Chapter XVI: Conclusion: Of the War in Affghanistan (7)

It is now more than forty years since it was remarked by Jeffrey, in his _Review_, that metaphysical science was decidedly on the decline in Scotland. Dugald Stewart, though in a delicate state of health at the time, was in the full vigour of his faculties, and had still eighteen years of life before him; Thomas Brown had just been appointed his assistant and successor in the Moral Philosophy Chair of the University of Edinburgh; and the _élite_ of the Scottish capital were flocking in crowds to his class-room, captivated by the eloquence and ingenuity of his singularly vigorous and original lectures. Even fifteen years subsequent, Dr. Welsh could state, in the Life of his friend, that the reception of his work on the _Philosophy of the Human Mind_ had been 'favourable to a degree of which, in metaphysical writings, there was no parallel.' It has been recorded as a very remarkable circumstance, that the _Essay_ of Locke--produced at a period when the mind of Europe first awoke to general activity in the metaphysical province--passed through seven editions in the comparatively brief space of fourteen years. The _Lectures_ of Dr. Brown passed through exactly seven editions in _twelve_ years, and this at a time when, according to Jeffrey, that science of mind of which they treated was in a state of gradual decay. The critic was, however, in the right. The genius of Brown had imparted to his brilliant posthumous work an interest which could scarce be regarded as attaching to the subject of it; and in a few years after--from about the year 1835 till after the disruption of the Scottish Church--metaphysical science had sunk, not in Scotland only, but all over Britain, to its lowest ebb. A few retired scholars continued to prosecute their researches in the province of mind; but scarce any interest attached to their writings, and not a bookseller could be found hardy enough to publish at his own risk a metaphysical work. We are old enough to remember a time, contemporaneous with the latter days of Brown, when young students, in their course of preparation for the learned professions, especially for the Church, used to be ever recurring in conversation to the staple metaphysical questions,--occasionally, no doubt, much in the style of Jack Lizard in the _Guardian_, who comforted his mother, when the worthy lady was so unlucky as to scald her hand with the boiling tea-kettle, by assuring her there was no such thing as heat, but which at least served to show that this branch of liberal education fully occupied the mind of the individuals ostensibly engaged in mastering it; and we remember a subsequent time, when students--some of them very clever ones--seemed never to have thought on these questions at all, and remained silent in conversation when they chanced to be mooted by the men of an earlier generation. During, however, the last ten years, mainly through the revival of a taste for metaphysical inquiry in France and Germany, which has reacted on this country, abstract questions on the nature and functions of mind are again acquiring their modicum of space and importance in Scotland. Our country no longer takes the place it once did among the nations in this department, and never again may; but it at least begins to remember it once was, and to serve itself heir to the works of the older masters of mind; and we regard it as an evidence of the reaction to which we refer, that a greatly more complete edition of the writings of Dugald Stewart than has yet appeared is at the present time in the course of issuing from the press of one of our most respected Scotch publishers--the inheritor of a name paramount in the annals of the trade--Mr. Thomas Constable.

