Chapter 26

[29] Those who fancy a possible evasion of the case supposed above, by saying, that if a failure, extensive as to England, should coincide with a failure extensive as to Poland, remedies might be found in importing from many other countries combined, forget one objection, which is decisive--these supplementary countries must be many, and they must be distant. For no country could singly supply a defect of great extent, unless it were a defect annually and regularly anticipated. A surplus never designed as a fixed surplus for England, but called for only now and then, could never be more than small. Therefore the surplus, which could not be yielded by one country, must be yielded by many. In that proportion increase the probabilities that a number will have no surplus. And, secondly, from the widening distances, in that proportion increases the extent of shipping required. But now, even from Mr Porter, a most prejudiced writer on this question, and not capable of impartiality in speaking upon any measure which he supposes hostile to the principle of free trade, the reader may learn how certainly any great _hiatus_ in our domestic growth of corn is placed beyond all hope of relief. For how is this grain, this relief, to be brought? In ships, you reply. Ay, but in what ships? Do you imagine that an extra navy can lie rotting in docks, and an extra fifty thousand of sailors can be held in reserve, and borne upon the books of some colossal establishment, waiting for the casual seventh, ninth, or twelfth year in which they may be wanted--kept and paid against an "_in case_," like the extra supper, so called by Louis XIV., which waited all night on the chance that it might be wanted? _That_, you say, is impossible. It is so; and yet without such a reserve, all the navies of Europe would not suffice to make up such a failure of our home crops as is likely enough to follow redundant years under the system of unlimited competition.--See PORTER.

But enough, and more than enough, of THE nuisance. It will be expected, however, that we should notice two collateral points, both wearing an air of the marvellous, which have grown out of the nuisance during the recent session. One is the relaxation of our laws with respect to Canadian corn; a matter of no great importance in itself, but furnishing some reasons for astonishment in regard to the disproportioned opposition which it has excited. Undoubtedly the astonishment is well justified, if we view the measure for what it was really designed by the minister--viz. as a momentary measure, suited merely to the _current_ circumstances of our relation to Canada. Long before any evil can arise from it, through changes in these circumstances, the law will have been modified. Else, and having, regard to the remote contingencies of the case (possible or probable) rather than to its instant certainties, we are disposed to think, that the irritation which this little anomalous law has roused amongst some of the landholders, is not quite so unaccountable, or so disproportionate, as the public have been taught to imagine. True it is, that for the present, _lis est de paupere regno_. Any surplus of grain which, at this moment, Canada could furnish, must be quite as powerless upon our home markets, as the cattle, living or salted which have been imported under the tariff in 1842 and 1843. But the fears of Canada potentially, were not therefore unreasonable, because the actual Canada is not in a condition for instantly using her new privileges. Corn, that hitherto had not been grown, both may be grown, and certainly will be grown, as soon as the new motive for growing it, the new encouragement, becomes operatively known. Corn, again, that from local difficulties did not find its way to eastern markets, will do so by continual accessions, swelling gradually into a powerful stream, as the many improvements of the land and water communication, now contemplated, or already undertaken, come into play. Another fear connects itself with possible evasions of the law by the United States. Cross an imaginary frontier line, and _that_ will become Canadian which was not Canadian by its origin. We are told, indeed, that merely by its bulk, grain will always present an obstacle to any extensive system of smuggling. But obstacles are not impossibilities. And these obstacles, it must be remembered, are not founded in the vigilance of revenue officers, but simply in the cost; an element of difficulty which is continually liable to change. So that upon the whole, and as applying to the reversions of the case, rather than to its present phenomena, undoubtedly there _are_ dangers a-head to our own landed interest from that quarter of the horizon. For the present, it should be enough to say, that these dangers are yet remote. And perhaps it _would_ have been enough under other circumstances. But it is the tendency of the bill which suggests alarm. All changes in our day tend to the consummation of free trade: and this measure, travelling in that direction, reasonably becomes suspicious by its principle, though innocent enough by its immediate operation.

