The Sun.
London, England, 1841-05-10 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, MONDAY, MAY 10, 1841.

sionists when they obtained power. Had the
same system been adopted by the Moderates 110
Evangelical Moderator would have been elected
for the last hundred years, and not one Presby-
tery out of ten would have returned an Evan-
gelical. So much for the election system of the
Moderates. The other statements of the Globe

respecting minor points are of the same descrip-
tion. Will the Times tell us, exclaims the Non-
intrusionist, " When the Presbytery of Lang-
holm returned in rotation Mr. CLARK, of Half-
Morton?" We answer, be has been ordained
only two years, and as there are seven members
of Presbytery, his turn may not yet come for
three years. " The COOKS (uncle and nephew)
of Laurencekirk," says the Globe, are present
and ready every year to fight the battles of mo-

deration, and owe thoir seats to election.
There is only one Coox of Laurencekirk ;
the other, Dr. COOK, who succeeded to the
place of Principal HILL in the Assembly, is re-
turned by the University of St. Andrew's, and

has no connection whatever with a Presbytery.
Mr. ROBERTSON is returned for Ellon, because
all, or nearly all, the members are Moderates,
and he merely takes the place of the member in

rotation, who declines to serve. But it is need-
less to argue this question with the writer in the

Globe. He is as ignorant of the state of the

Scotch Church as he is uncharitable in taking for
granted that the Strathbogie ministers are to be

deposed; and all honest straightforward Presby-
terians must rejoice that the firebrands have got
such a miserable advocate. We are only sur-
prised that a respectable paper should admit ab-

surdities which exposes it to ridicule in every
part of Scotland.

We will not venture to say that the eyes of
Europe are upon Lord PALMERSTON, but we may
safely affirm that the eyes of Mr. DAVID URQU-
HART are. Nothing his Lordship says or dies
escapes the notice of the ex-Secretary of Lega-
tion, and as he makes no secret of his discoveries,
we presume he chooses the hours when Lord
PALMERSTON is asleep to note them down, and
prepare them for the press. That hatred is more
sleepless and more vigilant than love, is proved
by the fact that the labours of all his Lordship's
admirers united, would hardly equal in amount
the mass of evidence which Mr. URQUHART has
brought together in a variety of forms to prove
him a traitor to his Sovereign and his country-
From pamphlets in an octavo size, Mr. URQU-
HART has ascended to quartos, and as the bulki-
ness of his effusions keep pace with the supposed
magnitude of Lord PALMERSTON'S guilt, we ex-
pect soon to see him figuring in folio, to the
mutual profit of the printer and the cheese-
monger. The office of the writer who would de-
vote his leisure to the exposure of all the real
faults, mistakes, oversights, and blunders of the
best-intentioned Minister would be no sinecure ;
how great, therefore, must be the labour thrown

away and the ingenuity wasted by the wight who
finds in the ordinary occurrences of every day
materials for the history of some unfledged trea-
son against the mother country ? We stated on
a former occasion that we would not attempt the
refutation of the absurd charges brought by Mr.
URQUHART against Lord PALMERSTON. It
is enough that nobody believes them—not
even the clique who proclaim Mr. UR-
QUHART their idol. But we cannot ab-
stain from deploring the infatuation which pre-
vents Mr. URQUHART seeing that he, too, is play-
ing the game of Russia, however unconsciously.
He ought to know that the rabid fury with which
he assails Lord PALMERSTON cannot be mistaken

—that it is prompted by hatred, not of the Minis-
ter, but of the man. He ought also to be aware
that in grossly exaggerating, as he does, the
dangers which threaten us from Russia, he but
parodies the silly conduct of the boy in the fable
who cried "wolf" so often that no one would
listen to him when he cried " wolf" in earnest.
Were Mr. URQUHART prompted by patriotism,
instead of by passion, to write as he does, his
censures would be directed against the Cabinet
generally, and not against the only Member of
it with whom he is known to be on the worst
terms. Lord PALMERSTON'S
policy is the policy
of the Cabinet to which he belongs ; but if an
individual be selected for censure, it is surely the
Premier who assumes its direction.

