Church and reform in Scotland; a history from 1797 to 1843

Front matter

Purchased by the Mrs. Robert Lenox Kennedy Church History Fund.

DA 760 .M34 1916 Mathieson, William Law, 18^

Church and reform in Scot! and

Preface

This is the conclusion of a work, published under four different titles, which I began nineteen years ago, and the first instalment of which appeared in 1902. In the present volume I have continued the poUtical narrative to the extinction of Scotland as a unit of parhamentary representation in 1832, and the ecclesiastical narrative to the secession from the Church in 1843 of those who maintained its hereditary quarrel with the State. Some account is given of social conditions before and after 1832. EvangeUcahsm, as treated in the opening chapter, falls mainly within the hmits assigned to the preceding instalment, but I have preferred to deal with it in connexion with the period to which in point of interest and importance it naturally belongs.

My most cordial thanks are due to Dr. Henry W. Meikle, not only for the help I have derived from his Scotland and tlie French Revolution, but for his kindness in placing at my disposal the results of his examination of the Home Office (Scotland) Correspondence at the PubUc Record Office. These have proved of great value, especially in the preparation of Chapter II., and are vi

PREFACE cited in the notes as Scottish MSS. P.R.O. The Roman numeral which follows indicates the manuscript volume, and will be useful to any one who desires to examine these papers for himself. My own researches in unpub- Hshed material have been confined to a large collection of letters addressed to Lord Advocate Robert Dundas amongst the Laing MSS., and to the correspondence of Principal Hill, chiefly with Alexander Carlyle, in the Edinburgh University Library.

I have to record my gratitude to the Carnegie Trustees for the Scottish Universities, who have assisted me by a grant in aid of pubhcation.

Edinburgh: September, 1916.

Democracy a product of the French Revolution Feudal constitution of Scotland Antagonism of Scots and English

Growth of British nationality - - - -

The awakening of industry ....

The political awakening ....

Intellectual activity . . . . .

Its anti-popular bias .....

Exceptions : Hutcheson ....

Adam Smith ......

John Millar ......

Dugald Stewart .....

Anti-patronage movement in the Church Evangelicalism

Chapter I

Individualism the principle of the Reformation Growth of theocracy in Scotland

The Leighton school .....

Henry Scougal ......

His influence on the Oxford Methodists Novelty and startling effect of their preaching Wesley and Whitefield as Dissenters ; their separation Evangelicalism within the Church of England - Its decline in Scotland ; Hutcheson viii

PAOB

Whitefield in Scotland ; Cambuslang - .... 43

Evangelicalism divorced from theocracy .... 45

Wesley and the Wesleyans in Scotland .... 45

Scottish and English Evangelicalism contrasted ... 50

Drawing-room Evangelicalism ; Lady Maxwell - - - 51

Lady Glenorchy ....... 52

Lady Leven and John Campbell ..... 54

The French Revolution ...... 57

Voluntaryism in the Relief Church ..... 59

The Seceders abandon the Covenant ..... 60

EvangeUcals and parliamentary reform - - - . 62

The brothers Haldane ; CongregationaUsm - - - - 62

Rowland Hill ........ 67

Intellectual character of the movement .... 69

CHAPTER II THE DECLINE OF MODERATISM Influences unfavourable to Moderatism .... 75