The other point connected with the corn question is personal. Among the many motions and notices growing out of the dispute, which we hold it a matter of duty to neglect, was one brought forward by Lord John Russell. Upon what principle, or with what object? Strange to say, he refused to explain. That it must be some modification applied to a fixed duty, every body knew; but of what nature Lord John declined to tell us, until he should reach a committee which he had no chance of obtaining. This affair, which surprised every body, is of little importance as regards the particular subject of the motion. But in a more general relation, it is worthy of attention. No man interested in the character and efficiency of Parliament, can fail to wish that there may always exist a strong opposition, vigilant, bold, unflinching, full of partizanship, if you will, but uniformly suspending the partizanship at the summons of paramount national interests, and acting harmoniously upon some systematic plan. How little the present unorganized opposition answers to this description, it is unnecessary to say. The nation is ashamed of a body so determinately below its functions. But Lord John Russell is individually superior to his party. He is a man of sense, of information, and of known official experience. Now, if he, so notoriously the wise man of "her Majesty's Opposition," is capable of descending to harlequin caprices of this extreme order, the nation sees with pain, that a constitutional function of control is extinct in our present senate, and that her Majesty's Ministers must now be looked to as their own controllers. With the levity of a child, Lord John makes a motion, which, if adopted, would have landed him in defeat; but through utter want of judgment and concert with his party, he does not get far enough to be defeated: he does not succeed in obtaining the prostration for which he man[oe]uvres; but is saved from a final exposure of his little statesmanship by universal mockery of his miserable partizanship. Alas for the times in which Burke and Fox wielded the forces of Parliamentary opposition, and redoubled the energies of Government by the energies of their enlightened resistance!

In quitting the subject of the corn agitation, (obstinately pursued through the session,) we may remark--and we do so with pain--that all laws whatsoever, strong or lax, upon this question are to be regarded as provisional. The temper of society being what it is, some small gang of cotton-dealers, moved by the rankest self-interest, finding themselves suffered to agitate almost without opposition, and the ancient landed interest of the country, if not silenced, being silent, it is felt by all parties that no law, in whatever direction, upon this great problem, can have a chance of permanence. The natural revenge which we may promise ourselves is--that the lunacies of the free-trader, when acted upon, as too surely they will be, may prove equally fugitive. Meantime, it is not by provisional acts, or acts of sudden emergency, that we estimate the service of a senate. It is the solemn and deliberate laws, those which are calculated for the wear and tear of centuries, which hold up a mirror to the legislative spirit of the times.

Of laws bearing this character, if we except the inaugural essays at improving the law of libel, and at founding a system of national education, of which the latter has failed for the present in a way fitted to cause some despondency, the last session offers us no conspicuous example, beyond the one act of Lord Aberdeen for healing and tranquillizing the wounds of the Scottish church. Self-inflicted these wounds undeniably were; but they were not the less severe on that account, nor was the contagion of spontaneous martyrdom on that account the less likely to spread. In reality, the late astonishing schism in the Scottish church (astonishing because abrupt) is, in one respect, without precedent. Every body has heard of persecutions that were courted; but in such a case, at least, the spirit of persecution must have had a local existence, and to some extent must have uttered menaces--or how should those menaces have been defied? Now, the "persecutions," before which a large section of the Scottish church has fallen by an act of spontaneous martyrdom, were not merely needlessly defied, but were originally self-created; they were evoked, like phantoms and shadows, by the martyrs themselves, out of blank negations. Without provocation _ab extra_, without warning on their own part, suddenly they place themselves in an attitude of desperate defiance to the known law of the land. The law firmly and tranquilly vindicates itself; the whole series of appeals is threaded; the original judgment, as a matter of course, is finally re-affirmed--and this is the persecution insinuated; whilst the necessity of complying with that decision, which does not express any novelty even to the extent of a new law, but simply the ordinary enforcement of an old one, is the kind of martyrdom resulting. The least evil of this fantastic martyrdom, is the exit from the pastoral office of so many persons trained, by education and habit, to the effectual performance of the pastoral duties. That loss--though not without signal difficulty, from the abruptness of the summons--will be supplied. But there is a greater evil which cannot be healed--the breach of unity in the church. The scandal, the offence, the occasion of unhappy constructions upon the doctrinal soundness of the church, which have been thus ministered to the fickle amongst her own children--to the malicious amongst her enemies, are such as centuries do not easily furnish, and centuries do not remove. In all Christian churches alike, the conscientiousness which is the earliest product of heartfelt religion, has suggested this principle, that schism, for any cause, is a perilous approach to sin; and that, unless in behalf of the weightiest interests or of capital truths, it is inevitably criminal. And in connexion with this consideration, there arise two scruples to all intelligent men upon this crisis in the Scottish church, and they are scruples which at this moment, we are satisfied, must harass the minds of the best men amongst the seceders--viz. First, whether the new points contended for, waiving all controversy upon their abstract doctrinal truth, are really such, in _practical_ virtue, that it could be worth purchasing them at the cost of schism? Secondly, supposing a good man to have decided this question in the affirmative for a young society of Christians, for a church in its infancy, which, as yet, might not have much to lose in credit or authentic influence--whether the same free license of rupture and final secession _could_ belong to an ancient church, which had received eminent proofs of Divine favour through a long course of spiritual prosperity almost unexampled? Indeed, this last question might suggest another paramount to the other two--viz. not whether the points at issue were weighty enough to justify schism and hostile separation, but whether those points could even be safe as mere speculative _credenda_, which, through so long a period of trial, and by so memorable a harvest of national services, had been shown to be unnecessary?

