text:  "Heu quantum fati parva tabella vehit!" It might seem to strangers a trivial thing that an obscure court like the presbytery should proceed in the business of induction by one routine rather than by another; but was it a trivial thing that the power of appointing clergymen should lapse into this perilous dilemma--either that it should be intercepted by the Scottish clerical order and thus that a lordly hierarchy should be suddenly created disposing of incomes which in the aggregate approach to half a million annually; or on the other hand that this dangerous power if defeated as a clerical power should settle into a tenure exquisitely democratic? Was _that_ trivial? Doubtless the Scottish ecclesiastical revenues are not equal nor nearly equal to the English; still it is true that Scotland supposing all her benefices equalized gives a larger _average_ to each incumbent than England of the year 1830