The Assembly approved of, and adopt the draft now submitted, and pass the same into a declaratory enactment.

CONSTITUTION OF SCHOOLS.

The Report of the Committee appointed to prepare overtures to Presbyteries relative to the constitution of schools, was given in by Dr Candlish. It was approved and adopted as an overture to be transmitted to Presbyteries.

The Report of the Committee appointed to prepare instructions to the Education Committee, and to Presbyteries, relative to the Government plan of education, was given in by Dr Candlish. The instructions are in terms of the resolutions passed by the Assembly relative to the Government educational plan. The Report was approved of and adopted.

The Report of Committee on Synod Records was then given in by Mr Omond. It stated, that out of seventeen, fourteen Synods had sent up their records. Those not sent up were Angus and Mearns, Glenelg, and Ross. The Synod books were ordered to be attested, with remarks of the Committee.

The Commission Record was ordered to be attested.

A Committee was appointed to prepare an act on the bereavement which the Church has lately sustained in the lamented death of Dr Chalmers, who were instructed to report to-morrow (Tuesday.)

The Assembly adjourned at one o'clock on Tuesday morning.

TUESDAY, JUNE 8. 1847.

Quoad Sacra Churches-Petition to Parliament-Presbyterial Arrangements-Psalmody Committee-Report on Highland Destitution - Speeches of Dr Buchanan and Mr Sheriff Speirs-Site Committee-Letter of the Hon. E. P. Bouverie-Deputation to Australia-Speech of Mr Macnaughtan-Popery-Deliverance on the Education Report-Deliverance on the Colonial and Foreign Missions Reports-Act relative to the lamented death of Dr Chalmers-Speech of Dr Bunting-Dr Chalmers' successor-West Port Church-Sustentation Fund-Speech of Dr Buchanan-Publication Committee-Principles of the Church-Commission-Closing Address of the Moderator.

The Assembly met in private conference at eleven o'clock, and public business commenced at twelve.

QUOAD SACRA CHURCHES.

Mr BEG G, Convener of the Committee appointed to prepare draft petition to Parliament on the subject of quoad sacra churches, gave in the Report of the Committee. The following is a copy of the draft petition which the Committee recommended should be sent to Parliament :-

"Unto the Honourable the Commons of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled, the humble Petition of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland,

Sheweth, That a large number of churches, many of them having schools connected with them, were erected in Scotland by voluntary contributions previous to the year 1843, at a cost of considerably more than £300,000:

That by far the largest proportion of this money was contributed by those who, in 1843, felt constrained by conscientious principle to leave the Established Church That the conditions on which these churches were built have been completely violated. The Established Church claimed the power of erecting quoad sacra churches, and assigning parishes by its own inherent authority, on the faith of which claim the people of Scotland subscribed their money to erect such places of worship, clearly understanding and intending that they should be parish churches, and not chapels of ease. The civil courts have since found that such power does not reside in the Establishment, the Establishment itself has renounced all claim to the possession of it, and yet, instead of allowing the people to retain their churches, or selling them and dividing the money, in proportion to the subscriptions, an attempt is being made to seize and employ them all as chapels of ease:

That to avoid harassing litigations, some of these churches have already been given

up to the Establishment under protest, although much hardship has been suffered in consequence of this surrender, by the congregations, and although some of these churches are now locked up, without ministers and congregations, whilst others of them, formerly crowded, are now nearly empty. That in many cases, however, these churches are still occupied by the congregations which built them, but although the Establishment apparently does not require them, an attempt is being made to turn the congregations out, and take possession of the buildings: That intricate questions have also arisen in regard to the debts connected with these quoad sacra churches:

That your petitioners being earnestly desirous to have this whole question settled upon principles of equity, have made a formal application to the Assembly of the Established Church, accompanied with a copy of said Memorial, desiring to have this whole matter submitted to amicable arbitration, and settled according to justice, a proposal, however, which your petitioners are sorry to say has not been entertained, although no answer has been made by the Assembly of the Establishment to the facts embodied in said Memorial.

Your petitioners are therefore under the necessity of coming to your Honourable House, in order that justice may be obtained, and a speedy termination put to questions which otherwise may be indefinitely prolonged, and may lead to the most mischievous results.