Very sure we are, that no eminent servant of the Scottish church could abandon, without anguish of mind, the multitude of means and channels, that great machinery for dispensing living truths, which the power and piety of the Scottish nation have matured through three centuries of pure Christianity militant. Solemn must have been the appeal, and searching, which would force its way to the conscience on occasion of taking the last step in so sad an _exodus_ from the Jerusalem of his fathers. Anger and irritation can do much to harden the obduracy of any party conviction, especially whilst in the centre of fiery partisans. But sorrow, in such a case, is a sentiment of deeper vitality than anger; and this sorrow for the result will co-operate with the original scruples on the casuistry of the questions, to reproduce the demur and the struggle many times over, in consciences of tender sensibility.

Exactly for men in this state of painful collision with their own higher nature, is Lord Aberdeen's bill likely to furnish the bias which can give rest to their agitations, and firmness to their resolutions. The bill, according to some, is too early, and, according to others, too late. Why too early? Because, say they, it makes concessions to the church, which as yet are not proved to be called for. These concessions travel on the very line pursued by the seceders, and must give encouragement to that spirit of religious movement which it has been found absolutely requisite to rebuke by acts of the legislature. Why, on the other hand, is Lord Aberdeen's bill too late? Because, three years ago, it would, or it might, have prevented the secession. But is this true? Could this bill have prevented the secession? We believe not. Lord Aberdeen, undoubtedly, himself supposes that it might. But, granting that this were true, whose fault is it that a three years' delay has intercepted so happy a result? Lord Aberdeen assures us that the earlier success of the bill was defeated entirely by the resistance of the Government at that period, and chiefly by the personal resistance of Lord Melbourne. Let that minister be held responsible, if any ground has been lost that could have been peacefully pre-occupied against the schism. This, however, seems to us a chimera. For what is it that the bill concedes? Undoubtedly it restrains and modifies the right of patronage. It grants a larger discretion to the ecclesiastical courts than had formerly been exercised by the usage. Some contend, that in doing so the bill absolutely alters the law as it stood heretofore, and ought, therefore, to be viewed as enactory; whilst others maintain that is simply a declaratory bill, not altering the law at all, but merely expressing, in fuller or in clearer terms, what had always been law, though silently departed from by the usage, which, from the time of Queen Anne, had allowed a determinate preponderance to the rights of property in the person of the patron. Those, indeed, who take the former view, contending that it enacts a new principle of law, very much circumscribing the old right of patronage, insist upon it that the bill virtually revokes the decision of the Lords in the Auchterarder case. Technically and formally speaking, this is not true; for the presbytery, or other church court, is now tied up to a course of proceeding which at Auchterarder was violently evaded. The court cannot now peremptorily challenge the nominee in the arbitrary mode adopted in that instance. An examination must be instituted within certain prescribed limits. But undoubtedly the contingent power of the church court, in the case of the nominee not meeting the examination satisfactorily, is much larger now, under the new bill, than it was under the old practice; so that either this practice must formerly have swerved from the letter of the law, or else the new law, differing from the old, is really more than declaratory. Yet, however this may be, it is clear that the jurisdiction of the church in the matter of patronage, however ample it may seem as finally ascertained or created by the new bill, falls far within the extravagant outline marked out by the seceders. We argue, therefore, that it could not have prevented their secession even as regards that part of their pretensions; whilst, as regards the monstrous claim to decide in the last resort what shall be civil and what spiritual--that is, in a question of clashing jurisdiction, to settle on their