EDUCATION AT GLASGOW—A FAR SEEING MEASURE—EMINENTLY SUCCESSFUL—A CELEBRATED TRIAL, SCOTT VS. MC’GAVIN—JUST VERDICT— SEVERE PAROCHIAL LABOUR—MR. SCOTT EQUAL TO THE OCCASION— TEMPORAL BUSINESS—RELIEF OF DISTRESS—MR. SCOTT, COMFORTER OF THE AFFLICTED AND FRIEND OF THE CLERGY—A TROUBLESOME ASSOCIATION— THE SAME DECLARED ILLEGAL ON THE AUTHORITY OF DANIEL O’CONNELL— SCHISMATIC ALSO AND HERETICAL—MR. SCOTT HIGHLY ESTEEMED—THE DEFENDER OF HIS PEOPLE—HIS SUCCESS AS LEGAL COUNSEL.

While the Catholics of Glasgow were rejoicing over the successful completion of the house of God there arose another want which caused no slight anxiety to the zealous pastor. There were no means for educating the numerous children of the flock. Hundreds of them were clamouring for the bread of instruction; and there was none to break it to them. Hence, in a manner, coerced, Mr. Scott was obliged to choose between the certainty of vice and some degree of danger as regarded purity of faith. The measure he adopted was, indeed, a bold one; and did not remain unquestioned. By many it was even declared to be inadmissible. The experience of many years, however, has pronounced in its favour—shown that it bore not with it the dreaded evil, while it resulted in incalculable good, and proved to be the resolve of a far-seeing and no ordinary mind. An offer had been made of Protestant co-operation, on condition that the Protestant version of the Scriptures should be introduced into the schools that were to be established. As the teachers were to be members of the congregation who could point out to their pupils and warn them as regarded the passages of the Protestant Bible complained of by Catholics, and which tended to sustain a few of the Protestant views, the faithful pastor found it less difficult to overcome his reluctance to allow the objectionable version to be read in the schools; and, rather than see so many children, the hope of his rising flock, abandoned to ignorance and vice, he gave his consent. The result was that many of those that were without, came forward with donations of money and books, making at the same time, kind and liberal speeches on the grand subject of dispensing unto all the blessings of education. There appears to have been no difficulty in having Catholic teachers appointed; and, for the first time since the days of Knox, there existed Catholic schools at Glasgow. This was indeed a great and most beneficial achievement. Far from corrupting the faith of the Catholic youth, it gave to the future a well-instructed congrega­tion, every member of which was prepared “to give a reason for the faith that was in him.” Extensive school premises were obtained in Portugal Street and permanently secured to reli­gion, being converted into a church under the invocation of St. John. Meanwhile, they were admirably adapted to receive the numerous children that flocked to them. Such was the “Gorbals School,” as it was called. It soon became insufficient to accommodate the great number that the love of instruction brought from all parts of the city. Hence several other Catholic Schools came to be established in the districts of Anderstown, Bridgetown Calton, Cowcaddens, and North Quarter.

It was now the lot of the good priest of Glasgow to encounter anew and most serious trouble. One Mr. Gavin, a native of Ayrshire and a rigid Presbyterian, who had tried all sorts of trades and passed through a strange variety of fortune, settled, at length, for a time, in Glasgow as the editor of a publication called The Protestant. This publication was very unsparing in its attacks on Catholics. It was encouraged in its evil course by a newspaper of the place, the Glasgow Chronicle. This journal, in July, 1818, threw out some sarcastic and libellous remarks which were afterwards repeated by The Protestant, regarding an Oratorio for a charitable purpose, which took place in St. Andrew’s Church soon after it was finished. The Rev. Mr. Scott was accused of “extorting money to build his chapel by a sort of poll tax from the starving Irish, and that by the fear of future punishment. Let the means by which that house was reared be inscribed upon its front, and it will remain for ages to come, a monument of Popish hard-heartedness and cruelty.” Again: “The house that is building west of the Chapel, and which is, it is said, intended for the manse, will be large enough to accommodate a dozen of priests, while they remain unmarried, as they must always do; from which I infer that Mr. Scott either has, or intends to have, abundant assistance in milking and managing his flock. It is doubtful how far he exhibits the character of a faithful pastor, while he seems to care only for himself. He asked no answer or explanation from his flock; it was for himself as an individual.” Mr. McGavin also published that “Father Scott refused to baptize the children of several labourers (whose names, unfortu­nately for himself, he specified) until they contributed towards the building of the new Chapel and paid up all their arrears; and that the masters of certain public works were applied to, to retain the weekly earnings of Catholic employees to aid the erection of the said Roman Catholic Chapel.”