The writings of Dugald Stewart have been unfortunate in more than that state of exhaustion and syncope into which metaphysical science continued to sink during the lapse of more than half a generation after the death of their author, and the commencement of which had been remarked by Jeffrey more than half a generation before. From some peculiar views--founded, we believe, on an overweening estimate of their pecuniary value--the son and heir of the philosopher tabooed their publication; and it is only now that, in consequence of his death, and of the juster views entertained on the subject by a sister, also recently deceased, that they are permitted to reappear. The time, however, from that awakened interest in metaphysical speculation which we have remarked, seems highly favourable for such an undertaking; and we cannot doubt that the work will find what it deserves--a sure and steady, if not very rapid sale. Stewart may be regarded as not merely one of the more distinguished members of the Scottish school of metaphysics, but as peculiarly its historian and exponent. The mind of Reid was cast in a more original mould, but he wanted both the elegance and the eloquence of Stewart, nor were his powers of illustration equally great. His language, too, was not only less refined and flowing, but also less scientifically correct, than that of his distinguished exponent and successor. We would cite, for instance, the happy substitution by the latter of the terms 'laws of human thought and belief,' for the unfortunate phrases 'common sense' and 'instinct,' which raised so extensive a prejudice against the vigorous protest against scepticism made in other respects so effectively by Reid; and he passes oftener from the abstractions of his science into the regions of life and character in which all must feel interested, however slight their acquaintance with the subtleties of metaphysical speculation. The extraordinary excellence of Professor Stewart's style has been recognised by the highest authorities. Robertson was perhaps the best English writer of his day. The courtly Walpole, on ascertaining that he spoke Scotch, told him he was heartily glad of it; for 'it would be too mortifying,' he added, 'for Englishmen to find that he not only wrote, but also spoke, their language better than themselves.' And yet the Edinburgh Reviewers recognised Stewart as the writer of a more exquisite style than even Robertson. And Sir James Mackintosh, no mean judge, characterizes him as the most perfect, in an artistic point of view, of the philosophical writers of Britain. 'Probably no writer ever exceeded him,' says Sir James, 'in that species of eloquence which springs from sensibility to literary merit and moral excellence; which neither obscures science by prodigal ornament, nor disturbs the serenity of patient attention; but, though it rather calms and soothes the feelings, yet exalts the genius, and insensibly inspires a reasonable enthusiasm for whatever is good and fair.' Now, it is surely not unimportant that the writings of such a man, simply in their character as literary models, should be submitted to an age like the present, especially to its Scotchmen. It is stated by Hume, in one of his letters to Robertson, that meeting in Paris with the lady who first gave to the French a translation of Charles V., he asked her what she thought of the style of the work, and that she instantly replied, with great _naïveté_, 'Oh, it is such a style as only a Scotchman could have written.' Scotland did certainly stand high in the age of Hume and Mackenzie, of Robertson and of Adam Smith, for not only the vigour of its thinking, but also for the purity and excellence of its style. We fear, however, it can no longer arrogate to itself praise on this special score. There have been books produced among us during the last twenty years, which have failed in making their way into England, mainly in consequence of the slipshod style in which they were written. A busy age, much agitated by controversy, is no doubt unfavourable to the production of compositions of classic beauty. 'The rounded period,' says an ingenious French writer, 'opens up the long folds of its floating robe in a time of stability, authority, and confidence. But when literature has become a means of action, instead of continuing to be used for its own sake, we no longer amuse ourselves with the turning of periods. The period is contemporary with the peruke--the period is the peruke of style. The close of the eighteenth century shortened the one as much as the other. The peruke reaching the middle of the loins could not be suitable to men in haste to accomplish a work of destruction. When was J. J. Rousseau himself given to the turning of periods? Assuredly it was not in his pamphlets!' Now the style of Stewart was first formed, we need scarce remark, during that period of profound repose which preceded the French Revolution; and his after-life, spent in quiet and thoughtful retirement, with the classics of our own and other countries, ancient and modern, for his companions, and with composition as his sole employment--though the world around him was fiercely engaged with politics or with war--had nothing in it to deteriorate it. He never heard the steam-press groaning, as the night wore late, for his unfinished lucubrations; nay, we question if he ever wrote a careless or hurried sentence. His naturally faultless taste had full space to satisfy itself with whatever he deemed it necessary to perform; and hence works of finished beauty, which, as pieces of art, the younger _literati_ of Scotland would do well to study and imitate. There may be differences of opinion regarding the standing of Stewart as a metaphysician, but there are no differences of opinion regarding his excellence as a writer.

