premier, Lord Melbourne, who succeeded, and all that could be obtained from them was a commission of inquiry. It was the vague "I'll see to it!" which in common life promises nothing, and usually accomplishes as little. Thus at least felt Dr. Chalmers, notwithstanding the assurances of Lord John Russell that the commissioners should be obliged to report progress from time to time, so that the House might apply the remedy to each evil successively as it was detected. It was no vague fear; for although the first report of the commissioners was to be returned in six months, thrice that period elapsed before the duty was implemented. This report, however, established a momentous fact; it was, that nearly one-third of the whole population of Edinburgh, to which their eighteen months' inquiry had been exclusively confined, were living in utter neglect of religious ordinances. To atone for such delay, as well as to remedy such an evil, it was now full time for the Parliament to be up and doing. But Parliament thought it was better to wait—to wait until they got farther intelligence. This intelligence at last came in two subsequent reports, by which it appeared that the deficiency of church accommodation and church attendance was still worse in Glasgow than in Edinburgh. And now, at least, was the time for action after four years of protracted inquiry; but the remedy which Parliament proposed consisted of little more than a few unmeaning words. The Highlands and the country parishes were to be aided from sources that were not available for the purpose, while the large towns were to be left in their former condition. In short, the Church of Scotland was to wait, and wait, and still to wait, while everything was to be expected, but nothing definite insured. A deputation from the Church Extension Committee was unavoidable under such circumstances of sickening procrastination and heartless disappointment; but the government that had anticipated such an advent, specified that Dr. Chalmers should not be one of the deputies. It was not convenient that the rulers of the hour should encounter the master-spirit of the age. Accordingly, the deputation of the Church of Scotland, minus Dr. Chalmers, waited upon Lord Melbourne, and represented what a dereliction the Government had committed in abandoning the religious provision of the large towns of Scotland, by which the principle of religious establishment itself was virtually abandoned. But they talked to a statesman whose only line of policy was to remember nothing about the past, and fear nothing for the future. Britain would last during his own day at least, and let all beyond encounter the life-and-death scramble as it best could. When he was told, therefore, that this abandonment of the Scottish cities was an abandonment of church establishment, and would inflict a fatal wound upon the Church of Scotland, this free-and-easy premier replied to the members of the deputation: "That, gentlemen, is your inference: you may not be the better for our plan; but, hang it! you surely cannot be worse; "and with this elegant sentence they were bowed off from the ministerial audience. It was well, however, that Dr. Chalmers, and those whom he influenced, had not entirely leaned, in such a vital question, upon the reed of court favour and government support. He had already learned, although with some reluctance, that most necessary scriptural caveat for a minister of the Church of Scotland, "Put not your trust in princes," so that from the commencement of this treaty between the Church and the State, he had turned his attention to the public at large as the source from which his expectations were to be realized. He therefore obtained the sanction of the General Assembly, in 1836, to form a sub-committee on church extension, for the purpose of organizing a plan of