Such calumnies could only be swept away by a successful prosecution. But, considering the state of the public mind at Glasgow, what hope was there of success in prosecuting? Bishop Cameron, when consulted, declared that he could see none; and hence endeavoured to dissuade Mr. Scott from submitting the matter to a jury selected from the most prejudiced people in the country. He did not, however, forbid to prosecute; and Mr. Scott, remarking that he must either do so or abandon his mission, resolved to bring an action against his defamers. The damages were laid at £3,000. The chief detractor, meanwhile, encouraged by the great bulk of the less educated classes, who were guided only by blind prejudice, shouted defiance, considering himself secure. It was a most trying and anxious time for Mr. Scott. His best friends dared not venture to give an opinion in his favour. He stood alone; but was undaunted and determined. The ablest barrister of the time, the celebrated Jeffrey, was retained as his counsel; and applied to the work before him with no less earnestness than ability. His speech at the trial was a consummate masterpiece of forensic oratory. Bishop Cameron, who, after giving his evidence, had been invited by the presiding judge to take a seat on the Bench, could not refrain from complimenting the eloquent counsel, and remarked that his able discourse must ensure success. Jeffrey, surveying the jury, where there was not much respectability to be seen, expressed much doubt. There was, however, unconquerable honesty and a sense of justice which no want of education and no amount of false teaching could ever eradicate from the minds of the Scotch people, even in the humblest walks of life. The twelve jurymen, after hearing the charge of the Right Honourable William Adam, Lord Chief Commissioner, retired for rather more than an hour. A little before five o’clock in the morning, they returned into Court, and unanimously found for the pursuer, against the defender, William McGavin, damages £100; against the defender, William Sym, Clerk of the Glasgow Fever Hospital, £20; and against the defenders, Andrew and James Duncan, printers in Glasgow, one shilling. Mr. McGavin’s damages, together with his law expenses, were computed at £1,400. The twelve ordinary Glasgow jurymen, it has been well remarked, “in spite of the prejudices of their education, in spite of their religious, antipathies, in spite of the fierce controversies of the day, in spite of all the means used to excite their anti-Catholic feelings, when it came to the point, threw their prejudices to the wind, stood to immortal justice, and vindicated the cause even of a Catholic priest.”

Mr. Scott could now, with an undisturbed mind, devote himself to the fulfilment of his parochial duties. These duties were necessarily very onerous, the congregation being so numerous and scattered over the increasing city of Glasgow. In visiting the sick and hearing confessions the zealous pastor was most assiduous, as well as in preaching frequently in a crowded church. At all times, but particularly when epidemics raged, visiting the sick was very trying and even dangerous. Mr. Scott was not to be dismayed. Typhus fever, small pox, even the dread cholera morbus had no terrors for him. He was always found when required, whether in the day time or the dead of night, by the bed side of the dying, speaking words of consolation and administering the grace-giving sacraments. If we may judge by the wise instructions which he imparted to the clergy, he did not neglect such precautions as prudence dictated, and on the utility of which science has pronounced. He advised the priests who assisted him to carry with them camphor or other disinfectants, to remain only as long as necessary near persons stricken with infectious or contagious disease, to refrain, as much as possible, from inhaling new air, when in a sick room, to avoid swallowing saliva and to wash their hands immediately after visiting an infected person. The propriety of this last recommendation was well shown by a case which occurred at the Edinburgh Infirmary. A medical student there had neglected, after attending to a typhus fever patient, to wash his hands, as was the custom of the house. He was immediately seized with the terrible fever and died, exclaiming: “O, had I but washed my hands! had I but washed my hands!”

