Since 1847, when the question had been last divided on, the votes given absolutely for trains had increased from 6751 to 7565; while the votes against trains had fallen from 6820 to 5836. The editor of the Scotsman, by whom this circumstance was pointed out at the time, and to whose acuteness, energy, consistency, and courage, the cause of religious liberty is deeply indebted, remarked also that, "in 1847, there was a preponderance of the stock voted on of £30,300 in favour of opening; in 1849, there is a preponderance (even reckoning according to Mr Blackburn's unparalleled plan) of £62,874. We court attention to the fact that, nevertheless, the majority which was 152 in 1847, is 241 now, shewing that the Pharisees maintain the little ground they really possess only by splitting and vote-manufacturing. It is important also to note the fact that one-half of the capital of the company (excluding loans) has not voted at all. All that half may be considered favourable to opening-the Pharisees, who are thoroughly organised, knowing all their men, and looking sharply after them, while the other side, with little or no organisation, only grope in the dark. We have thus the amendment carried by less than onefourth of the capital, at least a half of that fourth voting against their own avowed opinions, in order to please a presumptuous and clamorous clique, and the half of the remaining eighth composed of parties scattered over the whole country, who have bought one or two votes apiece for the sole purpose of making the company a field for agitating theological questions. If the bona fide Shareholders choose to tolerate such a state of matters, they should know that the bona fide Scotch public will not, but will continue perseveringly to resent and assail the insulting tyranny." *

On the two subsequent occasions when my motion was brought forward, the results were these:—

At the meeting on 12th March 1850, "a show of hands was taken, when 16 were held up for the motion, while the numbers against it were so numerous that they were not counted." The proxies stood as follows::

6020"

Majority against Sunday trains, £422,643

At the meeting on 27th August 1850, "it was agreed to come to a vote by a show of hands; when there appeared 40 for the amendment of Mr Macfie, and 18 for the motion of Mr Cox. The amendment was therefore declared to be carried. The proxies sent in to the Directors were stated to shew the following results:

4248"

"Majority against Sunday trains, £279,139

The comparatively small attendance, on these two occasions, of

* Scotsman, 22d August 1849.

Shareholders favourable to the motion, was the natural effect of a well-founded belief that no actual trial of strength would take place; seeing that, as usual, the Sabbatarian leaders would secure an efficient muster of their friends (who mostly reside in Glasgow and its neighbourhood), and would, moreover, by a liberal expenditure of money, add no small strength of proxies to that of voters present.

If, happily, the Directors shall reach the conviction that they are not entitled to withhold from the public the use of the Sunday Trains, they need not be deterred from doing justice by any compact with those Sabbatarians who, several years ago, helped them into power; for, in the eye alike of morality and the law, every agreement to do what is unjust and illegal is, ab initio, null and void. Nor need they pay much regard to the resolutions of the meetings above referred to-carried as those resolutions were by a small but active section of the shareholders. The majority has a preferable claim to their respect; and if, in spite of the facts above adduced, it appear to them doubtful what the wish of the majority is, a cheap and easy mode of ascertaining the truth is at hand: let them send to each shareholder a circular inclosing a simple and unambiguous declaration, to be signed and returned by such as are hostile to the proposal embodied in my motion; and let them, in doing so, refrain from directly or indirectly employing their influence as a Board to bias any of the shareholders. Nobody who regarded the running of the Sunday Trains as a breach of religious duty would fail to sign and return the declaration forthwith; and all others would, by omitting to do so, tacitly intimate their consent that passengers as well as letters and parcels should again be carried. If the preponderance were thus clearly ascertained to be in favour of the measure, the Board would be not only justified, but bound by a due respect for their constituents, to carry it into effect without delay. But I repeat, that if the public right asserted in the foregoing pages exist (and till the Plea be refuted I cannot but regard it as conclusive), no such appeal to the shareholders is in the slightest degree necessary; since it is the duty of the Directors to fulfil every obligation of the Company to the public, whether ninetenths or only a tenth or a twentieth of their constituents be adverse to their doing so. And with respect to the Sabbatarian section of the community at large, it is plain that although it were as preponderant, either in number or in the qualities which give weight to men's opinions and advice, as I believe it to be the reverse, its remonstrances in such a case as this are still less entitled to regard. Any complaints from that quarter against the Board for honestly performing a bargain, could bring discredit only upon those who made them.

NOTE B, page 3.

The Right to act according to one's Religious Belief.

