Reminiscences and
Reflections of an Octogenarian Highlander
Duncan Campbell, 1910
Published to a list of private subscribers.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 25
ON THE EDGE OF THE PRECIPICE
IN associations for secular purposes, even whole nations are not incapable
of recognising their mistakes and of trying to correct them. But religious
associations of all denominations ape at infallibility, and will, as a rule,
follow the course they have once set for themselves although it should lead
them to the gates of Hades. In this twentieth century those who deplore the
deplorable divisions of Scottish Presbyterianism, and who search back for
their originating causes, will, I have no doubt, say that the Veto Act was
a blunder, albeit a well-intentioned one, which ought to have been repudiated
as soon as its inefficiency was discovered, and its illegality declared,
in favour of that perfectly proper course by which the abolition of patronage
was obtained thirty years after the calamitous disunion of 1843 had taken
place. It was not till the edge of the precipice had been reached that the
demand for abolition was countenanced by the clerical leaders, who stuck
to their own inflated spiritual independence and papal infallibility claims,
and who, when they did at last as a great concession to lay-desire for the
larger boon, look at the preferable alternative, did not stop the march on
the line leading over the precipice.
They had given and received provocations not to be forgiven or forgotten
readily. Throughout all Scotland, and not only from hot religious zeal, but
also, as already noticed, for underlying race defence reasons, more blazingly
in the Highlands than anywhere else, the national heather was in flames.
Dr Cook and his Assembly minority had not as a party
any just title to the name of Moderates. They and the Tory lairds, the private
patrons, with a few exceptions, and the Peel Government, had committed themselves
to a policy of coercive repression which angered the people of Scotland and
furnished the heather-firers with fine torches. Enlightened patriotism was
compulsorily blind-folded or stricken dumb. By the faults both sides had
committed in this contest, they had unconsciously laid broad foundations
for the Radicalism which at once took hold of cities and burghs, and came
to the top in the counties when household suffrage was extended to them.
Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues banished political commonsense to Jericho
when, in utter forgetfulness or utter ignorance of the lessons taught by
Scottish history, they fell back on the policy of coercion which had been
so ruinous to the Stuart dynasty. Their Scotch advisers, lawyers, clericals,
Tory patrons, and proprietors who either recommended that policy or meekly
endorsed it, were still more culpable because they knew, or ought to know,
the fierce nature of the Scottish Presbyterians when called upon by their
Church leaders to rally in defence of their relig-ious rights, with which
in every blue banner mustering, the cause of civil rights and liberties was
dead sure to be inseparably intertwined in some manner. No gleam of second-sight
faintly showed to the Church leaders that a generation later on their successors
would not only throwaway the grand opportunity the abolition of patronage
provided for re-union, but bitterly dislike the liberation from the old yoke given
to the Church of Scotland, adopt a disestablishment policy, plunge into unnatural
political association with Irish Separatists, English Socialists,
and so-called Liberationists, and finally by their 1900 Union with the U.P.
Voluntaries, stray widely from the principles of the Claim of Right and Protest,
and thereby cause other separations. But if deficielat in foresight and recklessly
careless about the future of Presbyterianism in Scotland, they were adepts
at stirring-up and organising a big national movement which had many of
the features of a general trade-union strike. In 1842 this strike was in
the name of the crown. rights of Christ and His supreme sovereignty, plainly
and professedly directed against the unfavourable decisions of the Civil
Courts (which decisions were often garnished with deliberate words of offence),
and against the repressive, coercive policy of the Peel Government. It passes
human comprehension to understand how the Scottish advisers and supporters
of that Government failed to take in the extent and the significance of the
popular movement, and to impress upon Sir Robert Peel and his colleagues
the necessity for resorting to reasonable compromise. Lord Aberdeen's Act,
passed after the Disruption had taken place, from its general impracticability
and the -varying measure in which ever changing. Assembly majorities administered
it, proved to be much of a costly sham;
but it was a plausible sham containing a modicum concession. Had it been
passed in the session of 1842 it would, at least, have g-reatly strengthened
the "Forty Thieves" and added largely to their numbers. It might
even have prevented the catastrophe of 1843. Lord Aberdeen in 1841 introduced
a similar Bill in the House of Lords which was still more of a sham and came
to nothing. The rulers of the Church had in the Presbyterian organisation,
with its Kirk Sessions, Presbyteries, Synods,
and General Assemblies, splendidly constructed machinery for working up the
agitation. As, for example, in the deposition of the Strathbogie ministers,
for refusing to run their heads against civil penalties, by obeying ecclesiastical
injunction, they used their spiritual power as despotically as their opponents
used their civil power. Their opponents made some feeble attempts to hold
public meetings to pass counter-resolutions and to make counter-protests.
