because it has now brought us into the most undesirable attitude of difference with the Government, and introduces a case in which our privileges are manifestly and practically in danger)—when this inauspicious grant was first made to our fathers, it was, in fact, but a pittance of what the Ministers of the Presbyterian Church enjoyed when they were first settled in Ulster. Your fathers were stripped of their endowments by Cromwell, because of their unshaken loyalty to the ungrateful Charles-a man whose best apology has been, that he was so busy in reconciling his enemies that he had not time to think of his friends. (d) When this inauspicious grant was augmented by the beneficence, and, I will say, gratitude of the House of Hanover -whom the Presbyterians had been mainly instrumental in calling to the throne of these realms-the government of the day stipulated, that they would "studiously avoid interfering with you discipline," and publicly pledged the public honor, that they would " never withdraw the endowment from any one Minister while it was continued to the whole body." I will give, now, to Sir Wm. Gossett, not the thirteen days to which he has limited the congregation of Clough, nor the forty and odd days to which they have been afterwards extended, but I will grant him his whole period of life (and may it be long, and may his honours increase,) to reconcile the Government stipulations of 1803 with the Castle mandates of 1831.

Subtracting a day for the conveyance of Sir Wm. Gossett's letter, the congregation of Clough are told, that unless within twelve days they settle a most complicated legal case, by arbitration or otherwise, the royal grant will be withdrawn.—I regard this twelve days declaration of Sir Wm. Gosset as one of the deepest importance; not because it involves the interest of one of our Congregations, our Minister and his family-but I fear the threat here hung out in terrorem, is only the commencement of a plan for a more extended stripping of our poor Presbyterian Churches. But though the Government that threatens one, should strip the whole, and turn us out naked on the cold green hills of Ulster, the God who " tempers the wind to the shorn lamb," will also temper the storm in your capacity of endurance. Our fathers were respectable in their "deep poverty," before the grant was received; their sons will be respectable should it be taken away. (Hear, hear.) Do I then dread the withdrawal? No, I do not dread it. say to the Government, with the most loyal respect, take it from us if you will, and give it to Maynooth or to the Arians; the poor pittance of £75 a-year, of which our Minister and his family may be deprived, will indeed be a sorry addition; but because it will arise from the deprivation of our Orthodox Minister, they will regard it as the opima spolia. And I will say honestly and fearlessly to the Government, if you think it right to deprive one Minister of his endowment, you need not pause there, for I trust there is spirit enough in the Presbyterian Body to say and to feelif you deprive one, you must deprive us all-(Hear!) We will not stand calmly by and see a poor brother openly robbed. I do not mean to apply the word "robbery" to the Government-and let me not be misunderstood in this respect-but I do mean to apply it to those persons by whom the Government has been deceived. The Government, however, is too impartial and too clear-sighted to remain under delusion, and our cause is too good to leave room for doubt. I believe that so long as the grant is recommended and continued, the Government owe the endowment to our Minister; I believe that over its appropriation the Lord Lieutenant has no control; and I support my opinion thus-The warrant

was issued by his Grace of Northumberland in the regular form; came down to your agent in the ordinary manner and the original compact with Government provides, that it cannot be withdrawn from ONE, UNless it be withdrawn from ALL,

;

Well then, the endowment was actually granted, but the Government took it back. And why did they take it back? The allegation was, that it must be suspended till the location of the Minister should be settled. (e) Well then, who are to settle our discipline, and pronounce upon the regularity of our ordinations? Is it the Government? No, indeed; they are denied the power by the canons of our church; they are barred from the interference by their own voluntary disclaimer. We alone can settle the question, and we have already done so by the official certificate of our Moderator. Whom then do the Government require or expect to settle our discipline? We presume it must be legal or mercantile arbitrators. A legal question we are ready to submit to lawyers; a mercantile question we submit to merchants; but an ecclesiastical question, respecting the settlement of a Minister, we submit to neither.

So soon as the threat of withdrawing the endowment is held out, the Arian party come forward and propose to leave the case to two merchants! Two merchants! to settle a case of ecclesiastical discipline! No, no! ne sutor ultra crepedam is at all times a good advice, and never more applicable than in the present instance. I respect mercantile industry, and intelligence, and integrity, as much as any man; but when two merchants are proposed to regulate the discipline of the Synod of Ulster, and settle the question of her ordinations-I say, gentlemen, pardon me. Were it a question of debtor and creditor, I know not a merchant of reputation whose decision I would mistrust; but in a case of ecclesiastical discipline, I know few merchants, indeed, who would venture to give an opinion, and I will honestly confess, that I know not one to whom I should submit the question. I say it again, I say it! openly, and I say it advisedly, there lives not that merchant to whom, as such, I would submit a case of ecclesiastical regulation. Even had I no scriptural warrant, as I have abundantly, for this determination, I think there is a sufficiency of common sense amongst merchants to see the absurdity of making them judges over the ministry. What would two hundred merchants think of submitting an intricate case of commerce to two clergymen, myself, for example, being one of them? They would laugh at the proposal.-They would tell the clergy to mind their own affairs, and keep to their pulpits. So say I, in return; let merchants mind their own affairs, and keep to their counting-houses.-But in rejecting a mercantile arbitration of an ecclesiastical question, I take still higher ground. I am a Presbyterian of the old school, and will not consent that the laity become the ecclesiastical judges of the clergy. The Church of England groans, because her discipline has been absorbed into the civil courts, and lawyers exercise the functions that belong of right to her ministers; and shall the Presbyterian Churches, yielding the right of the eldership to judge the eldership, surrender into the hands of merchants the highest case of their ecclesiastical jurisdiction? It cannot be. The question here to be judged is one purely ecclesiastical, and by judges ecclesiastical it must be determined. To consent to a mercantile arbitration over an ecclesiastical appointment, were a speeimen of pure erastianism, against which our church has ever most de