At the meeting to which the contents of this page were originally addressed, I was accused by the Rev. Dr Lorimer of Glasgow, of maintaining "a monstrous doctrine, which would cover and protect the greatest vices and atrocities that had been committed on the face

of the earth. Would not," he asked, "the Thugs in the East Indies say with perfect sincerity that they held it as a religious duty to murder their fellow-men? Theirs was not a religion-he would call it a superstition; but on the principle advocated by the gentleman who first spoke, those persons were honest, and equally entitled to hold their opinions with any others."*

66

This accusation was founded on a speech in which the very words printed in the text were used:-namely, that every man is entitled to shape his practice in conformity with his own conclusions as to the divine will; under this sole restriction always, that he shall abstain from violating by his conduct the rights of his fellow-men ;"-" that for our religious opinions and practice, while they violate no man's rights, we are responsible to God alone;" and that, so long as the rights of society are uninvaded, no one has a right to say to us, What doest thou?" The qualification was deliberately thus reiterated, in order to prevent, if possible, misconception on the part even of the dullest hearer; and, with the same object, the first of the three clauses here printed in italics was uttered with as marked an emphasis as a pretty strong voice was capable of giving it.†

If, as is probable and may here be assumed, the reverend gentleman was not guilty of intentional misrepresentation, it must be concluded, either that, in his opinion, the murders committed by the Thugs do not "violate the rights of their fellow-men;" or that, in believing me to be the apologist of every crime committed from religious motives, he fell into a misapprehension not less "monstrous" than the doctrine which he fancied he had heard. If the former alternative be the true one, he is beyond the reach of argument; if the latter, he has furnished a proof that to be a minister of the Free Church of Scotland, and a doctor of divinity, is not necessarily to be so well imbued with the spirit of religious freedom, as to be incapable of ridiculously misunderstanding a plain statement of its tritest and most elementary principles.

So absurdly complete, indeed, was the mistake of the reverend gentleman, that, instead of having proclaimed the "monstrous doctrine" ascribed to me, I had, on the contrary, been loudly complaining of him and his friends for acting in a manner which, as far as principle is concerned, thoroughly assimilates THEM to those very Thugs whom I am represented as virtually taking under my patronage! The fact is, that, in accusing me, he unwittingly pronounced his own condemnation; for,

* Report of Dr Lorimer's speech, in the North British Mail of 13th March 1850, p. 1, col. 5.

That the words above quoted are exactly those which were spoken, I am able to certify with confidence; for, knowing well the necessity of extreme precision and clearness of language in such discussions, and having neither talent nor practice as a public speaker, I had taken the precaution to commit the argument to paper, and, as all who were present might see, made faithful use of the manuscript while speaking.

"Many and many a time," says Richard Baxter, "my own and others' sermons have been censured, and openly defamed, for that which never was in them, upon the ignorance or heedlessness of a censorious hearer; yea, for that which they directly spoke against; because they were not understood. Especially he that hath a close style, free from tautology, where every word must be marked by him that will not misunderstand, shall frequently be misreported." -Baxter's Works, by Orme, vol. ii., p. 561.

just as the Thugs, on their side, regard it as a meritorious act of religion to murder and rob travellers, so do the reverend doctor and his sabbatarian friends, on their side, think it a religious duty to rob the public of the means of travelling on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway on Sundays-to which means of travelling the persons robbed have as perfect a right as the victims of the Thugs have to their lives and property!

That Dr Lorimer, not less than the Thugs-or than Samuel when he hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal-or the followers of Joshua when they slaughtered the Canaanites-or Calvin when he burned Servetus in Geneva for heresy-or the excellent Judge Hale when he condemned old women to death for witchcraft— is "honest and equally entitled to hold his opinions with any other," I do not for a moment call in question. But when from opinion he proceeds to action-when, instead of merely expostulating with those whom he regards as sinners, he becomes a railway-shareholder and joins a band of robbers under the idea that it is his religious duty to do that which is as truly a violation of my rights as the taking of my purse would be-I am just as little inclined to tolerate his religious doings as I should be to submit with meekness to the predatory religious rites of the Thugs, or to wink at any of the other "vices and atrocities" which my doctrine is said to "cover and protect."

Dr Lorimer appears to have studied to little purpose, if at all, the literature of religious liberty, else he would have been more deeply impressed with the fact, that during the long and earnest controversy by which the right of private judgment in religious matters was at length established on an immovable basis, the accusation which he so solemnly brings against me was completely met by the champions of freedom in the 17th century; and that any revival of it now is looked upon with surprise and contempt by well-informed and thinking men. Its revival, in fact, has of late been so seldom ventured upon, that it would be difficult to point out among Protestant writers during the hundred and fifty years which have followed the

*"On no occasion," says that very able and consistent champion of religious liberty, Bishop Watson, "ought we to act in opposition to our conscience, but it does not follow that in obeying the dictates of conscience we always act rightly; for there is such a thing as an erroneous conscience, and we may not be able to detect the error. I knew a gentleman who had been brought up at Eton and at Cambridge, who from being a Protestant became a Roman Catholic. This gentleman examined the foundation of both religions, and finally settled on that of the Church of Rome. He acted properly in following the impulse of his judgment. I think he formed an erroneous judgment, but that is only my opinion, in opposition to his opinion; and even admitting my opinion to be right, it would be uncharitable in me to condemn him; for God only knows whether, with his talents and constitutional turn of mind, he could have escaped the error into which he had fallen. With a similar degree of moderation, therefore, I think of the different sects of Christians. Every sect believes itself to be right; but it does not become any of them to say, 'I am more righteous than my neighbour,' or to think that the gates of Heaven are shut against all others."-Anecdotes of the Life of Richard Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, written by Himself, vol. ii., p. 230. Lond. 1818.

