churchmen. An act of Parliament was hastily passed, offering
two hundred pounds reward to those who should inform against any person
concerned in the deed, and the penalty of death, by a very unusual and severe
enactment, was denounced against those who should harbour the guilty. But what
was chiefly accounted exceptionable, was a clause, appointing the act to be read
in churches by the officiating clergyman, on the first Sunday of every month,
for a certain period, immediately before the sermon. The ministers who should
refuse to comply with this injunction were declared, for the first offence,
incapable of sitting or voting in any church judicature, and for the second,
incapable of holding any ecclesiastical preferment in Scotland.
    This last order united in a common cause those who might privately rejoice
in Porteous's death, though they dared not vindicate the manner of it, with the
more scrupulous Presbyterians, who held that even the pronouncing the name of
the »Lords Spiritual« in a Scottish pulpit was, quodammodo, an acknowledgment of
prelacy, and that the injunction of the legislature was an interference of the
civil government with the jus divinum of Presbytery, since to the General
Assembly alone, as representing the invisible head of the kirk, belonged the
sole and exclusive right of regulating whatever pertained to public worship.
Very many also, of different political or religious sentiments, and therefore
not much moved by these considerations, thought they saw, in so violent an act
of parliament, a more vindictive spirit than became the legislature of a great
country, and something like an attempt to trample upon the rights and
independence of Scotland. The various steps adopted for punishing the city of
Edinburgh, by taking away her charter and liberties, for what a violent and
overmastering mob had done within her walls, were resented by many, who thought
a pretext was too hastily taken for degrading the ancient metropolis of
Scotland. In short, there was much heart-burning, discontent, and disaffection,
occasioned by these ill-considered measures.30
    Amidst these heats and dissensions, the trial of Effie Deans, after she had
been many weeks imprisoned, was at length about to be brought forward, and Mr.
Middleburgh found leisure to inquire into the evidence concerning her. For this
purpose, he chose a fine day for his walk towards her father's house.
    The excursion into the country was somewhat distant, in the opinion of a
burgess of those days, although many of the present inhabit suburban villas
considerably beyond the spot to which we allude. Three-quarters of an hour's
walk, however, even at a pace