own behalf where shall fall the boundary line--it may be supposed that Lord Aberdeen would no more countenance their claim in any point of practice, than all rational legislators would countenance it as a theory. How, therefore, could this bill have prevented the rent in the church, so far as it has yet extended? On the other hand, though apparently powerless for that effect, it is well calculated to prevent a second secession. Those who are at all disposed to follow the first seceders, stand in this situation. By the very act of adhering to the Establishment when the _ultra_ party went out, they made it abundantly manifest that they do not go to the same extreme in their requisitions. But, upon any principle which falls short of that extreme being at all applicable to this church question, it is certain that Lord Aberdeen's measure will be found to satisfy their wishes; for that measure, if it errs at all, errs by conceding too much rather than too little. It sustains all objections to a candidate on their own merit, without reference to the quarter from which they arise, so long as they are relevant to the proper qualifications of a parish clergyman. It gives effect to every argument that can reasonably be urged against a nominee--either generally, on the ground of his moral conduct, his orthodoxy, and his intellectual attainments; or specially, in relation to his fitness for any local varieties of the situation. A Presbyterian church has always been regarded as, in some degree, leaning to a republican character, but a republic may be either aristocratic or democratic: now, Lord Aberdeen has favoured the democratic tendency of the age by making the probationary examination of the candidate as much of a popular examination, and as open to the impression of objections arising with the body of the people, as could be done with any decent regard either to the rights yet recognised in the patron, or, still more, to the professional dignity of the clerical order.

Upon the whole, therefore, we look upon Lord Aberdeen as a national benefactor, who has not only turned aside a current running headlong into a revolution, but in doing this exemplary service, has contrived to adjust the temperament very equitably between, 1st, the individual nominee, having often his livelihood at stake; 2dly, the patron, exercising a right of property interwoven with our social system, and not liable to any usurpation which would not speedily extend itself to other modes of property; 3dly, the church, considered as the trustee or responsible guardian of orthodoxy and sound learning; 4thly, the same church considered as a professional body, and, therefore, as interested in upholding the dignity of each individual clergyman, and his immunity from frivolous cavils, however much against him they are interested in detecting his insufficiency; and, 5thly, the body of the congregation, as undoubtedly entitled to have the qualifications of their future pastor rigorously investigated. All these separate claims, embodied in five distinct parties, Lord Aberdeen has delicately balanced and fixed in a temperate equipoise by the machinery of his bill. Whilst, if we enquire for the probable effects of this bill upon the interests of pure and spiritual religion, the promise seems every way satisfactory. The Jacobinical and precipitous assaults of the Non-intrusionists upon the rights of property are summarily put down. A great danger is surmounted. For if the rights of patrons were to be arbitrarily trampled under foot on a pretence of consulting for the service of religion; on the next day, with the same unprincipled levity, another party might have trampled on the patrimonial rights of hereditary descent, on primogeniture, or any institution whatever, opposed to the democratic fanaticism of our age. No patron can now thrust an incompetent or a vicious person upon the religious ministrations of the land. It must be through their own defect of energy, if any parish is henceforth burdened with an incumbent reasonably obnoxious. It must be the fault of the presbytery or other church court, if the orthodox standards of the church are not maintained in their purity. It must be through his own fault, or his own grievous defects, if any qualified candidate for the church ministry is henceforth vexatiously rejected. It must be through some scandalous oversight in the selection of presentees, if any patron is defeated of his right to present.