burgh. We would propose, then, that Leith should have a Council to itself, independent of Edinburgh, and that the interference of the Council of Edinburgh in the affairs of the harbour should cease, on condition of Leith paying to the citizens of Edinburgh a certain sum, as value for the expenses laid out by the Council of Edinburgh, taking a share of the debt incurred by Edinburgh on account of the harbour, and this sum or share to be fixed by Parliament.

We will now allude to the audacious proposition lately made in the Council of Edinburgh, to obtain an act for selling the feus belonging to the city, or rather, we should say, the citizens. In regard to this, we maintain that it is nothing more than another scheme of this close and corrupt body to despoil the citizens and burgesses of their property; there are enough of ways and means to pay off the debt of the city without having recourse to this most fraudulent one, and we sincerely trust it will not be successful; for it is evident that the present squad of corruptionists intend by this measure to leave the Reformed Council and Citizens nothing but debts and incumbrances, as a legacy of the old corrupt system. We hope, however, that the inhabitants will watch the harpies whose eyes are intently fixed on the prey; for, let them once gain the act, legalising the sale of the feus, and there will be such a scene of jobbing and bribery which beggars all the powers of the pen to describe. The Council apparently wishes to make a genteel finish by this feu-rouping scheme of theirs, but we hope the inhabitants of Edinburgh will successfully baulk their nefarious intentions, and reserve to themselves, as a body, and for the joint benefit of the city, what the present self-elected cravens pant so intensely after. A slyer trick of financial duplicity could not be devised by Metternich himself.*

Nothing illustrates to greater advantage, the manner in which the City of Edinburgh's enormous debt has been contracted, than the lavish way in which the self-elected functionaries squander the funds placed at their disposal. Will it be believed when we state, that it takes no less a sum than upwards of Five Thousand Pounds to pay the salaries of the Provost and other public officers, whose united services are not worth Four Hundred Pounds.

To conclude, we would hint, that as the paying Government taxes confers a right for voting for a Member of Parliament, the payment of Burgh taxes should also constitute the right to vote for the Burgh Council. This is Five Pounds in Edinburgh, but we suppose it varies in the lesser Burghs. Now, by investing the Five Pound Householders with the Burgh franchise, it will have the advantage of preparing them for the extension of the Parliamentary franchise, which we trust will take place ere long. We would humbly propose, also, that all who were Burgesses previous to the passing of the Burgh Reform Bill, should have votes, whether they pay a Five Pound rent or not, as also all Incorporation Freemen, but, as we have already hinted, with this provision, that they should not have a double vote, that is, as Burgesses and Five Pound Householders. We hope, also, that the Burgh Bill will be plain and concise, relieved as much as possible of all repetitions and useless technicalities which serve only to confuse the reader. We would therefore advise the inhabitants of the Scottish Burghs, to look to themselves in this critical conjuncture,

We understand that about Three Hundred Pounds cover the expenses of the Glasgow Town Council, and they can vie at any time in regard to real utility and public usefulness with our own spendthrift Council. These salaries must, however, be retrenched, and that too, with an unsparing hand immediately. It would almost appear that every snug office and situation connected with the Council by patronage, is paid in the same lavish way. How comes it to pass, we ask, that the Treasurer of a Charitable Institution (George Heriot's Hospital) receives such an enormous salary as Five Hundred Pounds per annum? Is Two Hundred Pounds not quite sufficient for such an object? We maintain it is, and that, were Three Hundred Pounds taken from the present exhorbitant salary, the person who at present fills the office would be compelled to do the duty himself in place of keeping two clerks to do it for him. We may also notice, that the individual who receives such a handsome salary for doing nothing, actually allots an area apartment, that is, a servant's drudgery room, for the transaction of the business of an institution paying him so liberally! Really this is too bad,— -we say it is quite unjustifiable, but this must be looked after, and that shortly. He ought to reside in the Hospital, and the Three Hundred Pounds which would thus be saved, should be set aside in order to increase the number of boys from 180 to 200, as the house is quite large enough to hold 50 or 100 more.

on the successful termination of which, depends their municipal prosperity, and, in a still greater degree, their indiyidual respectability.*

SECTION XXXI.

REFORM IN THE CHURCHES OF SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND.

THERE is not an object of greater importance, nor one in which the happiness of the peoole of Britain is more concerned, than in the paramount question of ecclesiastical reform; a question involving interests both spiritual and temporal, democratical and aristocratical, and one which will require the greatest attention of a reformed legislature to settle and adjust to the satisfaction of the British nation.

We do not intend here to enter into any argument in order to demonstrate the necessity of a sweeping reform, both in the churches of Scotland and England; for thanks to the political writers of the present day, that necessity is now put beyond the shadow of a doubt. The object then to which we shall direct your attention, is the extent of that reform which the legislature should institute in the now corrupted churches of Scotland and England.