It was scarcely less safe, after great exertion in the pulpit, to sit for hours, often till a late hour in the evening, hearing confessions in the newly built church. This was fearlessly done; never­theless. The iron constitution of Mr. Scott was proof against every trial.

It fell to the lot of Mr. Scott to transact a great deal of temporal business in connection with his important mission. His punctuality in making all necessary payments and his judiciousness in the outlay of money won for him a golden name among all with whom he came to have business relations. Nor did he neglect the poor. His hand was ever open for the relief of distress. Even his good natured, unstudied salute in the streets was cheering to his more humble friends. But this was nothing to the kindness and charity which gave comfort to the disconsolate and shed a halo over the gloom of the scaffold. His tact and wisdom in ruling the extensive mission committed to his charge could not be surpassed. There was a certain manliness and at the same time bonhomie in his manner which few could resist. It was the result of his essential uprightness, and caused his friendship to be so precious and his counsels so valuable to his brother cler­gymen.

In 1825 a set of illiterate people called the Catholic Association, gave great annoyance to Mr. Scott. These people published a pamphlet in their defence, and inveighed against what they called “the unwarrantable, unprovoked and very surprising attack” of the Rev. A. Scott and the Rev. J. Murdoch, pastors of the Glasgow Catholic congregation. They remarked also on being excluded from all knowledge of the state of the funds or the management of the temporalities, and pointed out a plan for obtaining their right in this respect. This precious Association origi­nated through the mistaken zeal of some Irish members of the Church, and became the cause of the endless vexations which ever since that time have beset and annoyed the national bishops and priests in the West of Scotland. Several news sheets were enlisted in their service. Mr. Scott thundered against them in the pulpit, and in a style not the less vigorous for being peculiarly his own. He pronounced the Association illegal on the authority of Daniel O’Connell; and declared, moreover, that all meetings held independently of and in defiance of their pastors were schis­matic and heretical. In a memorial or requisition for the redress of grievances, which they sent to Bishop Cameron, they complained that Mr. Scott had attacked them from the pulpit, calling them by the most offensive names and representing those who signed the requisition, as “illit­erate rag-a-muffins,” comparing the roughness of their handwriting to their “tattered coats,” and recommending them, if they had any money to spare to use it in purchasing old clothes to cover their naked members. He declared, moreover, that he knew little of them, but by the scandal they had given to religion.

Although there were a few rebels who gave trouble, Mr. Scott was greatly revered by the congregation generally. He was a strict disciplinarian, and it not unfrequently behoved him to rebuke offenders. But even they who quailed beneath the lash of his just indignation, lost not confidence in his goodness; and had recourse to him when occasion required, with undimin­ished trust and affection. He was ever ready to defend his people when any difficulty occurred from the real or supposed state of the law. An instance or two may prove not uninteresting; Some of his flock had been summoned to qualify as Burgesses, and were told that if they did not, their shops would be shut. But, on presenting themselves, they were called on to take an oath which implied an abjuration of their Faith. Upon this Mr. Scott took the matter in hand, and visited, more than once, the Dean of Guild in his Court. This official gave proof of extraordinary ignorance of the law, as did, also, his legal adviser. Such lawyers of the city as were supposed to possess some liberality, were asked to act on behalf of Mr. Scott’s friends; but none of them could be induced to take up the case. The burden, therefore, fell on Mr. Scott, who proved the actual state of the law, and at the same time threatened legal proceedings against the ignorant authorities. He thus caused his congregation to be fairly treated, and complete justice to be done.