But they had no popular organisation at their command, and as they found
that the people would not attend their meetings, and that they were mocked
as mere class and caste demonstrations, they discontinued holding them. They
tried pamphlet war with no better success. The arguments put forth in those
pamphlets, although some of them were good from the legal and customary point
of view, caused the tide of popular opinion to rise higher and higher against
their side, and to evoke new Radical arguments and threats from hot-headed
antagonists. As soon as the Peel Government displaced the Melbourne one,
threats of separation began to be muttered by irresponsible individuals on
the popular side, but it was not till that threat was taken up by the responsible
leaders gathered together in Convocation that Government and country were
seriously warned of'such an extreme project as separation being really contemplated
by the then rulers of the Church of Scotland.
As a matter of fact I know very well that in our Glen the idea of separation,
under any circumstances, was at first most unfavourably received. It would
not be too much to say that to all but a few thoughtless or reckless individuals
it caused consternation. But throughout the whole contest there
had been almost perfect unanimity in favour of the abolition of patronage
by Act of Parliament.
Our people, at the instigation of the Church leaders, had just applied the
Veto Act to prevent the settlement of a presentee who was only unacceptable
on mere party grounds. They were far from being proud of their tame submission
to outside dictation, but they were unitedly convinced that abolition and
not the Veto, with its exhaustive process possibili6es and indefinite delays
of settlement, was the remedy that should be sought for.
As a stone rolling down a precipitous hill gains momentum as it rolls on,
so did this movement.
There were parishes in the north, such as Daviot near Inverness, and Kiltearn
in Ross-shire, which had, years before this, resorted to temporary divisive
courses; but in December, 1842, so highly and so justly appreciated was the
Church of Scotland by the vast majority of the Highland people as the most
precious part of "dileab nan athraichean" the legacy of their fathers
- that if secession had been put to the vote, it would, I feel sure, have
been vetoed
as plumply as any unacceptable presentee, and that too in defiance of contrary
orders from headquarters.
How was the alarm calmed? By assurances given in good faith by ministers
and other trusted leaders that the Church of Scotland was not in the smallest
danger of being injured by a threat of secession, which was meant to work
in the opposite direction by forcing the Government to change its attitude
on the whole matters in dispute. The threat was made in time for the Government
to change its attitude in the forthcoming session of Parliament, and if it
did so there would be a concordat
instead of a secession when the Assembly met in May. But what would happen
if the Government refused to make any satisfactory concessions 1 It was said
that in that improbable event the majority of the ministers, e]ders, and
people would go out; but it would be only to be quickly called back again
on conditions satisfactory to them. Behind Dr Chalmers were whirlwind riders
who were so carried away by the ideas of their own importance, and so inflated
by the cheers of excited audiences, that they could not now come down to
earth and settle there in comfort unless in a brand new Church where they
would be rulers, and by which their fame as founders would be kept high forever.
But those whirlwind riders were yet held in check by Dr Chalmers through
his commanding intellect and conservative proclivities, supported as he then
was by all the older, saner, and more reasonable men of his party, who, whether
ranked as leaders or as followers in Church courts, were influential in their
own parts of the vineyard.
The threat of separation placed both Church and State in a very difficult
position. But why should peaceful negotiations be yet despaired on Both sides
had become too obstinate and blind to the reasons for expedient mutual concessions,
which reasons were as plentiful as blackberries. So nothing was done between
the meeting of Parliament in winter and the meeting of the Assembly in May.
Sir Robert Peel, who did not understand Presbyterian Church affairs nor the
temper of the Scottish people, came to Scotland with the Queen in September,
1842. I saw him for the first and last time at Taymouth. He was singled out
for more observation in that large gathering than any other man.
A rumour had reached the Highlands that he had been insulted by an Edinburgh
mob, and good care was taken that he should be respected as Prime Minister
by the children of the Gael. His visit did not enlighten him on the true
inwardness of the Scotch ecclesiastical crisis. Perhaps the exuberant loyalty
evinced by all classes towards the Queen led him to suppose that the Queen's
Minister might with a light heart refuse concession to a noisy set of ecclesiastical
agitators. Scotch officials and Scotch supporters of the Conservative Government
deceived him, and, what is far more strange, honestly deceived themselves
by taking a portentously wrong estimate of the importance of the agitation.
When the separation threat was issued a short time after his visit, he might
well ask why should an English Prime Minister, incrusted in English ideas
and supported by Scotch Tories, pay any attention to the threat, when he
was made to believe by those who should know best, that if he firmly put
down his foot and kept it down, nothing worse would happen than the secession
of a few agitating ministers whose departure would be a gain. It was not
necessary on that showing to yield to a threat when yielding would be humiliating
to his own credit and the credit of his Government and party. Having, as
they asserted, to defend civil and religious liberty, the threateners had
voluntarily placed themselves under a necessity either to humble themselves
or to make the State yield. Month after month glided by without any practical
means being taken to effect compromise and reconciliation, and just in the
proportion in which hopeful expectation diminished, the violence of the agitation
increased, and so did the popular determination to range
up behind those who threatened to throw the unity of the Church of Scotland
over the precipice.