"

cidedly protested. But did you not consent to the arbitration of lawyers? That we did, as you shall hear, touching a point where lawyers were the most competent judges-the equitable right to a house and land, on the principle of a bill filed in Chancery. But the point originally mooted and specified by his grace of Northumberland, was the settlement of the Minister-a point purely ecclesiastical, and which was therefore excepted from the arbitration by lawyers to which we consented. (f) The same is the chief point still to be decided, and is no doubt chiefly contemplated among the "matters in dispute," which Sir William Gossett and Mr. Stanley have purposed for arbitration. But if all the points at issue cannot be settled by arbitration-how, it may be asked, are the Government to decide between the opposing claims of the Arians and the Synod? I answer at once-The Government are to decide by their own compact with the Synod, ratified in 1803. The word of our Government is publicly pledged: let that word be fulfilled, and we ask no more. Let the Government refer to the original letters of Mr. Secretary Marsden, and I hesitate not to declare my conviction, that the late mandates will be instantly recalled, and the endowment grant to the Minister recognized by the Synod. (g)

1 blame not his Majesty's Government for issuing to us this extraordinary demand. The Government, not being Presbyterian, is unacquainted with the first principles of our constitution. Had Government been aware of these principles, I am fully convinced they never would have called upon us for a sacrifice of our principles-still less would they have called upon that sacrifice under the operation of a threat. Our covenanted fathers endured twenty-eight years of unremitting and unrelenting persecution, rather than surrender the sacred principles of Presbyterianismand the loss of seventy-five pounds a year will never affright their sons into the surrender of the birth-right for which their fathers died. His Majesty's Government, I repeat it, not being acquainted with Presbyterian principles, do not see, that in commanding us to submit, amongst other matters, the question of the settlement of a Minister to arbitration, our obedience would be a virtual unchurching of the Synod-a renunciation of the kingship and supremacy of Christ. The moment the Government become aware of this fact, I confidently anticipate they will recall their order; at all events, it is honest to declare, that, touching the settlement of our Minister, it cannot be obeyed till we cease to be Presbyterians, till we cease to affirm that Christ is the king and head of the Church. What related to a possession of temporal property, we earnestly sought to submit to arbitration, and, foiled in that attempt, we now seek it by an appeal to the laws; but what relates to the settlement of a Minister, we will submit to no tribunal on earth: in that case we stand accountable and accounting to Christ alone. Nor do I for a moment suspect his Majesty's Government of any wish to undermine or overturn our Presbyterian constitution. They have issued their order, being unacquainted with our principles, and will, I trust, speedily and generously recall it, so far as it trenches upon principles that we cannot renounce, and would deprive us of privileges that we cannot surrender. In all things temporal we will render to the King an undivided loyalty and a prompt obedience; but in all things spiritual Christ is our King, and in the spiritualities of his church our loyalty and our obedience are for him alone.(Hear, hear.)

What would the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Scot land say, were the Government to order them to submit the settlement of

one of their Ministers to arbitration? There is not a Lord Commissioner in Scotland who would venture to make the demand. The Synod of Ulster is, indeed, a body very different from the General Assembly of Scotland; but we are one in origin, and we are one in principle: and so long as the Synod of Ulster stand by their Presbyterian principles, they will hold a rank in Ireland as honoured and influential as the General Assembly possesses in Scotland. But our influence is now at stake, because our principles are at stake—and if we barter one of our principles for a few pounds of money, we must forfeit that influence which it is equally the interest of the Government and the Church that we should continue to possess. (Hear.)