Patronage controversy dormant ..... 75

The London Foreign Missionary Society .... 75

Foreign mission movement in Scotland .... 77

Scottish mission to West Africa ..... gi

Chapels of Ease ....... 82

Sunday schools 83

Regulations as to students and licentiates .... 84

Clerical censorship of education ..... 86

Lay preaching 86

Plurality and non-residence ; the Arnot case - . - . 90

Clergymen as professors 93

The Leslie controversy 95

Principal Hill ; his career and policy - . - . . 100

Finlayson, the business manager ..... 106

Clergymen as poUticians ; Robert Ure - - . . - 107

Moderatism in its relation to the Government - . - . 108

Party struggles ; the eldership . . . . . - 110

Relaxation of discipUne - . . . . - 111

Patronage less illiberal in spirit ..... 112

Moderatism the victim of culture ..... 114 iz

Chapter III Page

Character of the War - - - - - - - 116

The Volunteers 118

The Militia Act, 1797 121

Threatened Invasion - - - - - - - 122

The Whig party in Scotland - - - - - - 124

The Edinburgh Review • - - - - - - 126

Melville impeached ; the Whigs in power .... 127

The Court of Session - - - - - - - 128

Proposals for its reform ...... 129

The old and the young Whigs 131

Francis Horner 132

Henry Peter Brougham - - - - - - 134

Distress of the cotton-weavers 135

Effect on industry of the Peace ..... 149

Distress and disorder in England and Scotland - - - 142

The Glasgow Radicals ....... 145

Richmond the Spy ....... 146

Political trials, 1817 ....... 148

Renewed distress, 1819 ; " Manchester Massacre " - - - 151

Meetings and riots in Glasgow and Paisley .... 153

Attempted risings ....... 155

Bonnymuir ; riot at Greenock - - - - 160

Failure of liberalism on the Continent ..... 161

Chapter IV

Whigs and Radicals ; their distinctive principles Newspapers ; the Scotsman ....

Growing popularity of the Whigs The Pantheon meeting and the Fox dinner, 1820-1821 Burgh Reform ; Montrose, 1817

Bankruptcy of Aberdeen ....

163 165 166 167 170 172

X CONTENTS

PAOB

Burgh Reform in Parliament, 1819-1822 .... 174

The Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly .... 176

The Glasgow Sentinel - ■ - - ■ - .180

The Icing's visit, 1822 182

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - - - - - 184

Reform of the Criminal Jury - . - . . - 185

The Edinburgh PoUce ....... 186

County representation . - - . - . - 189

The representation of Edinburgh ..... 190

Canning, 1827 ; his relations with the Whigs .... 193

The Whigs as a centre party - - - - - - 195

Chapter V The Reform Bills 1827-1834

The second Lord Melville ...... 197

Scottish Toryism breaking up - - - - - - 199

Welhngton ; the " July Revolution," 1830 - - - - 203

Earl Grey ; the English Reform Bill, 1831 - - - - 205

The Scottish representation ...... 208

Reform movement in Scotland ...... 209

The struggle for Reform at Westminster - - . - 211

The General Election of 1831 213

Excitement ; election riots ...... 214

Demonstrations against the Lords ..... 217

The first Scottish Reform Bill 219

The Bill as it became law ...... 220

Criticisms and amendments ...... 221

The new constituencies 223

The Burgh Reform Acts ...... 225

Lord Grey in Scotland, 1834 226

Character and significance of the movement .... 227

Chapter VI

Lord Brougham and Lord Durham in Scotland The Scottish Radicals - - - -

Strike of the Glasgow cotton -spinners -

The leaders tried and transported

Disclosures made at the trial -

Chartism in Scotland -

Social condition of Glasgow

The Scottish Poor Law -

Its burdens evaded by the rich

Dr. Chalmers's scheme of voluntary relief

Dr. AUson and the New Poor Law

Primitive conditions in the far north -

Telford's scheme of road-making

The " Sutherland Clearances " -

Wick and the northern fisheries

CHAPTER VII THE RELIGIOUS REACTION Growth of pietism after the Peace Scepticism amongst the Whigs

Thomas Chahners ; his early career

Movement against pluraUty, I813-I825

The Indian mission, 1824 . . . -

The Apocrypha controversy ....

Andrew Thomson and spiritual independence -

Re-union of the Seceders, 1820 ....

Ahenation of Evangelicals and Dissentei s

The Annuity Tax .....

Politics as a cause of the ahenation

Voluntaries and Disestabhshment

Patronage question revived ....

Veto and Chapel Acts, 1834 - Evangelical ascendency secured

Church Extension .....

The demand for additional endowments

Chalmers and the choice of a Moderator, 1837 -

Offer of assistance from the teinds, 1838

Chalmers as an orator .....

flis intellectual limitations ....

