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We have been requested to give publicity to the following address:.............................

To the Noblemen and Gentlemen, Landed Proprietors in Scotland, who have directly or indirectly refused Sites for Free Churches on their Estates.

My Lords and Gentlemen, -  Having been present in the General Assembly of the Church now sitting in Glasgow, and having there heard the detail of the sufferings endured by many of our brethern of the Free Church of England in consequence of your refusal to allow them to erect places of worship on your estates, even when the full value has been offered for the sites, we feel it our duty to you, not less than to ourselves, as landed proprietors, as well as to your suffering fellow countrymen, to address you on the subject in terms of friendly remonstrance on the course you are now persuing, which, in our humble opinion is consistent with the due exercise of the rights of property, injurious to the people on your estates, and calculated, if persevered in, to shake, and ultimately to overturn the whole framework of social order.

We heartily participate, as you may well believe, in every feeling in favour of the free exercise of the rights of property, and of the necessity of maintaining  those rights for the sake of all classes and orders of society, but we can never forget that if property has its rights, it has also its duties, and that the one can scarcely long  be maintained, if the other be neglected.

We beg to express our deep convictions that the charges brought against the Free Church of Scotland, as maintaining principles inconsistent with, and injurious to the good order of society, are utterly unfounded, and that on the contrary the maintenance of peace and good order in our country, and that the fruits of the ministrations of the pastors of our Free Church will appear more and more in the increase of loyalty to our beloved Sovereign, and in all due respect and prompt obedience to our civil rulers over civil things - for we believe that they only who truly"fear God" will truly "honour the King.

But we cannot, in present circumstances, forget the unerring word of Scripture, which tells us that "oppression maketh a wise man mad  , and we would respectfully but firmly assure you, that however far it may be from your intention to oppress or injure the people on your estates, the conduct you are pursuing is felt "in point of fact to be oppression" and "that of a very grievous kind.

For, to a man who deserves the name of free, nothing can be more offensive than any attempt to control him in the exercise of the rights of private judgment, but this you do effectually, however unintentionally, and that too, in the highest of all his interest, if you refuse him the means of worshipping God according to his conscience - a privilege which hitherto we believed to be enjoyed by the meanest and most erring man who dwells beneath the shelter of our glorious Constitution.

We at the same time believe the most of you have adopted this line of conduct without having bestowed upon it and its consequences that anxious and careful consideration which its importance demands.

Nor was it unnatural that you should do so, for you were called upon to act immediately on the conclusion of a long and in some respects an embittered controversy, during which personal feelings were more than ordinarily excited, and this consideration induces us the more anxiously to entreat you, now that the controversy has come to a conclusion, carefully to reconsider the determination on which you have been acting, both in its principles and the results to which it must lead, and we confidently trust that if you do so you will by the blessing of God be led to alter your present determination, and be induced to grant suitable sites, for a just equivalent, to the members of the Free Church of Scotland on your several estates.

We feel confident that if such shall be the case, you will be the means of conferring incalculable benefits on your country - not only at the present crisis, but to latest ages - and we heartily pray that He who has given you your estates, with all their privileges and all their responsibilities, may now guide you to act in this great matter as shall be for His glory and for the best interests of our beloved country.

        Signed in name and by appointment of the Meeting.

                                            BREADALBANE, Chairman.

Glasgow, 31st October, 1843.

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