We are the uniform apologists of no Cabinet.
We support no Minister in any
project which
we deem injurious to the national welfare. But
although we have on many occasions found
reason to condemn courses of procedure adopted
by Lord PALMERSTON, we never countenanced,
made upon him
nor shall we ever countenance, the wholesale,
indiscriminate, and foul attacks
by the Urquhartite faction. We are for the good

politics, as
old English principle of fair-play in
in fisty-cuff warfare. Besides, taken all in all,
the foreign administration of Lord PALMERSTON

has been conducted with great ability, and

and throwing the minister of the parishioners on the vo-
luntary principle for his support.
Of the column of the Times' article, a single short
paragraph alone deserves any notice :
" Heretofore it has been the practice in most Scotch
Presbyteries, to elect clerical representatives to the As-
sembly according to the principles of rotation ; but, as a
proof of the dead partisanship of the dominant faction
in the Church, they have this year violently set aside
the rotation system, and packed that venerable house
with their own obsequious tools ! It is due to the Pres-
bytery of Glasgow to say, that, as far as they are con-
cerned, this pitiful piece of pettitbgging has been man-
fully and successfully resisted. In the Edinburgh Pres-
bytery-, however, Messrs. Candlish and Cunningham,
have been thrust into the Assembly out of their proper
turn, and both of these modest persons voted fur their
own intrusion—in defiance of the prescriptive right of
some of their reverend brethen ! The ensuing Assembly,
therefore, is a packed one, to all intents and purposes."
Now, this is all untrue. It never has been the prac-
tice in the Scotch Presbyteries to send representatives to
the Assembly entirely by rotation. Heretofore, as now,
the practice has been to send them partly by rotation and
partly by election. Both parties in the Church feel the
necessity of sending their ablest men invariably to the
Assembly, and this they do by election. But so de-
cidedly have the moderate Presbyteries adopted and
used the election principle in sending representatives to
the Assembly, that several moderate Presbyteries have
never allowed their Evangelical members to go to the
Assembly at all ; for instance, there are two Evangeli-
cals in the Presbytery of Elgin who have never been
returned ; and will !-,he Times tell us when the Presbytery
Lsughohne returned by rotation Mr. Clark of Half-
Morton ? But the Presbytery of Ellon every year sends
Mr. Robertson—every Assembly sees Paul of Tully-
nessle, Forbes of Boharm, Gibbon of Lonmay, and the
Cooks (uncle and nephew) of Laurencekirk, present and
ready to fight the battles of moderatism, and owing their
seats to election and not to rotation. Of the nine repre-
sentatives of the Evangelical Presbytery of Edinburgh
in the Assembly about to be held, six have been chosen
by rotation and only three by election—Candlish, Cun-
ningham, and Chalmers. Unlike several moderate
Presbyteries, the Evangelical Presbyteries have never
used the election principle to the exclusion of moderates
who would come in by rotation. So much for the en-
suing Assembly being a packed one !
We will not adopt the words of the Globe and
say " this is all untrue," but certainly there never
was such a perversion of facts, such a display of
ignorance on an important question, and such a
wanton attempt to transfer the blame from the
guilty to the innocent, contained in the same
number of lines. We are not the advocates of
the journal which the Globe attacks. At first,
it took up the part of the Non-intrusionists, and
then went over to the other side, and we are
ready to make allowance for the change, on the
ground that it had been misinformed as to the
state of the Scotch Church ; but this can be no
excuse for the course pursued by the evening
paper. The word entirely, which the Globe gives
in italics, is a pure invention, and the description
of the practice in most Scotch Presbyteries, " to
elect representatives to the General Assembly,
according to the principle of rotation," is strictly
correct. Till the Non-intrusionists obtained
power, it was rarely or ever departed from.
We remember no instance in which it was set
aside, but we know many in which it was adhered
to, often to the disadvantage of both the
Moderate and the Evangelical party. In the
Edinburgh Presbytery, which guided most of
the others, Dr. INGLis, a Moderate, and Sir
HARRY MoNcRrEFF, an Evangelical, the leaders
of their respective parties, were often excluded
when important questions were to be decided,
because they renounced the principle of election.
The intrusion commenced with the Non-intru-