Dr CANDLISH-I do not, for my part, comprehend what the protest means. I know that, during the Auchterarder controversy in the ten years' conflict, our friend, Dr Cook, was in the practice of emphatically protesting. What that meant beyond a dissent I never could comprebend, unless he meant to leave the Church. (Hear, hear.) On the whole, I think it is a thing more honoured in the breach than the observance. But perhaps we have disposed of that matter by allowing it to lie on the table.

Dr BUCHANAN-I must protest against this discussion-(a laugh)upon a question not before the House. It was merely a question whether the name of a particular individual should be allowed to remain at all. (Get on, Get on.)

Mr NISBET-Dr Candlish has made a remark about a protest. I have to make another-a protest is sometimes very important.

Mr COWAN-In the House of Commons the rule is that, in matters of this kind, those who do not vote are not allowed to remain in the House.

Sir H. W. MONCREIFF-The House of Commons rules cannot be allowed here. I protest against that. (Laughter.)

The subject then dropped.

PRESBYTERIAN UNION IN AMERICA-TRANSATLANTIC TELEGRAM.

Dr BUCHANAN-I have a communication of a very pleasing kind to make to the Assembly; and perhaps the House will allow me to make it just now. It has been sent me by Dr Field, one of the American deputies whom we had the pleasure of seeing here the other day. It so happened that our own deputies to the American Assemblies were present in those Assemblies about the same time as our friends were here; and I am sure that it will be of interest to hear what they have donethe two General Assemblies in America. The telegram was transmitted from New York, yesterday evening, to Dr Field. (Hear, hear.) It is to the following effect:

"The Presbyterian churches have agreed upon a basis of union, which has been referred to the respective parties for confirmation; and it is considered almost certain to be approved of." (Warm applause.)

Mr COWAN-I beg to propose that a copy of that communication be sent to our friends, Dr Gibson and Dr Begg. (A laugh.)

Mr NISBET-Moderator, that is very insulting.

Dr CANDLISH-The honourable gentleman is clearly out of order.

CHURCH AND MANSE BUILDING.

Mr WILSON gave in the report of this committee, (No. IX.) There were several overtures in favour of a more frequent collection for this fund. Mr Wilson, in giving in the report, called attention briefly to the various features of it. He also brought the special report of the same committee on the Condition of Ecclesiastical Buildings. In con. clusion, he had to ask the Assembly to consider whether they could give them a collection this year, as they deprived them of half of the collection last year.

The Assembly approved of the reports, and referred the question of a collection for the fund until the report of the committee on Collections. Mr M'GREGOR, Paisley, proposed the following motion, of which he

had given notice :-"That the Assembly appoint a committee to inquire into the whole matter of insurance, as brought up by the overtures; to confer with Presbyteries thereanent; and, having digested any suggestions received by them, to report to next Assembly." He was glad to mention that a number of the very ablest men in Scotland were willing to be members of the committee.

Dr CANDLISH seconded the motion.

Mr ROBERT MACKENZIE, Dundee, remarked that the amounts dealt with by Mr M'Gregor's proposal were much larger than they at first sight appeared. Experience proved that the fund which would be formed out of fire insurance premiums would accumulate very rapidly. The sum annually paid at present by those congregations which insured their property was £875. Had this sum been accumulating since the Disruption, it would have amounted to £36,000 or £38,000. And the only deductions from it, besides the expenses of management, which could not be large, would have been the cost of the two churches which had been destroyed by fire since the Disruption, and a trifling amount of loss by partial fires; and as yet only one half the property of the Free Church was insured. If they could prevail upon all, or nearly all, their congregations to insure, by the end of the century a building fund worth looking at would be accumulated.

The motion was agreed to; and an overture from the Presbytery of Lockerby, asking the Assembly to recommend congregations to form a fund for keeping the buildings in proper repair, was remitted to the same committee.

SABBATH OBSERVANCE.

