I had a letter last week relating to Mr. Greenshields[7] an Episcopal clergyman of Scotland, and the writer seems to be a gentleman of that part of Britain.  I remember formerly to have read a printed account of Mr. Greenshields’s case, who has been prosecuted and silenced for no other reason beside reading divine service, after the manner of the Church of England, to his own congregation, who desired it:  though, as the gentleman who writes to me says, there is no law in Scotland against those meetings; and he adds, that the sentence pronounced against Mr. Greenshields, “will soon be affirmed, if some care be not taken to prevent it.”  I am altogether uninformed in the particulars of this case, and besides to treat it justly, would not come within the compass of my paper; therefore I could wish the gentleman would undertake it in a discourse by itself; and I should be glad he would inform the public in one fact, whether Episcopal assemblies are freely allowed in Scotland?  It is notorious that abundance of their clergy fled from thence some years ago into England and Ireland, as from a persecution; but it was alleged by their enemies, that they refused to take the oaths to the government, which however none of them scrupled when they came among us.  It is somewhat extraordinary to see our Whigs and fanatics keep such a stir about the sacred Act of Toleration, while their brethren will not allow a connivance in so near a neighbourhood; especially if what the gentleman insists on in his letter be true, that nine parts in ten of the nobility and gentry, and two in three of the commons, be Episcopal; of which one argument he offers, is the present choice of their representatives in both Houses, though opposed to the utmost by the preachings, threatenings and anathemas of the kirk.  Such usage to a majority, may, as he thinks, be of dangerous consequence; and I entirely agree with him.  If these be the principles of high kirk, God preserve at least the southern parts from their tyranny!

[Footnote 1:  No. 30 in the reprint. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 2:  Cicero, “De Amicitia,” vii.  “For what family is so firmly rooted, what state so strong, as not to be liable to complete overthrow from hatred and strife.”—­G.H.  Wells. [T.S.]]

[Footnote 3:  Refers to the October Club.  See Swift’s “Memoirs Relating to that Change,” etc. (vol. v., pp. 385-6 of present edition). [T.S.]]

[Footnote 4:  The contest is the subject of one of Macaulay’s “Lays.”  Three brothers named Horatius fought with three named Curiatius, and the fight resulted in Publius Horatius being the sole survivor. [T.S.]]