May it therefore please your Honourable House to take this petition into your favourable consideration, together with the Memorial above mentioned, and hereunto appended, and to grant such redress as the circumstances of the case demand. And your petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray.

Signed in name, and by appointment of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, this day of June 1847 years."

The Assembly approved of the draft petition, and left it to the Committee to fix upon a Member in each House of Parliament who should be requested to present the petitions.

Mr BEGG said, that as he had been appointed to the office of Convener of the Home Mission Committee, he must beg leave to resign the convenership of the Quoad Sacra Committee. There was one member in the House who was peculiarly fitted for the office, and he would beg to propose him, namely, Mr Gray of Perth.

Mr TWEEDIE said, that if Mr Begg was resolved to resign, he had great pleasure in seconding the nomination of Mr Gray, inasmuch as there was a special propriety in the appointment of their brother, seeing that it was through his instrumentality that the ministers of chapels of ease were placed on the same status with that of parish ministers. He would also suggest that the Assembly record their thanks to Mr Begg for the painstaking he had bestowed upon this matter, and for the great service which he had rendered to the Church in it. (Hear, hear.)

The motion of Mr Begg, and the suggestion of Mr Tweedie, were unanimously agreed to, and Mr Gray was accordingly appointed Convener.

PRESBYTERIAL ARRANGEMENTS.

Mr BEGG gave in the following Report on Presbyterial arrangements, which was approved of:

"Your Committee have considered the various overtures remitted to them, and they recommend the Assembly to enact as follows, viz. :—

"1. That the meetings of the Synod of Galloway shall be held on the first Tuesday of April and the first Tuesday of October.

"2. That the congregation of Ruthwell shall be disjoined from the Presbytery of Lockerby, and annexed to that of Dumfries.

"3. That the congregation of Stow be disjoined from the united Presbytery of Kelso and Lauder, and annexed to that of Dalkeith, until the Assembly shall see cause to re-erect Lauder into a separate Presbytery.

"4. That the Presbytery of Meigle be disjoined from the Synod of Angus and Mearns, and annexed to that of Perth."

PSALMODY.

Mr JAFFRAY, in the absence of Mr Bridges, the Convener, then read the Report

of the Committee on Psalmody. The Report urged the importance of ministers promoting the object for which the Committee was appointed, namely, the improvement of the singing of psalms in the worship of God. They knew no better way of doing this than by directing attention to the excellent work on Psalmody which had been published by the Free Church. An arrangement had been made with Mr Johnstone the publisher, by which they gave up the copyright to that gentleman, who undertook to publish it, upon the condition that he was to be guaranteed to the extent of £75, provided that loss to that extent be incurred by the publisher during the next two years.

After some discussion as to the pecuniary liabilities undertaken by the Committee, the Assembly approve generally of the Report, and in respect of the outstanding liability mentioned in the agreement with Mr Johnstone, they express no opinion, and remit it to the Committee to take the necessary steps for meeting this claim, and to report to next Assembly.

HIGHLAND DESTITUTION COMMITTEE.

Dr MACKAY of Dunoon laid on the table the Report of the Committee on Highland Destitution.*

