theory of the General Assembly be correct, it unquestionably lay beyond their judicial grasp, and also beyond their legislative grasp, except under the condition of a union, for the decision of this particular dispute, between the Commons and the Assembly.[1]
It will be obvious to all our readers that, in alluding to the Free Church controversy, our object is not to excite feelings but to extricate principles. The constitutional points of the case are all that we care about. The Veto Law may be regarded as an unjustifiable act, because it was an encroachment on the rights of property. Patronages were property—they could be bought and sold. The Veto Law depreciated their value. But the question we have to deal with is not the conduct of the Assembly, but solely its amenability. Had the conduct been a thousand times more unjustifiable than it was, so long as the Assembly was not amenable, it could not be constitutionally touched. But if there be any truth in the origin which we have assigned to this body; if it be true (and who can doubt it?) that it is our old Scottish Parliament existing under the phasis in which it transacted ecclesiastical business, it is obvious that it is responsible to no higher authority—that no authority higher than itself exists. Our Scottish Parliament is abolished quoad civilia; but it never was abolished quoad sacra. It still exists for the transaction of ecclesiastical business. Let the Parliament of England look to it.
When the General Assembly found that the British Parliament would not entertain their case, and that they had nothing to expect at the hands of government, the Free Church secession took place; the ministers gave up their livings without waiting to be turned out,—without waiting to see whether they could be turned out. We do regard this step as a most fatal blunder in a constitutional point of view. It was an admission that the state had a right to the temporalities of the Assembly, whenever that body passed and gave effect to enactments which the state
- ↑ It might perhaps be argued that the General Assembly was exempt even from the legislative control of the House of Lords, and was, in fact, its own House of Lords, inasmuch as the Scottish nobles, by the terms of its original constitution, had a seat within its walls, and inasmuch as there was no separate chamber of Scottish peers when it was established. But to press this argument would, we think, be refining too far upon the existing British constitution.