Mr ALEX. MACKENZIE, in submitting this report, (No. XX.,) briefly alluded to the various points upon which it touched. On the question of Sabbath desecration, it had been said that shareholders who felt aggrieved could at once get relief by selling out; but, he asked, was it right that we should have any work, public or private, in which a conscientious Christian man could not engage, or that we should have any concern in which he could not invest his means, without subjecting him, directly or indirectly, to a trampling upon the divine law? With regard to the bills of Mr Hughes and Lord Amberley, he hoped the Assembly would petition against such measures, and he expressed his great delight at the noble stand taken by the United Presbyterian Synod regarding them. (Hear, hear.) It was not that they had ever doubted their United Presbyterian brethren did not value the Sabbath as much as they themselves did, but at the present juncture, when so much was said about their differences, he felt assured they were substantially agreed as to the magistrate's duty on this great matter of the Sabbath, for this very reason, that they were at one in their action. (Applause.) He next pointed out the duty of ministers to warn those under their charge who might visit the Paris Exhibition against conforming to the customs in France respecting the Lord's-day, and concluded by remarking that our Sabbaths were being stolen from us, and we were saying very little about it. Mammon, pleasure, and loose views on the subject were stealing it away from us, and he believed that in our day one cause was the great worldliness existing in the Church.

Mr MILLER of Leithen deplored the handing over of our railways to

English companies-it will have (if carried out) the effect of bringing our railways into the practice very much adopted in England of carrying on a traffic on the Lord's day not greatly different from it as on other days. He moved the adoption of the report, and that the House petition against the two bills above referred to.

Dr WYLIE seconded the motion, and said that in the case of the Sabbath we had no alternative between worship and labour, and that if we abandoned the proper observance of the Sabbath, it would be attended with a decreasing population, a dying commerce, a stricken and dying virtue, and a decadence of national character.

Dr LONGMUIR, Aberdeen, thought they should deal with the owners of steamboats whose orders compelled men to work on Sabbath.

Mr KIDSTON, Glasgow, (elder,) said that as a Wharncliffe meeting of the Glasgow and South-Western Railway was shortly to be held in Glasgow, he had 510 proxies, representing £400,000 of stock, against the amalgamation, and he advised all who held stock, and were desirous to preserve the Sabbath, to forward their proxies to him.

The motion was agreed to.

REPORT ON TEMPERANCE.

Mr WILLIAM KIDSTON, (elder,) submitted the report of the committee on Temperance, (No. XXI.) Mr Kidston said-It would be easy for him to use a familiar quotation, to cause the House to "sup on horrors," by conducting them in imagination through the police courts, jails, penitentiaries, and mad-houses of the country, or to make a half-hour's stay in a public-house situated in a crowded locality on a Saturday night, or thereafter to enter the dwellings of the people to see the domestic broils and bitterness which drunkenness produces. He had himself been brought into contact with the sad evils connected with this vice in prosecuting his labours as a territorial Sabbath-school teacher, and when afterwards placed on the Commission of the Peace for the counties of Lanark and Dumbarton, he had considered it his duty to attend faithfully all meetings of the Licensing Courts. In this way he might be permitted to say that he had gained such experience as enabled him to be of some assistance in passing the Public-Houses Act of 1862-an Act, he was happy to say, through which it had hitherto been found impossible to drive a wheelbarrow, much less the traditional coach and six. (Applause.) Reference was made in the report to the causes of intemperance, one of which was the excessive number of public-houses. These were far beyond the real wants of the community, or what could be justified on any honest plea of legitimate refreshment. A cognate subject to this was the want of a proper enforcement of the laws for the regulation and control of public-houses. For this excess and want of proper control more parties were to blame than one. The police are expressly enjoined by statute to enforce the provisions of the Act, but they did not always do so. Fiscals were instructed to prosecute all offenders, and were protected and remunerated in the discharge of their duty, but it was not always attended to. Magistrates had in some cases acted upon their own idea of what the law ought to be, instead of administering the statute as they found it; they had consequently given too much weight to the private pecuniary interests of those who profit by drunkenness; not having the moral well-being of the community properly before them,