To begin with the Church of Scotland, the first and

* There are few places in Edinburgh which a stranger, on his arrival, desires more to see than the University Museum. Yet this most instructive sight is, from the exorbitant sum charged for admission, actually shut up from the public. This is another nefarious act of our blessed Town Council, this perfection of our odious Burgh system, but which ought not to be permitted a single day longer. In our opinion, no more ought to be charged than what will be sufficient to keep a person or two for she wing the Museum, and we think the nominal sum of Sixpence quite enough for this purpose, and there is no fear but it will be a good situation for some poor fellow in want of employment. And by all means raise the Mineralogical Professor's salary, don't let that be a hindrance in the way of doing an act of justice to the community, we would rather want the worthy Professor's services altogether than submit to be imposed upon in this scandalous way.

most prominent abuse which should be rectified is the system of patronage. To attempt the description of this invention for the moulding of the Church of Scotland to the purposes of darkness and hypocrisy, would at this time be totally superfluous. We shall only mention that it owes its introduction in its present form to the temporising spirit of the clergy of 1688.* It is a system that was utterly abhorred and disowned by John Knox, and the institution of it was against this and other antichristian errors, for which the great body of the Scottish martyrs laid down their lives. Patronage, then, is the most prominent error of the Church, be it either in its established or voluntary form, and from it flows the laziness of the clergy in the discharge of their duties; their notorious subserviency to the rulers of the state, so long as these rulers imitate them in pursuing a similar career of dereliction of duty; although it is too true that should the ru

• Another defect attending the churches of Scotland and England, is the shocking laziness of the clergy. Most of them are in fact little better than drones and sinecurists; and the reason is obvious, they are obtruded in almost every instance upon the people, and consequently they are quite independent, and care nothing for them. Nothing illustrates this better, than their practice of reading sermons in place of preaching them. It is a well known fact, that in all times, and in all places, preaching has been more beneficial to the church than reading; and that in every place where a revival in religion has taken place, it has been by the agency of preached sermons given under the direct impulse of the Holy Spirit. This unholy reading practice, therefore, should be abolished; for when or where did we ever here of a revival of religion caused by reading a sermon? Never; it is morally impossible that such an effect can take place, because it is a practice totally opposed to the working of the Holy Spirit upon the minds of men. It is a remarkable fact, that there was no reading of sermons before the introduction of patronage, and this introduction took place in 1688, from which period, we date the introduction of sermon reading, at least so far as regards the Church of Scotland. But when patronage gives up the ghost, which we know it will do ere long, we expect that this unholy practice will also cease to exist. There cannot be a doubt now resting on the minds of every unbiassed individual, that patronage has been productive of as much evil to the church of Christ, as Burgh corruption has been to the State. In short, the one is merely temporal boroughmongering, the other spiritual; and the latter is as ruinons in its effects to the church, as the former is to the State.

lers commence to reform the church's abuses, it is then, and then only that the government becomes in their holy estimation the enemies of the cross, the propagators of infidelity, and every thing that is bad in the vocabulary of priestcraft and clerical corruption. To say more about patronage would be quite supererogatory, and we pass on to the next inconsistency, and that is, owning the head of the state, as temporal head of the Church. Now, this is a doctrine for which our time-serving divines of the Church of Scotland have no authority from the sacred Word, and if they have it not from thence, where is it to be found? Surely none of them will have the satanic hardihood to maintain that they can find it in the false and antichristian supremacy of the state, or in its head? We hope not. The consequence is, that this long established assumption of despotic kings, (Henry VIII. and James VI. in particular) must be dispensed with, as there is not the least doubt existing now among all real evangelical men, respecting the antichristian nature of the unholy usurpation.* It is an usurpation which John Knox and his fellowreformers would have died rather than have owned. It is an usurpation and error which caused the persecution of presbyterians in Scotland at the hands of the ignorant and the fanatical Episcopalians; and it is an usurpation which, so long as it exists, will essentially impair the usefulness and vigour of the Church of Scotland. These two, the one a constitutional, and the other a practical error, are the only two material inconsistencies in the "Auld Kirk"; and then from these flow all the wickedness that exists,

* In regard to the proverbial laziness of Established ministers, nothing can be brought to prove it in a more advantageous manner, than the conduct of the Presbytery of Edinburgh, mostly composed of all the council of Edinburgh's nominees, in regard to two of their brethren who have dared to step out of the rules laid down by these Edinburgh worthies, respecting the number of times for dispensing the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The Rev. Mr Grey, and the Rev. Mr Tait, seeing the necessity of dispensing the sacrament four times a-year, in place of two times, have been interdicted by this indolent Presbytery, but have been released from the interdict by the synod, who are not so religiously preposterous as this Christian body. Some of the members, however, to carry their ill-timed obstinacy to the last point, have appealed to the General Assembly. So much for clerical usefulness.