the House of Lords, and the result was that the Veto Act was declared to be contrary to the law of the land, and that not only were nominees rejected by it pronounced to be entitled to all the emoluments of the livings, but that it was pronounced illegal in the church to appoint any other clergymen to the spiritual cure of the parishes in question. Thus arose a controversy which agitated Scotland throughout its whole extent for ten years ; and in which the original question of the " Non-Intrusion " of clergymen upon unwilling congregations was merged in the question of the proper relations between Church and State. Of this controversy Dr. Chalmers was, on one side, the chief champion ; and for several years ho was inces santly occupied in defending his view of the questions in dispute in speeches and through the press, both against the "Moderate" party in the church itself, who had from the first opposed the Veto Act, and also against the civil courts and the government. More than once it seemed as if the legislature was on the point of devising some means of healing the breach which had been made, and restoring quiet to Scotland ; but at last, these hopes being over, the struggle was ended at the meeting of the General Assembly on the 18th of May 1843, by the so-called "Disruption e. by the voluntary secession of upwards of 400 clergymen, followed by a large portion of the people of Scotland from the Established Church, and the institution of a new ecclesiastical body called "the Free Church!' At the bead of this secession was Dr. Chalmers, who was nominated moderator of the first General Assembly of the new church.
The last four years of Dr. Chalmers's life were spent by him as Principal and Professor of Divinity in the New College founded by tho adherents of the Free Church for the theological education of its ministers (his chair in Edinburgh University having been necessarily vacated by him on his secession from the establishment). During these years, too, be exerted himself prodigiously in arranging the organisa tion of the new church, and in raising funds for its support; and probably at no period of his life was the statesman-like character of his intellect, his power of dealing with new social emergencies and of leading men, more conspicuously shown. He bad seen the foundations
of the new church laid very much to his mind, and was preparing to resign the farther work of completing its organisation into the hands of his many able and younger colleagues, and to devote the rest of his days to his labours as a theological professor, to Christian and philosophical literature in connection more immediately with the North British Review,' then started under his superintendence, and to a new expert. ment of Christian philanthropy which he had begun in one of the most wretched quarters of the old town of Edinburgh, when death removed him. He had just returned from a visit to England iu apparently excellent health and spirits, to take part in the proceedings of the General Assembly of th'e Free Church, when on the morning of the 31st of May 1847, he was found dead in his bed at his house at Morningside near Edinburgh. His death was felt throughout Scotland like a national shock ; and all ranks and parties joined in doing honour to his memory as one of the greatest men that Scotland had produced. He left a widow who did not survive long, and six daughters, one of them married to the Rev. Dr. Hanna, under whose superintendence a new issue of the collected works of Dr. Chalmers has been put forth in twenty-five volumes, and who has also written his life in four volumes, and edited much of his correspondence.
Dr. Chalmers was a man of powerful frame, not tall, but massively built; his head was very large. It was remarkable in a man so cele brated over Britain as an orator, that he always spoke not only in a broad Scottish, but also in a broad provincial Scottish accent, mis pronouncing almost every word. Personally he was a man of most simple, bland, and sociable maoners, with a great fund of anecdote and broad humour. His works, notwithstanding tho force of intellect that they show (and his speculations in social and political economy, in particular, are valued by many of the best thinkers of the day who have no sympathy with his theological or ecclesiastical opinions), but faintly convey an idea of what the man was while he lived, and of what be still is in the memory and imagination of the Scottish people.