This being so, we have never been able to understand the apparent apathy with which the landed body met the first promulgation of the _Veto_ Act in May 1834. Of this apathy, two insufficient explanations suggest themselves:--1st, It seemed a matter of delicacy to confront the General Assembly, upon a field which they had clamorously challenged for their own. The question at issue was tempestuously published to Scotland as a question exclusively spiritual. And by whom was it thus published? The Southern reader must here not be careless of dates. _At present_, viz. in 1844, those who fulminate such views of spiritual jurisdiction, are simply dissenters; and those who vehemently withstand them are the church, armed with the powers of the church. Such are the relations between the parties in 1844. But in 1834, the revolutionary party were not only _in_ the church, but (being the majority) they came forward _as_ the church. The new doctrines presented themselves at first, not as those of a faction, but of the Scottish kirk assembled in her highest court. The _prestige_ of that advantage, has vanished since then; for this faction, after first of all falling into a minority, afterwards ceased to be any part or section of the church; but in that year 1834, such a _prestige_ did really operate; and this must be received as one of the reasons which partially explain the torpor of the landed body. No one liked to move _first_, even amongst those who meant to move. But another reason we find in the conscientious scruples of many landholders, who hesitated to move at all upon a question then insufficiently discussed, and in which their own interest was by so many degrees the largest. These reasons, however, though sufficient for suspense, seem hardly sufficient for not having solemnly protested against the _Veto_ Act immediately upon its passing the Assembly. Whatever doubts a few persons might harbour upon the expediency of such an act, evidently it was contrary to the law of the land. The General Assembly could have no power to abrogate a law passed by the three estates of the realm. But probably it was the deep sense of that truth, which reined up the national resistance. Sure of a speedy collision between some patron and the infringers of his right, other parties stood back for the present, to watch the form which such a collision might assume.