Dr BUCHANAN of Glasgow, as having filled the office of Convener of the Acting Committee, whose Report was on the table, narrated the leading outstanding particulars which the Report embodied. After stating that £15,608 had been contributed to the Free Church Committee, of which sum £11,674 was handed over to the Board in money and provisions, he said that notwithstanding this liberal contribution, the members of the Free Church were found to have contributed to the appeal from the Central Board just as if the appeal which had been made by the Free Church, and which was so liberally responded to, had never been made at all. They had heard of tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands swept away by this calamity in Ireland, but they had cause to thank God that the means which had been taken in Scotland had had the happy effect of preventing deaths from starvation, although, no doubt, the suffering was great. Dr Buchanan then proceeded to say, that there was a matter which he was not sure whether he should refer to. It was well known that very serious calumnies had been vented against the Free Church in reference to this movement. He alluded particularly to a pamphlet, a copy of which he held in his hand, entitled a " Letter to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, in regard to the formation of Local Committees, with remarks occasioned by the proceedings of the Free Church Committee connected with the Fund." He did not know who was the author of that document. He did not envy him. (Hear.) No man could read the pamphlet without feeling ashamed that there should have been a head to imagine such things, and to pen and put them on record, that there should have been an individual found in their country, in a season of great public calamity, who should have found himself at liberty to endeavour to mar the harmony of public feeling upon a question of common humanity, and to turn it into a miserable occasion of party contention and strife. (Hear, hear.) He alluded to the pamphlet, not for the purpose of condescending to notice the insinuations which it made in regard to the formation of the Committees. Everything that was done by the Free Church Committee, or by the Central Board, in connection with the formation of these Committees, was before the public, and was open to public scrutiny. He alluded to the pamphlet for the purpose only of adverting to the very base and most discreditable misrepresentations which it made in regard to pecuniary matters. In that pamphlet the assertion was made that the destitution prevailed within seven Synods of this Church, including within their bounds 230 parishes. It asserted, moreover, that from these districts this Church had drawn since the Disruption £139,000, or at an average of about £40,000 per annum; and it not only insinuated, but plainly announced, that they had been scourging, and robbing, and impoverishing the Highlands, and that consequently the contribution of £15,000 which had been made by them to alleviate the distress in the Highlands was but a very trifling and contemptible reparation for the immense sums which they had been drawing out of the destitute districts. This was the extraordinary and extravagant assertion which this anonymous pamphleteer had

*See Appendix.

Q q

thought himself warranted to make. Now, what was the fact? One of the seven Synods included in this statement contained fifty parishes, and it so happened that at the date when that statement was made,--and he knew not that the fact had since changed,in only one of these fifty parishes was there any destitution at all, while the pamphleteer put them all down as being in a state of destitution. This was one specimen of the style in which this result was accumulated. Then there was the general statement about the money. The real number of parishes in which destitution existed at the time that this statement was made, was not two hundred and fifty, but eighty-seven; and the total contributions since the Disruption, to all the Schemes of the Church, that had been raised within these eighty-seven parishes, were £24,165, instead of £139,000. Then, in the next place, of this £24,165, by far the greatest amount of it was spent in these localities. In point of fact the only sums raised for Free Church objects beyond that for Foreign Missions, in which the Free Church cannot be said to have any selfish or local interest, and which merely pass through the Church on an errand of mercy and benevolence to the remote parts of the world, and which was not great; but at all events, great or small, beyond their contributions to Foreign Missions, the entire sum that came out of these destitute districts since the Disruption amounted exactly to £9524. Now, let them look to the other side. What had the Free Church sent to these districts? It was well to observe that this sum included all that had been raised for the Sustentation Fund and the Home Mission Fund. In the single item of the Sustentation Fund, there had been sent back previously to this statement being uttered, £17,630. In the shape of salaries for probationers, catechists, and other spiritual labourers, there had been sent back to these districts £1280; in the shape of grants for church building £6840 had been sent back; and for school building £2030 had been sent back; amounting in all to £27,780; and when to this was added the collection for the destitution, amounting to £15,600, they had a total of very nearly £44,000. They bad sent to these destitute districts close upon £44,000, and all the money that had come out of them was £9524; in other words, these districts, so far as money was concerned, had been benefited by this Church to the extent of more than £30,000, instead of £140,000 coming out of them. Now, he understood that great pains had been taken to circulate this very miserable and contemptible pamphlet throughout the country; and he doubted not that, in many quarters where the answer to it could never be known, it had done much mischief, not only in having arrayed prejudices against this Church, but in having marred the harmony of that general feeling that ought to have existed in reference to so great a calamity. He nnderstood that, even at this time, and during the sitting of the Established Assembly, great pains had been taken to circulate this pamphlet; and in these circumstances, though it might appear to some unnecessary, he thought it not altogether out of place to make the statement which he had now laid before them, in order that, as part of the Assembly's proceedings, it might find its way more or less over the country. He did not think that it would be becoming the Committee or the Church to have taken any other notice of anything so utterly worthless and contemptible.

