Edinburgh
3rd March 1868
My Dear Father,
I will try to get Dr Brown’s[2] speech. I did not see it myself having been busy over Friday, and so not having read the papers but I suppose it was in Friday’s Daily Review. I will send a report of yesterday’s proceedings, along with this letter. I have not yet looked over the report farther than to see that Dr Arnot’s,[3] Dr Begg’s[4] & Dr Rainy’s speeches are not reported — three of the most interesting speeches. If they appear tomorrow I will send them.
The Debate[5] began yesterday at half past ten & we had a holiday for the occasions. I was not there at the beginning but came up to the Assembly Hall, to which the meeting adjourned, about twelve. In the meantime Dr Blaikie[6] had spoken (with great effect, I believe) and Dr Duncan[7] had just opened with the words “My Stomach … and my general health … no good”. The poor Rabbi read away for a long time at a most prolix & rambling speech upon the connection of church & state, the nature of the Law of Moses &c. Particularly he gave an elaborate grammatical analysis of the decision of last Assembly showing what was the subject & what the predicate. The whole was delivered with great hesitation & stammering. He could hardly read his notes & was more broken down than I have ever seen him in our Class even on his worst days. At last he was prevailed on to stop & hand over his paper to the reporters.
After this came a succession of commonplace men. Some of them I had heard, some not. Balfour of Holyrood[8] whom I did hear was frightfully violent in manner & matter. On the other hand Balfour of the North (Dr C. Brown’s colleague) is said to have been very good. But I did not hear him, having had to go home for Dinner.
At the Evening sederunt there was a very large attendance. The body of the Hall was full & so was the Moderator’s gallery, and during a great part of the evening the elders’ gallery & that facing it. The Debate opened with a crushing speech from Thomson of St Stephens[9] which, with Rainy’s later in the evening, has made me a much stronger unionist than I was before. Thomson as an O.S.[10] holding the obligation of the covenants took up High Presbyterian ground just as Begg’s party always affects to do & demonstrated that Begg’s views were antipresbyterian. He quoted largely from the discussion between the Independents & Presbyterians at Westminster & showed that Begg took the exact ground of the former. During the speech Begg’s famous smile grew more & more forced & finally was supplanted by a very red & angry expression.
We all thought Thomson would bring Begg to his feet & so serve Rainy’s end — for it was clear from the beginning of the day that both B. & R. were playing the waiting game each trying to come in last.
Well Begg restrained himself & Ireland[11] got up, to plead with the most Christian calmness, according to his own account, but really to rake up everything he could lay hold of against the U.P. body. His only other remarkable statement was a virtual (I rather think even an explicit) denial that History could be any guide to the church. He evidently thought History the work of the Devil. I suppose he was set up by Begg simply to gain time, but in this he failed. Arnot got up & coming down to the region of plain sense made a very telling little speech, with a smart attack on the Watchword[12] and on the anonymous nature of the threats of disruption.
After this Dr Begg of course felt that in the order of debate an anti-union man should speak & that a little before ten he could hardly set up one of his myrmidons. However he was unwilling to rise & a long pause ensued with many cries of Vote! Rainy & Candlish sat quite still, & I suppose would have had no objection to vote as Thomson & Arnot – the latter by his shrewd sense & humour, the former by his argument & earnestness — had produced a very great effect.
So of course Begg had nothing for it but to rise & ask if Dr Candlish wished to speak, as he reserved a right to do on Wednesday. Dr Candlish had no desire to speak. So Begg was fairly sold & treated us to a long & mostly very pointless speech ending about a quarter past eleven.[13]
There is no doubt that Dr B[egg] was speaking against time hoping that at so late an hour Dr Rainy would curtail his speech. The only thing remarkable about Begg’s speech in itself was the peroration which was very pathetic. He broke down just at the proper moment, in fact so exactly at the right moment, that almost every one thinks his emotion was mainly show. Then came Rainy, who took his time and spoke till half past twelve or rather later, keeping his temper admirably. Begg writhed under his speech in which he proved that Dr Begg was inconsistent with his previous declarations. Moreover just as Thomson had proved Begg an Independent Rainy proved that his views were those of extreme Voluntaries who hold that all churches may be endowed. This was very cleverly done & Begg did not at all like it. R[ainy] carried the house wholly with him but the effect was somewhat broken by the addition of a speech from Duff who brought forward a suggestion rather than a motion & accompanied it by a rather wordy speech. Bonar[14] waived the right of reply & then the vote came off with results that must be regarded as satisfactory. By this was two in the morning & you may suppose we were all glad to get home.
