CAULFIELD to make room for a manufacture of as many protestant freeholds as his land could admit. Not only the candi- dates, but their friends and relatives had recourse to the same expedient; and the system, in progress, was further improved by shortening the term of thirty-one years leases to the catholic down to twelve or eight, so as to terminate about the eve of a general election,-a cere- mony in which the catholic had no share, except the honour of bearing a part with his cudgel, to support the cause of his landlord, or his friends, who happened to be candidates or partisans, in those ferocious conflicts uni- 409 formly prevalent in contests for representation. The dissenters, principally inhabiting the north, although exempt from the severities sustained by the catholics, were not without some share of legal disability. For, although the kirk was viewed as a half-sister of the high church, still her children were not regarded without some share of jealousy. Their Scottish descent rendered them in view of some orthodox zealots, as hereditary friends to the house of Stewart, while by others they were sus- pected, partly as descendants of the Cromwelian school, and tinctured with the principles of the puritans in the days of the first Charles, and partly as secret adberents of the house of Stewart:-and all together, a sort of mules between Republicans and Jacobites. They were, however, by no means cordial to the ascendancy of the dominating sect, for, in common with the catholics, they were heavily assessed by tythes for the support of the high church,from whose ministry they derived no advantage; while they had a ministry of their own to support: and although they were eligible to affairs under the state, their admission was barred by sect oaths, and religious compliances with high church discipline; that the boon was a bitter pill to the presbyters of the old school: but then they cordially hated the pope and the papists, and to this saving principle they ultimately owed the indulgence of a bill, passed from year to year, dispensing with those, compliances, and allowing further time to qualify. Thus they enjoyed, as