when enjoined by the statute not to license a greater number than was "meet and convenient," But there was no doubt that the public have been to blame-they have been very apathetic and neglectful of their duty. When the reduction of the number of public-houses was spoken of, it had sometimes been objected that this was an interference with the "liberty of the subject;" but he wished to bring the fact under the notice of the House, that, by the present law, it was as much the liberty of one subject to object to a public-house as it was the liberty of another to make application for one. On that account he recommended that the public should pay more attention to the privileges conferred upon them by the eleventh section of the Act. By the Act of 1862, which declared that there should be no such thing as a vested interest in a public-house, "a house not licensed at the time of making application" is declared to be a new house. He would like to make a remark or two on the case of grocers' licence; no place should have a grocer's licence where the parties live on the premises, so that there might be no temptation to evade the law. The magistrates of Glasgow were now withdrawing certificates from all grocers who were convicted of selling or giving to be drank on the premises. It was thought in some places that grocers could open their shops before eight, or after eleven, provided they did not sell exciseable liquors; but this was not the case-they were prohibited from "exposing for" sale any liquors, and the moment their doors were open the goods were exposed for sale. He believed this would require to be looked after in Edinburgh. It was, however, gratifying to notice that at the recent Whitsunday licensing courts, deputations from various parts of the country had waited upon the magistrates, to urge upon them the necessity of reducing the number of public-houses and enforcing the terms of certificate. He thought it necessary to take some notice of a deputation which waited on the Lord Provost and magistrates of Edinburgh, and the remarks made by Lord Provost Chambers in reply to their memorials. His lordship was reported to have stated that the magistrates, in limiting the number of public-houses, would run the risk of increasing the number of shebeens. He was surprised that any one acquainted with the subject could suppose that shebeens were a substitute for public-houses. If his lordship had stated that unless publichouses were allowed to be open all night, and on Sabbath, they would run the risk of increasing the number of shebeens, his statement would in that case have been at all events intelligible. The Lord Provost, moreover, stated that the magistrate had no control over shebeens; but the Act of 1862 had, in conformity with the report of the Royal Commission, not only enjoined that public-houses should not be open after eleven o'clock, or on Sabbath, but had given such ample powers to suppress shebeens that no willing magistrate could have the slightest difficulty in at once putting them down. Facts and statistics have now proved beyond all doubt that drunkenness increased in proportion to the number of public-houses. The case of Liverpool showed this, and, if time permitted, he could give them many cases from his own experience. In this matter it was the supply that created the demand. It was noticed in the report that there was one abuse of the statute which greatly discouraged efforts to reduce the number of public-houses, and that was the practice of bringing up before the Licensing Courts applications for the same new houses every half-year. Public opinion should impress upon the magis

trates that the decision given at Whitsunday should last for a year; and indeed that it should be considered res judicata, and not entertained again till there was reasonable grounds of supposing such a change of circumstances as might entitle the parties to a rehearing. Another cause of intemperance arose from the circumstance that many became the victims of the drinking customs of the country. It was painful to notice that, among a certain class in making a bargain, the offer was made in drink, accepted in drink, and clenched in drink. (Hear, hear.) But another part of the report put the question, What can be done by the Church? This was an important question for the consideration of the House. It was recommended that a sermon on intemperance should be preached in the course of the year from all the pulpits of the Free Church. This suggestion he hoped the House would agree to, and allow it to be included in the deliverance of the Assembly. (Hear, hear.) He would not like to omit to notice with gratitude the labours of temperance societies; without these we would probably have been worse than we are, and the arguments they now employ for the entire disuse of intoxicating drinks were based upon Christian expediency. They had certainly at least the merit of continuing to expose the evils, and interesting the public to attempt a cure. There was another topic in which they could not help taking an interest, namely, the efforts of the people of England to get their beer-houses and their public-houses shut on the whole of the Sabbath. The desire for this in England seemed to be increasing. It was worthy of notice, also, that the people of England were agitating for an alteration in their licensing law; this would require to be closely watched, so that the alteration might be a beneficial one. He concluded by urging upon them to use all moral, social, and legislative remedies for staying the evils of intemperance. (Applause.)

Professor DOUGLAS moved the deliverance :-" "The Assembly urge upon the ministers and members of the Church the duty of using all proper means in endeavouring to arrest the progress of drunkenness and the multiplication of public-houses, and to discourage drinking customs. The Assembly also recommend that every minister of the Free Church should preach a sermon on temperance on a day to be named by the Presbytery to which he belongs, and all Presbyteries are enjoined to name such a day, with a view to ministers warning their congregations against the insidious evils of drunkenness; and Presbyteries are commanded to see that this is attended to." In submitting the motion, he suggested that the committees on temperance and several cognate subjects, the reports on which were generally submitted to a very thin House, should be combined in future; and the reports being taken up collectively would thereby, he thought, secure a greater amount of attention on the part of the members. Dr CANDLISH seconded the motion. He thought that if they left the charge of the Sabbath question, and the temperance question, and one or two more in the line of religion and morals, in the hands of the one committee, they would find the voice of the Supreme Court of the Church, when called upon to take up any of the subjects in cases of emergency, would be more influential than it is as these matters are at present managed. He thought, however, that to remit all these matters to the committee ou religion and morals would not be practicable at present, or perhaps for a year, though it was a change which should be kept in view by the Assembly. With reference to the special sermon on temper