THE Queen must write upon a subject which she thinks she can no longer remain silent upon.

She yesterday saw her valued friend Dr Macleod, than whom there is no better, more liberal-minded, or more thoroughly Christian a man, and he told the Queen that he considered this Episcopalian movement in Scotland — countenanced and encouraged, as it was, by the Archbishop of Canterbury — as most serious, and indeed alarming to the safety of the Church of Scotland. With dissent (the Free Church) on the one side, and this most shameful and openly avowed attempt to try and convert the Presbyterians to Episcopalianism, he does not see how the Established Church can stand. They have already succeeded in carrying with them the great bulk of the aristocracy in Scotland, and therefore establishing a religion for the rich, and another for the poor, and thus alienating the people from their superiors, and producing a want of sympathy between them.

If it had been merely the Episcopalian Church of Scotland, as they are dissenters in Scotland, Dr Macleod said it would not have signified; but when the Archbishop of Canterbury himself came to Scotland, and permits the Bishops to speak of “the Church” — implying, as they do, that the Scotch establishment is no Church, and her Sacraments not to be considered as such, which they openly do — the case becomes very grave. Now the Queen takes a solemn engagement, on her accession, to maintain the Established Church of Scotland, and any attempt to subvert it is contrary to Law.

The Queen feels, more strongly than words can express, the duty which is imposed upon her and her family to maintain the true and real principles and spirit of the Protestant religion; and the Queen will not stand the attempts made to destroy the simple and truly Protestant faith of the Church of Scotland.