In glancing over the report in the D[aily] R[eview] I see that Thomson is very ill-reported. The most telling part of his speech is quite omitted, viz. that in which he showed that Presbyterians as opposed to Independents hold that incorporation between Churches holding “one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism” is not enough. He also urged that historically the F.C. is no more the Church of Scotland than the earlier seceeders are [and] that our claim to be the Church of Scotland can only be maintained by acting not as a sect but as the national church striving to unite the whole nation within her bounds.
Then there was a very thorough answer to the question why the F.C. did not join the U.P.s at the disruption (put by Buchanan) and a great deal more that has been quite left out. The speech was in fact too long & not at all popular in style and so I suppose the Reporter did not appreciate it. It is quite spoiled in the Review.
Oh! I should mention that Arnot had a beautiful hit at Dr J. Buchanan. He said Dr B.’s conclusion about another disruption was so pathetic that it nearly beguiled a tear from him, but his mind was quite set at ease when he heard the next sentence about property &c &c.
We have another holiday for the Commission tomorrow when no doubt there will be another row about Moncreiff’s[15] motion.
We had the first Cunningham lecture today, elegant but exceedingly commonplace. Nothing new from beginning to end in it. You need not expect to hear of any discourses for some time. All the Professors are exhausted by yesterday’s work — thirteen hours! and many e.g. Rainy were there the whole time or nearly so.
I have got the Friday’s Review, but for fear of overweight send only half the paper.
Ellen & I are both well
and I am
Your affectionate son
Wm Robertson Smith
[1] CUL ADD 7449 C092 MS
[2] Probably Brown, Dr Thomas (1811–1873): minister of the Dean Free Church in Edinburgh from 1849 and later the author of Annals of the Disruption.
[3] Dr W. Arnot (b.1808): was minister of Edinburgh Free High Church from 1863, succeeding Robert Rainy there after the latter’s appointment to the chair of Church History at New College.
[4] Effectively leader of the conservative wing of the Free Church, Dr James Begg was bitterly opposed to union with the United Presbyterians. Always regarded with deep suspicion by William Pirie Smith, James Begg was later to play a major role in the attack on Robertson Smith’s views.
[5] The debate in question was held in the Assembly Hall by the Free Presbytery of Edinburgh from Monday to Wednesday, March 2-4, 1868 (see Begg, 1868).
[6] Blaikie, Dr William Garden (1820–1899): was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School, Marischal College and Edinburgh University, becoming an ordained minister just prior to the Disruption, when he joined the Free Church ministering briefly at Drumblade before becoming minister at Pilrig Free Church in Edinburgh in 1844 and, from 1868, Professor of Apologetics and Pastoral Theology at New College.
[7] Duncan, Dr John (“Rabbi”): the first holder of the chair of Old Testament Language and Literature at New College, was a highly esteemed though decidedly eccentric scholar. By 1868 he was failing considerably and A. B. Davidson had been appointed to assist him until his death in 1870.
[8] Balfour, William of Holyrood Free Church in Edinburgh was a close ally of James Begg and later wrote a series of controversial articles for the Edinburgh Courant: these were subsequently published in book form, The Establishment Principle Defended, with a preface by Begg (Balfour, 1873).
[9] Thomson, Edward Anderson, D.D. was minister of St Stephen’s from1862 to 90.
[10] O.S.: i.e. a former member of the Original Secession Church, the majority of whose members united with the Free Church in 1852.
[11] Ireland, Robert Henderson (1827–1881): F.C. minister at Skene, Aberdeenshire, from 1850; translated to Portobello in 1861.
[12] The Watchword, founded and edited by Dr Begg, was the chief organ for disseminating his views.
[13] Dr Begg contrived to have an edited report of his speech published (Begg, 1868) and this provides an interesting parallel to the account given by WRS. The peroration employs indeed all the histrionic skills that Begg commanded, the report stating in parentheses: “At this point Dr Begg became much affected, and was obliged to make a considerable pause, during which he received the cheers of the audience”.
[14] Bonar, Dr Horatius (1808–1889): a powerful anti-unionist, remembered today mainly for his prolific and popular hymn-writing. Cf. Carnegie Simpson (1909) p.174.
[15] Moncreiff, Sir Henry Wellwood Bart., D.D. (1809–1883): was minister of Free St Cuthbert’s Church, Edinburgh, an expert in ecclesiastical law, and Joint Clerk to the Free Church Assembly from 1855 until his death. He played a significant and highly influential role in the trial proceedings against WRS.