With regard to metaphysics themselves, we are disposed to acquiesce in the judgment of Jeffrey, without, however, acquiescing in much which he has founded upon it. To _observe_ as a mental philosopher, and to _experiment_ as a natural one, are very different things; and never will mere observation in the one field lead to results so splendid or so practical as experiment on the properties of matter, to which man owes his extraordinary control over the elements. To the knowledge acquired by his observations on the nature or operations of mind, he owes no new power over that which he surveys: in at least its direct consequences, his science is barren. It would be difficult, however, to overestimate its _indirect_ consequences. It seems impossible that the metaphysical province should long exist blank and unoccupied in any highly civilised country, especially in a country of active and acquiring intellects, such as Scotland. If the philosophy of Locke or of Reid fail to occupy the field, we find it occupied instead by that of Comte or of Combe. Owens and Martineaus take the place of Browns and of Stewarts; and bad metaphysics, of the most dangerous tendency, are taught, in the lack of metaphysics wholesome and good. All the more dangerous parties of the present day have their foundations of principle on a basis of bad metaphysics. The same remark applies to well-nigh all the religious heresies; and the less metaphysical an age is, all the more superficial usually are the heresies which spring up in it. We question whether Morrisonianism could have originated in what was emphatically the metaphysical age of Scotland, in the latter days of Reid, or the earlier days of Stewart. What became in our times a heresy in the theological field, would have spent itself, as the mere crotchet of a few unripened intellects, in the metaphysical one. It would have found vent in some debating club or speculative society, and the Churches would have rested in peace. There are other indirect benefits derived from metaphysical study. It forms the best possible gymnastics of mind. All the great metaphysicians, if not merely acute, but also broad-minded men, have been great also in the practical departments of thought. The author of the _Essay on the Human Understanding_ was the author also of the _Treatise on Government_ and the _Letters on Toleration_. Hume, in those _Essays on Trade and Politics_, which are free from the stain of infidelity, was one of the most solid of thinkers; and he who produced the _Theory of Moral Sentiments_ continues to give law at the present time, in his _Wealth of Nations_, to the commerce of the civilised world. From a subtile but comparatively narrow class of intellects, though distinguished in the metaphysical province, mankind has received much less. Berkeley was one of these, and may be regarded as their type and representative. Save his metaphysics,--demonstrative of the non-existence of matter, or demonstrative rather that fire is not conscious of heat, nor ice of cold, nor yet our enlightened surface of colour,--he bequeathed little else to the world than his tar-water; and his tar-water, no longer recognised as a universal medicine, has had its day, and is forgotten. Without professing to know aught of German metaphysicians--for in the times when we used to read Hume and Reid they were but little known in this country--we can by no means rate them so high as the men whose writings they are supplanting. What, we have been accustomed to ask, are their trophies in the practical? Have any of them given to the world even tar-water? Where are their Lockes, Humes, and Adam Smiths? The man who, according to Johnson, can walk vigorously towards the east, can walk vigorously toward the west also. How is it that these German metaphysicians exhibit their vigour exclusively in walking one way? Where are their works of a practical character, powerful enough to give law to the species? Where their treatises like those of Locke on _Toleration_ or on _Government_, or their essays like that of Hume or of Adam Smith on the _Balance of Power_ or the _Wealth of Nations_? Are they doing other, to use a very old illustration, than merely milking rams, leaving their admirers and followers to hold the pail?

