Some of the entries are very
significant. In spite of all remonstrances the Tory majority would not
hear of delay. The Whig minority struggled hard, appealed to the act of
Union and the Act of Security, and insisted on having both those Acts
read at the table. The bill passed this House, however, before the
people of Scotland knew that it had been brought in. For there were then
neither reporters nor railroads; and intelligence from Westminster
was longer in travelling to Cambridge than it now is in travelling
to Aberdeen. The bill was in the House of Lords before the Church
of Scotland could make her voice heard. Then came a petition from a
committee appointed by the General Assembly to watch over the interests
of religion while the General Assembly itself was not sitting. The first
name attached to that petition is the name of Principal Carstairs, a man
who had stood high in the esteem and favour of William the Third, and
who had borne a chief part in establishing the Presbyterian Church in
Scotland. Carstairs and his colleagues appealed to the Act of Union, and
implored the peers not to violate that Act. But party spirit ran high;
public faith was disregarded: patronage was restored. To that breach
of the Treaty of Union are to be directly ascribed all the schisms that
have since rent the Church of Scotland.
I will not detain the House by giving a minute account of those schisms.
It is enough to say that the law of patronage produced, first the
secession of 1733 and the establishment of the Associate Synod, then the
secession of 1752 and the establishment of the Relief Synod, and finally
the great secession of 1843 and the establishment of the Free Church.
Only two years have elapsed since we saw, with mingled admiration and
pity, a spectacle worthy of the best ages of the Church. Four hundred
and seventy ministers resigned their stipends, quitted their manses, and
went forth committing themselves, their wives, their children, to the
care of Providence. Their congregations followed them by thousands, and
listened eagerly to the Word of Life in tents, in barns, or on those
hills and moors where the stubborn Presbyterians of a former generation
had prayed and sung their psalms in defiance of the boot of Lauderdale
and of the sword of Dundee. The rich gave largely of their riches. The
poor contributed with the spirit of her who put her two mites into the
treasury of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, in all the churches of large towns, of
whole counties, the established clergy were preaching to empty benches.
And of these secessions every one may be distinctly traced to that
violation of the Treaty of Union which was committed in 1712.