SPEECH, &c. MY LORDS, THIS is a case which comes before Your Lordships' House by appeal from the Court of Session the Appellant is the Earl of Wemyss, who appears in the character of an heritor of the parish of Prestonkirk, though in reality he represents the landed interest of Scotland, for in the course of the argument this has been stated from the Bar to be their cause. The Respondent is the Rev. Mr. Macqueen, the minister of that parish, who avowedly maintains what in the pleadings before you has been held forth as the cause of the Church of Scotland. On the facts which have given rise to this case there is no dispute; both parties are agreed, that the stipend had been first modified and augmented in the year 1678, and that a second augmentation had been granted in the year 1793. B It is under these circumstances, that the clergyman of this parish, in the month of November 1806, raised a process for a further augmentation. Soon after the cause came into Court, it appears, that the Appellant in this case gave notice, that he was determined to dispute the competency of the Court under the Act of Parliament from which it derived its authority, to grant augmentations in cases which had been previously augmented and modified: and it seems to have been agreed on both sides to consider this purely as a question on the powers of the Court, without relation to any of the circumstances that might ultimately regulate the decision on the particular case. Accordingly, it was so argued on the 9th of December 1807, when the parties were ordered by the Court to give in memorials. On advising these memorials, the Court pronounced an interlocutor to the following effect: "The Lords Commissioners having heard coun"sel for the parties, and advised the memorials, "find that this Court having been established "by an Act in the year 1707, as a permanent "court of commission, in place of the former "teinporary commissions for the purpose, inter 66 alia, of modifying and augmenting the stipend of parochial ministers, out of the teinds, "it is the duty of the Court, and within its powers, as recognised by the House of Lords, "in two decided cases in the years 1784 and "1789, and by the uniform practice of the "Court acquiesced in by all parties, in a great variety of instances, ever since the last-men"tioned period, to receive such applications, "when made in the regular forms, and deter"mine upon them according to the state of "matters at the time, and the merits of each t; particular case, notwithstanding a former aug❝mentation since the institution of the Court "and therefore that the present case must be "allowed to proceed as usual." It is the justice and propriety of this interlocutor on which Your Lordships are now called to pronounce judgment: and those of Your who Lordships have attended the cause must be fully sensible that you have had on this occasion every advantage which could be derived from the learning and ingenuity of the Bar: the pleadings on both sides have been conducted in a manner that must have convinced you that the labour bestowed in preparing, and the talent |