Dugald Stewart, though mayhap less an original in the domain of abstract thought than some of his predecessors, belongs emphatically to the practical school. With him philosophy is simply common sense on that large scale which renders it one of the least common things in the world. And never, perhaps, was there a more thoroughly honest seeker after truth. Burns somewhat whimsically describes him, in a recently recovered letter given to the world by Robert Chambers, as 'that plain, honest, worthy man, the Professor. I think,' adds the poet, 'his character, divided into ten parts, stands thus: Four parts Socrates, four parts Nathaniel, and two parts Shakespeare's Brutus.' The estimate of Sir James Mackintosh is equally high; nor will it weigh less with many of our readers that the elder M'Crie used to give expression to a judgment quite as favourable. 'He was fascinated,' says the son and biographer of the latter, 'with the _beau ideal_ of academical eloquence which adorned the Moral Chair in the person of Dugald Stewart. Long after he had sat under this admired leader, he would describe with rapture his early emotions while looking on the handsomely erect and elastic figure of the Professor--in every attitude a model for the statuary--listening to expositions, whether of facts or principles, always clear as the transparent stream; and charmed by the tones of a voice which modulated into spoken music every expression of intelligence and feeling. An esteemed friend of his happening to say to him some years ago, "I have been hearing Dr. Brown lecture with all the eloquence of Dugald Stewart," "No, sir," he exclaimed with an air of almost Johnsonian decision, "you have not, and no man ever will.'" The first volume of the collected works of Stewart, now given to the world in a form at once worthy of their author and of the name of Constable, contains the far-famed _Dissertations_, and is edited by Sir William Hamilton. It contains a considerable amount of original matter, now published from the author's manuscripts for the first time. It would be idle to attempt criticising a work so well established; but the brief remark of one of the first of metaphysical critics--Sir James Mackintosh--on what he well terms 'the magnificent Dissertations,' may be found not unacceptable. 'These Dissertations,' says Sir James, 'are perhaps most profusely ornamented of any of their author's compositions,--a peculiarity which must in part have arisen from a principle of taste, which regarded decoration as more suitable to the history of philosophy than to philosophy itself. But the memorable instances of Cicero, of Milton, and still more those of Dryden and Burke, seem to show that there is some natural tendency in the fire of genius to burn more brightly, or to blaze more fiercely, in the evening than in the morning of human life. Probably the materials which long experience supplies to the imagination, the boldness with which a more established reputation arms the mind, and the silence of the low but formidable rivals of the higher principles, may concur in providing this unexpected and little observed effect.'

_August 26, 1854._

OUR TOWN COUNCILS.

It is a grand, though doubtless natural, mistake to hold that the members of the Town Councils of our Scottish cities and burghs really represent in opinion and feeling their nominal constituencies the electors, through whose suffrages they have been placed in office. In very many cases they do not represent them at all: they form an entirely dissimilar class,--a class as thoroughly different from the solid mass of the community, on which they float like froth and spume on the surface of the great deep, as that other class from which, because there are unhappily scarce any other men in the field, we have to select our legislators. The subject is one of importance. In the Sabbath controversy now carrying on, it has been invariably taken for granted by the anti-Sabbatarian press of the country, that our Town Councils _do_ represent the general constituency; and there has been much founded on the assumption. We shall by and by be finding the same assumption employed against us in the Popery endowment question; and it would be well, therefore, carefully to examine the grounds on which it rests, and to ascertain whether there may not exist some practical mode of testing its unsolidity.

It is not difficult to see how that upper class to which our legislators of both Houses of Parliament mainly belong, should differ greatly from the larger and more solid portion of the middle classes in almost all questions of a religious character and bearing. Bacon, in his _Essay on Kings_, has quaintly, but, we are afraid, all too justly remarked, that 'of all kind of men, God is the least beholding unto them [kings]; for He doth most for them, and they do ordinarily least for Him.' But the character applies to more than kings. It affects the whole upper layers of the great pyramid of society, from its gilded pinnacle down to the higher confines of its solid middle portion; and to these upper layers of the erection our legislators, hereditary and elective, with, of course, a very few exceptions in the Lower House, all belong. They are drafted from the classes with which, if we perhaps except the lowest and most degraded of all, religious questions weigh least. There is, of course, no class wholly divorced from good; and those exceptions to which Cowper could refer two generations ago obtain still:

'We boast some rich ones whom the gospel sways,
And one who wears a coronet, and prays:
Like gleanings of an olive tree, they show
Here and there one upon the topmost bough.'

