This should be the natural catastrophe of the case; and the probable evasion of that destructive consummation, to which she is carried by her principles, will be--that as soon as her feelings of rancor shall have cooled down, these principles will silently drop out of use; and the very reason will be suffered to perish for which she ever became a dissenting body. With this, however, we, that stand outside, are noways concerned. But an evil, in which we _are_ concerned, is the headlong tendency of the Free Church, and of all churches adulterating with her principle, to an issue not merely dangerous in a political sense, but ruinous in an anti-social sense. The artifice of the Free Church lies in pleading a spiritual relation of any case whatever, whether of doing or suffering, whether positive or negative, as a reason for taking it out of all civil control. Now we may illustrate the peril of this artifice, by a reality at this time impending over society in Ireland. Dr. Higgins, titular bishop of Ardagh, has undertaken upon this very plea of a spiritual power not amenable to civil control, a sort of warfare with Government, upon the question of their power to suspend or defeat the O'Connell agitation. For, says he, if Government should succeed in thus intercepting the direct power of haranguing mobs in open assemblies, then will I harangue them, and cause them to be harangued, in the same spirit, upon the same topics, from the altar or the pulpit. An immediate extension of this principle would be--that every disaffected clergyman in the three kingdoms, would lecture his congregation upon the duty of paying no taxes. This he would denominate passive resistance; and resistance to bad government would become, in his language, the most sacred of duties. In any argument with such a man, he would be found immediately falling back upon the principle of the Free Church; he would insist upon it as a spiritual right, as a ease entirely between his conscience and God, whether he should press to an extremity any and every doctrine, though tending to the instant disorganization of society. To lecture against war, and against taxes as directly supporting war, would wear a most colorable air of truth amongst all weak-minded persons. And these would soon appear to have been but the first elements of confusion under the improved views of spiritual rights. The doctrines of the _Levellers_ in Cromwell's time, of the _Anabaptists_ in Luther's time, would exalt themselves upon the ruins of society, if governments were weak enough to recognise these spiritual claims in the feeblest of their initial advances. If it were possible to suppose such chimeras prevailing, the natural redress would soon be seen to lie through secret tribunals, like those of the dreadful _Fehmgericht_ in the middle ages. It would be absurd, however, seriously to pursue these anti-social chimeras through their consequences. Stern remedies would summarily crush so monstrous an evil.