CHAPTER VIII The Auchterarder Case, 1837 - - - - - - 307

The Churcli claims spiritual independence .... 310

Commemoration of the Glasgow Assembly, 1838 - - - 312

The Non-Tntrusionists compared with the Covenanters - - 313

Their sentimental view of Scottish history .... 315

Auchterarder judgment confirmed, 1839 .... 3I6

The Church adheres to the Veto Act - - - - - 318

Claims the pastorate, but not the stipend .... 3I8

The Lethendy Case ....... 320

Mamoch and Strathbogie ...... 321

Scottish Presbytery and Anglican Episcopacy ... - 323

The Oxford Movement ....... 324

Attitude of the Whig Government ..... 326

The Church and the Tories 329

Lord Aberdeen as mediator ; his Bill, 1840 .... 331

The Non-Intrusionists opi)osed by the Moderates - - 335

Their view of Church and State ... . 336

Public opinion against them ...... 339

Except in the Highlands ; " The Men " - - - - 341

The Mamoch ordination, 1841 ...... 343

CandUsh disqualified for a professorship .... 344

Reaction against the Veto 346

The Duke of ArgyU's BiU - - - - . - 347

Strathbogie ministers deposed 348

Memorial to Sir Robert Peel 360

Sir George Sinclair's proposal ; " The Forty " - - - - 351

The Culsamond Case ....... 353

Sir James Graham and the Sinclair clause .... 355

The Claim of Right, 1842 357

The second Auchterarder Case ...... 359

The Convocation ....... 361

The Chapel Act and the Stewarton Case, 1843 - - - . 363

The Claim of Right rejected by Parliament .... 365

Chalmers resumes the leadership ..... 366

His financial schemes ....... 368

Secession, not disruption ...... 369

An impracticable ideal ....... 372

The temporal divisions which intersect our survey of the past may be compared, as mere measm^es of distance, to the parallels and meridians drawn by the geographer on his map; for, just as we study the physical formation of a country by tracing its mountain chains and river systems, and are not arrested in our course by lines of latitude and longitude, so the movements which traverse the face of history cannot reasonably be broken up into compartments of time ; and perhaps we may distinguish between the historian and the annalist by saying that the one thinks in epochs, the other in periods. Yet it is curious to reflect how often we may estimate the progress as well as the life of a nation in sections of a hundred years. All the four centuries, for example, which constitute the modern history of England, are roughly conterminous with phases of national development ; and each of them, considered as an epoch, has borrowed almost to the same extent from its successor. Thus the Tudor dictatorship was established in 1485 ; the destruction of the Spanish Armada, with which that dictatorship fulfilled its purpose, was accomplished in 1588 ; the expulsion of the Stewarts, who had resisted the growing demand for constitutional monarchy, took place in 1688 ; and the French Revolution, which inaugurated the rise of democracy in Europe, broke out in 1789. It is with the half-century of Scottish history which followed the last and greatest of these events that we are concerned in this work ; and, as the masses had to wait considerably longer for their admission to political power, we shall be occupied mainly with the state of things which prevailed before and after the enfranchisement of the middle class in 1832. A fuller instalment of democracy was always, however, an object both of hope and of dread, and we shall find that the chief characteristic of the period is the pressure of popular passions and ideas on political, religious and even intellectual Hfe. There is little, it may be supposed, in the history of Scotland during the preceding age to prepare one for the development of this force ; and our first task must be to consider how far its growth can be discerned under so unpromising a surface as that of the eighteenth century.

One is tempted at first sight to dismiss such an inquiry as useless on the ground that democracy in Scotland was an importation from France ; and, so long as our attention is confined to politics, this opinion may not be wholly disproved. The people was an entity unknown — and so, for that matter, was the nation — to the Scottish constitution. The Parliament, which came to an end in 1707, was neither popular nor national, but feudal ; and the first Earl of Stair characterised it in terms more accurate than welcome when he said that an Act of that assembly was " but a decreet of the Baron Court." So high was the franchise, and so limited in scope, that it was confined to sixty-six self-elective corporations, and to some two thousand landowners, whose charters were derived

THE SCOTTISH REPRESENTATION from the Crown ; nobles, gentry and burgesses formed one House ; and it was only — with one brief exception — during the last few years of its existence, when commercial rivalry with England had made it a real embodiment of the national spirit, that the Scottish Parliament emancipated itself from Government control and attained to freedom of legislation and debate. The Union did not alter the basis of this system : it merely eliminated most of the peers and burgh and shire members, and provided that the remainder should meet, not as a separate legislature at Edinburgh, but as an addition to the Lords and Commons at Westminster. The " Baron Court," thus reduced to a fragment and transported to a foreign soil, lost the hold it had recently obtained on public esteem, whilst the representation, which had always been its worst feature, survived intact — except for the growth of abuses — till 1832. Under such conditions the admission of Scotland to the wider field of British politics seemed only to have impoverished and contracted its public life. The sixteen peers, ostensibly elected by their brethren, but really nominated and even pensioned by the Crown, were notorious from the first as a " dead Court weight " ; their colleagues in the House of Commons were almost equally submissive ; and in 1762, when the country was clamouring for a national militia, a writer in the newspapers complained that nobody thought it worth while to inquire whether the Scottish members could be trusted to support this demand " or whether they are gone, like our drovers, to sell their votes as the others do their cattle."