But in at least the mass, religion has not been influential among the governing classes in Britain since the days of the Commonwealth. It has formed one of the great forces on which they have calculated--a formidable power among the people, that they have striven, according to the nature of the emergency, to quiet or awaken, bias or control,--now for the ends of party, when an antagonist faction had to be overborne and put down,--now for the general benefit of the country, when a foreign enemy had to be repelled or an intestine discord to be suppressed; but it has been peculiarly a force outside the governing classes--external, not internal, to them,--a power which it has been their special work to regulate and direct, not a power which has regulated and directed them. The last British Government which--God, according to Bacon, having done much for it--laboured earnestly to do much for God, was that very remarkable one which centred in the person of the Lord Protector.

Hence naturally much that is unsatisfactory to the comparatively religious middle classes of the country, in the conduct, with regard to religious questions, of the classes on whom devolves the work of legislation. There is no real community of feeling and belief in these matters between the two. To the extent to which religion is involved in the legislative enactments of the time, the middle class is in reality not represented, and the upper class does not represent. It may not seem equally obvious, however, how there should be a lack of representation, not only among our members of Parliament, but also among our members of Council. They at least surely belong, it may be said, to the middle classes, by whom and from among whom they are chosen for their office. Certainly in some cases they do; in many others, however, they form a class scarce less peculiar than those upper classes out of which the legislators of the country come to be drawn, simply because there is no other class in the field out of which they can be selected.

The Reform and Municipality Bills wrought a mighty change in the Town Councils of the kingdom. The old close burgh system, with all its abuses, ceased for ever, save in its remains--monumental debts, and everlasting leases of town lands, granted on easy terms to officials and their friends; and droll recollections, like those embalmed by Galt in our literature, of solid municipal feasting, and not so solid municipal services,--of exclusive cliqueships, misemployed patronages, modest self-elections,--in short, of a general practice of jobbing, more palpable than pleasant, and that tended rather to individual advantage than corporate honour. The old men retired, and a set of new men were elevated by newly-created constituencies into their vacated places, to be disinterested on dilapidated means, and noisy on short commons. The days of long and heavy feasts had come to a close, and the days of long and heavy speeches succeeded. No two events which this world of ours ever saw, led to so vast an amount of bad speaking as the one Reform Bill that swept away the rotten burghs, and the other Reform Bill that opened the close ones. By and by, however, it came to be seen that the old, privileged, self-elected class were succeeded in many instances by a class that, though elected by their neighbours, were yet not quite like their neighbours. Their neighbours were men who, with their own personal business to attend to, had neither the time nor the ambition to be moving motions or speaking speeches in the eye of the public, and who could not take the trouble to secure elections by canvassing voters. The men who had the time, and took the trouble, were generally a class ill-hafted in society, who had high notions of reforming everything save themselves, and of keeping right all kinds of businesses except their own. The old state of things was, notwithstanding its many faults, a state under which our Scotch burghers rose into consideration by arts of comparative solidity. A tradesman or shopkeeper looked well to his business,--became an important man in the market-place and a good man in the bank,--increased in weight in the same proportion that his coffers did so, and grew influential and oracular on the strength of his pounds sterling per annum. With altered times, however, there arose a new order of men,--

'The wits of Charles found easier ways to fame.'

It was no longer necessary to spend the greater part of a lifetime in acquiring money and character: a glib tongue, a few high professions of public principle, and a few weeks' canvassing, were found to serve the turn more than equally well.

There commenced straightway a new dynasty of dignities and honours. Councillors got into print in the capacity of speechmakers, who, save for the revolution effected, would never have got into print in any other capacity than, mayhap, that of bankrupts in the Gazette. Eloquent men walked to church in scarlet, greatly distinguished as provosts and bailies, who but for the happy change would have crept unseen all their lives long among the crowd. Members of Parliament went arm-in-arm, when they visited their constituencies, with folk altogether unused to such consideration; and when a burgher's son sought to be promoted to the excise, or a seaman to the coast-guard service, it was through the new men that influence had to be exerted. And of course the new men had to approve themselves worthy of their honours, by making large sacrifices for the public weal. They had in many cases not much to do: the magistracy of the bygone school, whom they succeeded, had obligingly relieved posterity of the trouble of having a too preponderous amount of municipal property to manage and look after; but if they had not much to do, they had at least a great deal to say; and as they were ambitious of saying it, their own individual concerns were not unfrequently neglected, in order that their constituencies might be edified and informed. In cases not a few, the natural consequences ensued. We have in our eye one special burgh in the north, in which every name in the Town Council, from that of the provost down to that of the humblest councillor, had, in the course of some two or three years, appeared also in the _Gazette_; and the previous provost of the place had got desperately involved with the branch banks of the district, and had ultimately run the country, to avoid a prosecution for forgery.