Mr Sheriff SPEIRS thought the Assembly very much obliged to the Vice-convener of the Committee, Dr Buchanan, for the statement he had made. He rose for the purpose of supplying an omission. He alluded to the personal services of Dr Mackay of Dunoon, in reference to the subject of Highland destitution. He must say that Dr Mackay had set in his own person an example, not only to this Church, but to mankind at large, of the way in which duty of that kind ought to be discharged. They knew very well that, in a matter of this kind, people were too often rather content to rest satisfied with the bestowal of their means for alleviating distress, than in setting themselves in the way of applying their means; but their friend Dr Mackay had not contented himself with bestowing the utmost diligence in the arrangements of the Committee, and in the Report which he had made, but, believing that the presence of a minister would be of the greatest possible service among the distressed, he had embarked in the small yacht belonging to the Free Church, at the most tempestuous season of the year, and was engaged in the cause of humanity in navigating perilous seas during a great part of the winter months, and he only returned from this duty in order to render another important service to the Church, namely, as a witness before the Site-Committee. He was perfectly satisfied that whoever went

to the Highlands this summer would find that the poor people appreciated the services of his friend. There was another topic in connection with this matter, which he thought the Assembly would do well to bear in mind, in reference to some observations which he had read, as having been made in another place-[the Established Assembly.] It had been truly stated by Dr Buchanan, that in consequence of the prompt interference of the public in this part of the kingdom, and the arrangements that were made for supplying food to the destitute in the Highlands and Islands, there had not been a single instance, so far as known, of an individual having perished from hunger throughout Scotland. Nothing could be more gratifying than that communication. He was not, however, induced altogether and entirely to ascribe that fact, cheering as it was, to relief having been timeously afforded to the Highlands. He would attribute a great deal of the suspension and alleviation of this visitation in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland to the conduct and character of the people themselves (hear, hear); and he was persuaded that if, in any district in Ireland, where, with an equal amount of destitution, the same relief had been afforded, the results would still have been altogether different, and they would not have had to congratulate themselves that there had been no deaths from starvation. They all knew how much depended, in cases of famine and destitution, upon the orderly character and forbearance, and the submission of the people themselves. He believed that it was owing entirely and altogether to the religious character of the Highland population that the visitation had been less severe upon them than it had been upon other parts of the community that had been visited with famine-(hear, hear);-and when he heard that in other places the Highlanders were reprobated on account of their ignorance, and that that ignorance was assigned as the reason for their adherence to the Free Church, all that he would say in reference to the matter was, that he only wished, looking at their conduct during this great calamity, there was in the low country of Scotland the same amount and the same description of ignorance. (Hear, hear.) He was seldom disposed to question the judgment of his friend Dr Buchanan; but he was not sure if upon this occasion, with all the thanks that were due to him, and justly due to him, for the exposition of the fabrication which appeared in the shape of an anonymous pamphlet, as he (Dr Buchanan) called it, but which he (Mr Speirs) would take the liberty to call an anonymous libel-(hear, hear) -he was not sure if Dr Buchanan had not rather exceeded what might have been expected on this occasion. While they might be glad to have received from Dr Buchanan an analysis or an anatomy of the falsehoods contained in that pamphlet, he was afraid that the notice which had been taken of it by a person of Dr Buchanan's consideration might only have the effect of rescuing from a deserved oblivion a publication which really, after all, was too contemptible to deserve notice, and was altogether unworthy of the serious refutation of the misstatements contained in it. He read the pamphlet, as one read everything on a subject so engrossing at the period, when it was written of Highland destitution; but he must say that it made no impression on his mind at all. When he saw a person making statements, and when he saw him so ashamed of them that he would not put his name to the falsehoods which he uttered, that was quite satisfactory to his mind that the thing was altogether undeserving of notice. (Hear, hear.) The only thing that passed through his mind when he read the pamphlet was, that he did not believe that it was really the production of their former opponents in the Established Church, for he rather thought that they were too honest for that, after all. (Hear, hear.) He knew that there was a class of individuals with whom we used formerly to be associated, and that when we were thought to be on the winning side, or rather, that theirs was the popular cause, this class took some credit to themselves for professing our principles, and talked largely of the sacrifices which they were prepared to make for the principles for which we were contending; but he (Mr Speirs) always found that these persons were actuated by other considerations than principle; and that when the profession of them was no longer a matter of pecuniary gain, as it was to some of them, and that no credit was to be got for professing them, they would very soon turn their hacks upon us; and that when they had done so, they would become our bitterest opponents. (Hear.) Now, what passed through his mind when he heard this pamphlet was, he need not particularise names here, that the pamphlet was the production of some of this discreditable class of persons. (Hear, hear.) But he did not