So long as Scotland retained her mediaeval franchise, an improvement in the character of her representatives was rather to be desired than expected ; but it might have been supposed that she would gain in political enlightenment from association with a people whose institutions, however anomalous, were decidedly sounder and more advanced. Scotsmen, however, were in no mood to assimilate a constitution, which their previous experience had not enabled them to understand ; for the settlement of 1707, far from being the ripe fruit of friendship, had been imposed by wise statesmanship on two fiercely antagonistic peoples ; and, half a century later, the feud had not been healed. Whilst the Scots were disappointed in their hopes of commercial benefit from the Union, the English, who had aimed at security, were smarting under the recollection of Jacobite conspiracies and revolts ; their new fellow-citizens were known to them chiefly as obsequious voters and insatiable place-hunters ; and the unpopularity of the Scots in London rose to an unprecedented height, when George III., with Scottish members as his hirelings and a Scotsman as his Prime Minister, attempted to revive the tradition of personal rule. Much of the abuse heaped on Bute and his countrymen was, of course, the mere vapourings of jealousy and party spite ; but it had at least a basis of sense ; and this was well expressed by a shrewd and temperate writer who pointed out how much of the feudal and autocratic spirit still survived in Scotland, and declared that " constitutional power here in Scottish hands will, with some strong colour of reason, be always dreaded by the English."

That British nationality was becoming something more than a mere legal abstraction may, however, be inferred from the fact that at this crisis, so unfavourable to the growth of such a spirit, the Scottish members could not all be collected into the Government fold.

PROJECTS OF REFORM

Oswald and Sir Gilbert Elliot, the only two who had distinguished themselves in the previous reign, were never remarkable for independence, and both enlisted under Bute ; but George Dempster, whose long and honourable career began in 1762, was to prove himself a bold and enlightened Whig ; and it is significant that three of his countrymen voted with him against Bute's principal achievement, the Peace of Paris, and that one of these acted as teller with that anti-Scottish agitator, John Wilkes. Henceforth the Minister who shepherded the dumb voters from North Britain had always to report some " scabby sheep " ; and, twenty years later, the movement which had begun at Westminster was manifesting itself in the country.

Up to this point the spirit of reform in Scotland can be discerned only in occasional attempts to rectify the county franchise ; for that archaic qualification, dependent on the technicalities of feudal law, and fantastic enough at best, had been so grossly abused that, of some 2,500 persons enrolled as electors, little more than half were genuine. But the disasters of the American War had provoked an agitation in England for the exclusion of placemen and pensioners from Parliament and for an improvement in representation ; and this movement, which found many supporters amongst the Scottish middle class, was the first of its kind since the Union in which EngHshmen and Scotsmen alike took part.^ When, however, both Whigs and Tories had discredited themselves by their coalition under Fox and North, and the King had given his confidence to a minister so independent, so upright and so popular as the younger Pitt, the demand for parliamentary reform lost much of its force ; and the Scottish reformers,

' Meikle's Scotland and the French Revolution, p. 8.

who were more numerous in the burghs than in the counties, then resolved not to challenge the right of the town councils to elect members of Parliament, but to insist that these councils, which had long been self-elective, should be chosen by the people. A powerful organisation, comprising delegates from more than two-thirds of the burghs, devoted itself for eleven years to exposing the corruption and mismanagement of these exclusive oligarchies ; but Pitt's Government was unwilling to sanction a principle so far-reaching in its effects as that of popular election ; and the town councils contrived to prolong their resistance till the reformers themselves, intimidated by the excesses of the French Revolution, gave up their attempt.

Such secular agitation as had sprung up in Scotland before 1789 had, therefore, been confined mainly to municipal politics and to the better-class townspeople. The apathy of the masses was dissipated by the event which was to make this year memorable in the history of Europe ; but they had already awakened to a fuller industrial life ; and the germ of revolutionary fever transmitted from Paris could not have produced such an effect if the social organism had not thus become susceptible to its power.