Let it not be held that we are including the entire tribe of modern town functionaries in one sweeping condemnatory description. We ourselves, in our time (we refer to the fact with a high but surely natural pride), held office as a town councillor, under the modern _régime_, for the space of three whole years in a parliamentary burgh that contained no fewer than forty voters. All may learn from history how it was that Bailie Weezle earned his municipal honours during the ancient state of things in the famous burgh of Gudetown. 'Bailie Weezle,' says Galt, 'was a man not overladen with worldly wisdom, and had been chosen into the Council principally on account of being easily managed. Being an idle person living on his money, and of a soft and quiet nature, he was, for the reason aforesaid, taken by one consent among us, where he always voted on the provost's side; for in controverted questions every one is beholden to take a part, and the bailie thought it was his duty to side with the chief magistrate.' Our own special qualifications for office were, we must be permitted in justice to ourselves to state, different from Bailie Weezle's by a shade.

It was generally held, that if there was nothing to do we would _do_ nothing, and if nothing to say we would _say_ nothing; and so thoroughly did we fulfil every expectation that had been previously formed of us, that for three years together we said and did nothing in our official capacity with great _éclat_, and regularly absented ourselves from every meeting of Council except the first, to the entire satisfaction of our constituency. It will not be held, therefore, in the face of so important a fact, that we include in our description all the town magistracies under the existing state of things, and most certainly not all modern town councillors.

Nothing, however, can be more certain, we repeat, than that they differ from their constituencies as a class, and that they are chosen to represent them in municipal affairs, just as another and higher class is chosen to represent them in the Legislature--merely because there is no other class in the field. The solid middle-class men of business have, as has been said, something else to employ them, and cannot spare their services. They cannot accept of mere notoriety, with mayhap a modicum of patronate influence attached, as an adequate price for the time and labour which their own affairs demand. It is a peculiar class in the municipal as in the literary field, that 'weigh solid pudding against empty praise,' and come to regard the empty praise as solid enough to outweigh the pudding. Not but that it is a fine thing to be in a Town Council, and to see one's fortnightly speeches flourishing in the public prints. Where else could some of our Edinburgh worthies bring themselves so prominently before the eyes of the country?

Where else, for instance, could Councillor ---- impart such universal interest to the fact that he taught in a Sabbath school, and rode out of town every evening to attend to its duties by a Sunday train,--thus forming an invariable item, it would seem, in the average of the ninety-two Sabbath journeyers that travelled by the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, and failed to remunerate the proprietors? Or where else could Councillor ---- refer with such prodigious effect to Dr. Chalmers's bloody-minded scheme of '_executing_ the heathen?' Or where else could Councillor ---- succeed in eliciting so general a belief that he was one of the poor endangered heathens over which the threatened _execution_ hung, through his famous oath 'By Jupiter?'

By the way, is this latter gentleman acquainted with Smollett's story of the eccentric Mr. H., and chivalrously bent, on the same principle, in acknowledging a deity in distress? 'Mr. H., some years ago, being in the Campidoglio at Rome,' says Smollett, 'made up to the bust of Jupiter, and bowing very low, exclaimed, in the Italian language, "I hope, sir, if ever you get your head above water again, you will remember that I paid my respects to you in your adversity." This sally,' continues the historian, 'was reported to the Cardinal Camerlengo, and by him laid before the Pope Benedict XIV., who could not help laughing at the extravagance of the address, and said to the Cardinal, "Those English heretics think they have a right to go to the devil in their own way.'"