The same truly Christian spirit pervades the whole of that instructive work; see particularly vol. i., pp. 107, 118, and vol. ii., pp. 16, 17, 56, 227, 287; also his Miscellaneous Tracts on Religious, Political, and Agricultural Subjects, Lond. 1815; and pp. 39 and 47 of the Catalogue of Books in Divinity appended to vol. vi. of his Collection of Theological Tracts, 2d ed., Lond. 1791.

death of Locke, a single instance of so rash an enterprise, besides that of Dr Lorimer himself.

While religious liberty was still a question even among Protestants no argument was more frequently employed by the advocates of despotism than this very one,-That the right of private judgment would, if conceded to all, sanction every species of crime, sedition, and immorality, which knaves or enthusiasts might pretend or imagine to fall within the sphere of their religious duties. How strenuously and effectively the inference was repudiated, may be learned from the controversies of the day;* and in particular from the following passage in Locke's conclusive Letter concerning Toleration, a work in which the whole subject of men's religious rights is handled with consummate ability.

"As the magistrate," says he, " has no power to impose by his laws, the use of any rites and ceremonies in any church, so neither has he any power to forbid the use of such rites and ceremonies as are already received, approved, and practised by any church: because if he did so, he would destroy the church itself; the end of whose institution is only to worship God with freedom, after its own manner.

"You will say, by this rule, if some congregations should have a mind to sacrifice infants, or, as the primitive Christians were falsely accused, lustfully pollute themselves in promiscuous uncleanness, or practice any other such heinous enormities, is the magistrate obliged to tolerate them, because they are committed in a religious assembly? I answer, No. These things are not lawful in the ordinary course of life, nor in any private house; and therefore neither are they so in the worship of God, or in any religious meeting. But indeed if any people congregated upon account of religion, should be desirous to sacrifice a calf, I deny that that ought to be prohibited by a law. Melibus, whose calf it is, may lawfully kill his calf at home, and burn any part of it that he thinks fit. For no injury is thereby done to any one, no prejudice to another man's goods. And for the same reason he may kill his calf also in a religious meeting. Whether the doing so be well-pleasing to God or no, it is their part to consider that do it. The

*See, for instance, Apollonii Jus Majestatis circa Sacra, tom. i., pp. 26, 56, 58, quoted in Dr M'Crie's Miscellaneous Writings, p. 478; Letter from Faustus Socinus to Martinus Vadovitz, 14th June 1598, in Toulmin's Memoirs of Socinus, pp. 103, 105, 111; Dr John Owen's Works, xv., 74, 201, 239, 241, 242; Taylor's Liberty of Prophesying, Epistle Dedicatory, and Sect. xiii., § 2; Sect. xvi., § 3; Sect. xix., passim (Heber's edition of his Works, vii., 403, 411; viii. 118, 142, 212); Bishop Barlow's Case of a Toleration in Matters of Religion, pp. 21, 31; Barclay's Apology for the Quakers, Prop. 14; and Locke's Letter concerning Toleration, ed. 1765, p. 51. Among later writers, see Dr Benjamin Ibbot's Sermons on the Right and Duty of Private Judgment, in the Boyle Lectures, ii., 806; Dr Balguy's Third Charge (on Religious Liberty) delivered to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Winchester, in his Nine Discourses, &c., p. 208, 2d edit., 1817; Dr Furneaux's Letters to Blackstone concerning his Exposition of the Act of Toleration, &c., pp. 158, 160 (London, 1770); Dr Parr's Works, vol. iii., pp. 710, 715; Bishop Heber's Life of Taylor, pp. 216, 217, 318; Sismondi's Review of the Progress of Religious Opinions during the Nineteenth Century, p. 32 (Lond. 1826); Samuel Bailey's Essay on the Formation and Publication of Opinions, 2d ed., p. 316 (Lond. 1826); and an admirable article on the Right of Private Judgment in the Edinburgh Review, vol. lxxvi., p. 412. The last is from the pen of Mr Henry Rogers, and is reprinted among his Essays selected from that periodical, vol. ii., p. 1.