The Union had justified its unpopularity by proving a slow and unequal stimulus to the development of commerce, and as late as 1746 the country was pronounced to be in a " declining and sinking condition " ; but the revival came at last, and during the thirty years which preceded the French Revolution, it went forward with amazing vigour. Glasgow, indeed, owing to its facilities for transatlantic trade, had benefited from the first ; and the sable canopy of its industrial greatness had early descended on the clear waters, the

INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS fragrant meadows and orchards of that once beautiful town. At this period Glasgow had completed the cycle of its development and decline as the largest tobacco emporium in Great Britain, and, having emerged undaunted from the havoc of the American War, was finding a more durable basis for its prosperity in the manufacture of cotton. A great canal, the greatest yet attempted in the United Kingdom, was bringing to its doors the shipping of the east coast ; improvements had been made in the channel of the Clyde ; and small coasting vessels, the precursors of a mighty fleet, were already ascending the river to the Broomielaw. Linen was the manufacture which had benefited most directly from the Union ; spinning and weaving, encouraged by the Government, spread rapidly from village to village ; and the three towns which were the chief centres of this industry had assumed something of their present guise. Paisley had won its reputation for thread, had eclipsed Spitalfields in the manufacture of silk gauze, and was now, like Glasgow, turning its attention to cotton. Perth was already famous for its dyeworks and bleach-fields. Dundee, a declining town at the Union, had suffered thereafter, in common with other eastern seaports, from English competition, and its population dwindled till about 1750 ; but flax and hemp more than re-established its prosperity, and 4000 persons in 1792 were said to be living on a piece of ground which, twenty years earlier, had contained only five or six houses. The production of woollen goods still lagged far behind that of linen ; but the making of hosiery contributed to the rise of Aberdeen, and the cloth manufacture had begun, though in a very small way, at Hawick and Galashiels.

More conspicuous in some districts than in others, the movement we are considering was in progress before the middle of the centm*y, but after 1760 we become conscious of a rapid and general advance. The Carron Iron Works, which were to furnish grates and stoves to almost every coal-burning household in Great Britain, and ordnance to every European Government, were estabhshed in that year. The North Bridge of Edinburgh, an indispensable preliminary to the New Town, was commenced in 1763 and finished in 1772 ; the quantity of paper manufactured in the surrounding district increased from 6,400 reams in 1763 to 100,000 in 1790 ; and at Leith, the port of Edinburgh, the shore dues rose during the first twenty years of this period from £580 to £4,000. Agriculture had shown a tendency to improvement since the Union, but it was not till 1760 that the ancient method of joint tillage was given up, and " the new husbandry," with its single tenant, long lease, rotation of crops and culture of grasses and turnips, came into general use. Roads that merited the name were almost unknown till about 1760, when the funds required for their upkeep were obtained through the commutation of personal labour ; and, sixteen years later, travelling was reported to have become " incredibly easy, expeditious and commodious." In the Highlands prosperity presented itself in a shape more acceptable to the capitalist class than to the people. The rearing of black cattle, which had long been the staple industry of these districts, flourished greatly under the level of high prices which prevailed from 1766 to 1780 ; but this caused a rise of rent and a consequent eviction of many small tenants ; and it was during these years that sheep-farming, which was to cause even greater profits and hardships, was gradually introduced.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

At a time of industrial expansion, when the ancient social system was everywhere breaking up, and town and country were alike being transformed, it needed only the influence of the French Revolution to evoke a strong popular spirit ; and, as the significance of this movement became manifest, the British people tended to fall apart into three distinct groups. There were the alarmists, tutored by Burke and comprising all the Tories and many of the Whigs, who detested the Revolution and made it a pretext for combating or postponing all liberal measures ; there were the followers of Fox, who regarded it as the nemesis of repression, to be propitiated in this country by judicious reform ; and there were the quasi-republicans, fired by the writings of Paine, and mostly of humble rank, who hailed it with, enthusiasm as the dawn of freedom. In 1792 Fox's party organised themselves as " The Friends of the People " with a view to obtaining shorter and more representative parliaments, and this society, from which Fox himself held aloof, was soon extended to Scotland ; but the industrial population which had sprung up in the principal towns — particularly in Dundee, Glasgow and Paisley, and even the peasantry, had imbibed stronger doctrine from Paine ; and associated with the Scottish branch of the society were many more or less revolutionary clubs. The burgh reformers, true to their resolution not to overstep the municipal sphere, refused — though some of their leaders were less scrupulous — to countenance this agitation ; but the failure of all attempts to popularise the town councils caused several riots ; a bad harvest aggravated the general discontent ; sheep-farming in the Highlands, " toll-money " on the new Lowland roads, provoked disturbances ; and a writer in the Scots Magazine declared that his countrymen had so efiectually awakened from their long apathy in regard to public affairs that half of them " seem to have become politically mad."