On receipt of the first letter from Sir W. Gosset, a remonstrance was immediately forwarded, and a second from Mr. Stanley extended the thirteen days to forty-three, the middle of this current July, and reiterating the threat of withdrawing the grant, in case of non-compliance. (h) Perhaps Mr. Stanley has been persuaded we will quicken our paces when threatened with loss. Little does he know the Ulster Presbyterians, if he imagines them so mean and mercenary, as to do, from dread of loss, what they would not do for love of peace and justice. We are poor indeed, but, thank God, we are independent.(Hear, hear.) We were honestly anxious for arbitration; but, as I shall show, we were foiled in our attempts. We would not submit to be over-reached by cunning, and we will not submit to be compelled by power.-Let us be threatened not with the withdrawal of one man's share, but let coercion be attended by the withdrawal of the whole, and I believe the experiment would be utterly unsuccessful. might be reduced to poverty, but we would retain our integrity.—(Hear, hear.)

We

To my Lord Anglesey, Mr. Stanley, or Sir W. Gosset, I attach rot a shadow of blame; they have been deceived-they have been misled. But how do I know they have been deceived? Why, certainly it is not from direct evidence, but from analogy. I know that his Grace of Northumberland and Lord Leveson Gower were deceived, and, therefore, I infer that similar causes have produced similar effects with my Lord Anglesey and Mr. Stanley I here openly and fearlessly declare, that I have the information directly from the lips of the individual by whom our cause was most wofully misrepresented to the late Lord Lieutenant's confidential advisers. He was my own intimate friend; but absence from his country, and the influence of enemies upon his return, alienated him, not from me, but from our cause; and made him, by his rank and character, the vehicle of their misrepresentations. Not to the open honesty of my Lord Anglesey, as a soldier, nor to the practised wisdom of Mr. Stanley, as a politician, do I trace the injuries we have sustained, or the judgments with which we are threatened; but I trace them to the outcry raised by Arianism, whilst Orthodoxy has been silent; I trace them to our want of aristocratical protection; I trace them to the calumnies by which our friends have been cooled, and our enemies excited; and I trace them to that overruling providence of God, who permitted them to arise, that our faith may be proved, and our patience made perfect.--(Hear, hear.)

We have no means of approaching my Lord Anglesey or Mr. Stanley through the influence of powerful friends; but, for men constituted like them, we have what is far better-we have the means of approaching them, to show, not by whom, but how far, they have been misled. Weak men would, indeed, refuse to retrace their steps, but it is a glory for men of talents and integrity to discover and amend their mistakes.

I say, then, to my Lord Anglesey and Mr. Stanley "You have interfered with our Presbyterian discipline! We have certified the settlement of our Minister, and you have called it into question; and this you have done, through oversight of our compact with Government, and through the misrepresentations of our case, which we have not been allowed to correct." I would farther say to my Lord Anglesey and Mr. Stanley-"The threat of withdrawing the endowment from our Minister, would, if executed, be a breach of assolemn a compact as ever was made between man and man.-The endowment was granted, the warrant to pay was put into the hands of our agent. The warrant, that grants to an individual, cannot be recalled while the King continues the grant to the whole body : but the King continues to patronize the whole body, therefore the Lord Lieutenat cannot withdraw it from one. This interference of the Government is an infringement of our discipline, of which the Synod of Ulster is compelled to complain. How our enemies have succeeded in misrepresenting our cause, and deceiving the Government into the threat of a practical breach of a public engagement, I cannot tell. But we have been so long silent under wrongs, that I presume they supposed us capable of any act of submission, and any endurance of prac tical degradation. But if our enemies did so reckon upon our passiveness, they have been egregiously deceived. The cause of our silence was not insensibility of our wrongs, or consciousness of our weakness; but it arose from the frequent changes of the Government, which prevented any Chief Secretary from understanding our cause, and from our unwillingness to disturb the public mind with the report of our complaints; and chiefly it arose from the extraordinary fact, that the original representation of the Antrim Presbytery we have not been able to obtain from the Castle, in the space of nine months, though we have applied to three Secretaries, and have had an actual promise from one. The frequent change of Adminis tration may account for our disappointments, and also serve to shew why the Government yet remain unacquainted with the real merits of the case. The letters of the two Secretaries row leave us no alternative. We must appeal to the Government respectfully, yet decisively. Failing success there (an event that is possible, though I cannot imagine how) the Parlia ment is open to your petition, and surely there will be found some one there kind enough and bold enough to plead our cause. And still, should your complaints remain unheard or unredressed, you have William the IV. whose generous bounty, while flowing down to the green vales of Ulster, has been arrested in its passage and retained in the purlieus of Dublin, Should you be disappointed in your last appeal, and if you must finally be deprived of your endowments, your only resource, then, is submission to Providence, and contentment in honest poverty. (Hear, hear.) But if you stop short in maintaining your rights until you have made all these efforts, you deserve to have your necks galled with the yoke of an intolerable patronage, and to be deprived, from time to time, by the misrepres sentations of calumny, of those sacred rights and privileges which you made not an effort to defend (Hear.)

I again repeat my decided conviction that the Government could never seriously intend to deprive you of your rights, or to violate its solemn engagements. (Hear.) The Government has been deceived and misled, and will, I doubt not, speedily rectify the error, by restoring the endow. ment of your Minister. But, should I be in error in those favourable