This act, then, of Lord Aberdeen's removes all _legal_ effect from the '_call_.' Common sense required _that_. For what was to be done with patronage? Was it to be sustained, or was it not? If not, then why quarrel with the Non-intrusionists? Why suffer a schism to take place in the church? Give legal effect to the 'call,' and the original cause of quarrel is gone. For, with respect to the opponents of the Non-intrusionists, _they_ would bow to the law. On the other hand, if patronage _is_ to be sustained, then why allow of any lingering or doubtful force to what must often operate as a conflicting claim? 'A call,' which carries with it any legal force, annihilates patronage. Patronage would thus be exercised only on sufferance. Do we mean then, that a 'call' should sink into a pure fiction of ceremony, like the English _conge-d'elire_ addressed to a dean and chapter, calling on them to elect a bishop, when all the world knows that already the see has been filled by a nomination from the crown? Not at all; a _moral_ weight will still attach to the 'call,' though no legal coercion: and what is chiefly important, all those _doubts_ will be removed by express legislation, which could not but arise between a practice pointing sometimes in one direction, and sometimes in another, between legal decisions again upholding one view, whilst something very like legal prescription was occasionally pleaded for the other. Behold the evil of written laws not rigorously in harmony with that sort of customary law founded upon vague tradition or irregular practice. And here, by the way, arises the place for explaining to the reader that irreconcilable dispute amongst Parliamentary lawyers as to the question whether Lord Aberdeen's bill were _enactory_, that is, created a new law, or _declaratory_, that is, simply expounded an old one. If enactory, then why did the House of Lords give judgment against those who allowed weight to the 'call?' That might need altering; _that_ might be highly inexpedient; but if it required a new law to make it illegal, how could those, parties be held in the wrong previously to the new act of legislation? On the other hand, if declaratory, then show us any old law which made the 'call' illegal. The fact is, that no man can decide whether the act established a new law, or merely expounded an old one. And the reason why he cannot, is this: the practice, the usage, which often is the law, had grown up variously during the troubles of the seventeenth century. In many places political reasons had dictated that the elders should nominate the incumbent. But the ancient practice had authorized patronage: by the act of Queen Anne (10th chap.) it was even formally restored; and yet the patron in known instances was said to have waived his right in deference to the 'call.' But why? Did he do so in courteous compliance with the parish, as a party whose _reasonable_ wishes ought, for the sake of