In December, 1792, the various societies held a Convention at Edinburgh ; but the proceedings, though attended by 140 delegates, testified rather to the zeal and disunion of the movement than to its strength. During the next few months, when public bodies were testifying their loyalty to the constitution and some of the wilder spirits were being prosecuted for sedition, the liberal cause in Edinburgh was reported to be losing ground ; but the refusal of the House of Commons in May to entertain proposals of reform was keenly resented ; and still more bitter feelings were aroused when Thomas Muir, an advocate, whom the societies had appointed chairman of their General Association, was sentenced on August 30, after a grossly unfair trial, to fourteen years' transportation. The effect of this conviction was to make constitutional little less dangerous than revolutionary agitation ; and the Scottish Friends of the People, whose connexion with the parent society in England had always been loose, now allied themselves with English associations much more extreme. In December, 1793, a so-called British Convention, which courted martyrdom by its ostentatious mimicry of French forms, was dispersed at Edinburgh, and several of its promoters followed Muir to Botany Bay. The agitation still continued, fostered by English and Irish intrigues and becoming more violent and reckless as it subsided into subterranean channels ; but in 1799, after two conspirators had been transported and one had suffered death, it was practically, if not finally, suppressed.

The period we are considering was one of no less

INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM distinction in letters and philosophy than in material welfare, and it may smrprise some readers to find how largely the political awakening of the nation was divorced from its intellectual life. Nothing at all resembling the fermentation of thought which was then in progress had been known in the previous history of Scotland ; and the intercourse of scholars and thinkers was almost as little disturbed by passion and prejudice as that which the unquestioned supremacy of science has secured for them in our own day. The notorious infidelity of Hume was no bar to his intimacy with men who delighted in his genius and personality whilst they regretted his opinions. Robertson, Blair and Carlyle, who led the Moderate party in the Church, were his devoted friends ; Reid and Campbell, the philosophers of orthodoxy, were content to be known as his " friendly adversaries " ; and Blair gave utterance to a truth, which was soon to be lost and has only recently been recovered, when he said that the proper object of censure was " not freedom of thought but licentiousness of action." The spirit of dispassionate inquiry, spreading from the philosophical to the religious sphere, had no doubt strengthened with a vein of scepticism this tolerant temper ; but such a temper was not unnatural at a time when dogmatism had gone out of fashion, and when many of the orthodox agreed with Wesley in regarding religion as more a matter of emotion than of logic. Professor Gregory, indeed, most devout of pietists, declared that " the Heathens " were all powerful, and that the Deists of his youth had become the Atheists of his riper years ; but even Gregory confessed that he had never read a theological treatise, and associated amicably with the men whose opinions he abhorred.

It might have been supposed that when the Scottish democracy awoke, vigorous but dazed, from its long sleep, it would turn for inspiration and guidance to these leaders of thought ; but this was just the quarter in which it was least likely to find help. The influence of Hume, who had died in 1776, was all in favour of order and repose ; his friends, who still administered the Church, had almost succeeded as enthusiasts for patronage in strangling its popular life ; Dundas, the high priest of Toryism, was their political patron ; and Sir Gilbert Elliot, writing as a Whig from Edinburgh in 1782, congratulated himself on having " found one just man in Gomorrah." ^ The apparent paradox may, however, be readily explained. The literary revival had begun in the ecclesiastical sphere as a reaction against the turbulence and fanaticism which had long been associated with Presbytery ; it aimed at social as well as intellectual distinction, and, though afterwards much improved in breadth and tone, it always retained something of its fastidious and exclusive spirit. It had thus much in common with the great liberal movement which preceded the French Eevolution — a movement rational and humane but far from democratic, which sought, not to emancipate the people, but to place them under better, if no less absolute, government than that of courtiers, mistresses and priests. The men whose writings had given such lustre to the eighteenth century in Scotland were rapidly dying out in its last decade. The social conditions under which they had lived and worked were passing away with the dawn of municipal and parliamentary reform, and there were none of the same school to take their place. The awakening of the masses