h I had just witnessed, and completing my
second pamphlet, I set out for Edinburgh, and saw for the first time
men with whose names I had been familiar during the course of the
Voluntary and Non-Intrusion controversies. And entering into their
plans, though with no little shrinking of heart, lest I should be found
unequal to the demands of a twice-a-week paper, that would have to
stand, in Ishmael's position, against almost the whole newspaper press
of the kingdom, I agreed to undertake the editorship of their projected
newspaper, the _Witness_. Save for the intense interest with which I
regarded the struggle, and the stake possessed in it, as I believed, by
the Scottish people, no consideration whatever would have induced me to
take a step so fraught, as I thought at the time, with peril and
discomfort. For full twenty years I had never been engaged in a quarrel
on my own account: all my quarrels, either directly or indirectly, were
ecclesiastical ones;--I had fought for my minister, or for my brother
parishioners: and fain now would I have lived at peace with all men; but
the editorship of a Non-Intrusion newspaper involved, as a portion of
its duties, war with all the world. I held, besides--not aware how very
much the spur of necessity quickens production--that its twice-a-week
demands would fully occupy all my time, and that I would have to resign,
in consequence, my favourite pursuit--geology. I had once hoped,
too--though of late years the hope had been becoming faint--to leave
some little mark behind me in the literature of my country; but the last
remains of the expectation had now to be resigned. The newspaper editor
writes in sand when the flood is coming in. If he but succeed in
influencing opinion for the present, he must be content to be forgotten
in the future. But believing the cause to be a good one, I prepared for
a life of strife, toil, and comparative obscurity. In counting the cost,
I very considerably exaggerated it; but I trust I may say that, in all
honesty, and with no sinister aim, or prospect of worldly advantage, I
_did_ count it, and fairly undertook to make the full sacrifice which
the cause demanded.

It was arranged that our new paper should start with the new
twelvemonth (1840); and I meanwhile returned to Cromarty, to fulfil my
engagements with the bank till the close of its financial year, which in
the Commercial Bank offices takes place at the end of autumn. Shortly
after my return, D