Now, standing, as we do, either on the threshold of serious national controversies of a religious bearing, or already entered upon them, it would be well to mark and test the facts which it is our present object specially to point out. It would be well to take measures for rendering it an as palpable as it is a solid truth, that the municipal _tail_ of the country's representation no more really represents it in several very important respects than its parliamentary _head_. It represents it most inadequately on the Sabbath question now; it will represent it quite as inadequately in the Popish endowment question by and by; and if in reality we do not wish to see the battle going against us on both issues, there must be effective means employed to demonstrate the fact. In matters of a religious bearing, the ill-hafted notoriety-men of our Town Councils much more nearly resemble the upper indifferent classes, from which our legislators are drafted, than they do the solid bulk of the community.

They are decidedly in the movement party, and form a portion, not of the ballast, but of the superfluous sail, of the State. Nor should it be difficult to render the fact evident to all. In one of our northern burghs--Dingwall--a majority of the Town Council lately memorialized the Directors of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway in exactly the same vein as the majority of our Edinburgh Town Council. So extreme a step seemed rather extraordinary for Ross-shire; and a gentleman of the burgh, one of the voters, convinced that the officials were far indeed from representing their constituency, shrewdly set himself to demonstrate the real state of the case. First he possessed himself of an accredited list of the voters; and then, with a memorial addressed to the Directors, strongly condemnatory of the conduct of the Council, he called upon every voter in the burgh who had not taken the opposite side in the character of a councillor, with the exception of two, whose views he had previously ascertained to be unfavourable. And what, thinks our reader, was the result? Seven councillors had voted on the anti-Sabbatarian side; and the provost, for himself and the Council, had afterwards signed the memorial. And of the voters outside, four were found to make common cause with them. Two more did not make common cause with them, but were not prepared to condemn them, and so did not sign. There were thus fourteen in all who were either not opposed to the running of Sabbath trains, or who were at least not disposed openly to denounce the parties who had memorialized the Directors, in the name of the burgh, to the effect that Sabbath trains should be run. Of the other electors, ten were non-resident, five more were out of town at the time, three had fallen out of possession since the roll had been made up, and one was dead. And all the others, amounting to sixty-nine in number, at once signed the document condemnatory of the Council, and were happy to have an opportunity of doing so. The available votes of the burgh were opposed to those of their pseudo-representatives in the proportion of nearly six to one.

In the parliamentary burgh of Cromarty an almost similar experiment was made. There, however, though the movement party had composed the majority of the Council only a few years since, they had been cast out of office, partly through a strong reaction which had taken place against them, partly in consequence of a quarrel among themselves. And so the existing Town Council took the initiative in memorializing the Directors in favour of the recent resolution not to run Sunday trains. Of all the voters of the burgh, only five stood aloof; all the others made common cause with the Town Council in attaching their names to their document.

But it is a significant fact, that in the knot of five the ex-councillors of the movement party were included; and that had _they_ been in the Council still, a majority would to a certainty have voted in the wake of the Edinburgh Town Council. There is much instruction in facts such as these; and they may be turned to great practical account.

Why should not the sentiments of every voter in Scotland be taken on this same Sabbath question now? or what is there to prevent us from taking the sentiments of every voter in Scotland on the Popish endowment question by and by?

It is a tedious and expensive matter to get up petitions, to which all and sundry affix their names; but the franchise-holders of Scotland are comparatively a not very numerous class; and about the same amount of labour that goes to a monthly collection for the Sustentation Fund, would be quite sufficient to place before Government and the country the full expression of _their_ feelings and opinions on the two leading questions of the day. But enough for the present--'a word to the wise.'

_January 20, 1847._

SUTHERLAND AS IT WAS AND IS;{1}

OR, HOW A COUNTRY MAY BE RUINED.