d--surely what was good
for his complaint must of course be beneficial to yours?' It was in
vain you pleaded your being perfectly well,--your detesting the
medicine,--your being certain it would not agree with you--none of the
apologies were received as valid. You might be warm, pathetic or
sulky, fretful or patient, grave or serious in testifying your
repugnance, but you were equally a doomed man; escape was impossible.
Your host was in his turn eloquent,--authoritative,--facetious,
--argumentative,--precatory,--pathetic, above all, pertinacious. No
guest was known to escape the _Leetle Anderson_. The last time I
experienced the laird's hospitality there were present at the evening
meal the following catalogue of guests:--a Bond-street dandy, of the most
brilliant water, drawn thither by the temptation of grouse-shooting--a
writer from the neighbouring borough (the lairds _doer_, I
believe),--two country lairds, men of reserved and stiff habits--three
sheep-farmers, as stiff-necked and stubborn as their own haltered
rams--and I, Malachi Malagrowther, not facile or obvious to persuasion.
There was also the Esculapius of the vicinity--one who gave, but
elsewhere was never known to _take_ medicine. All succumbed--each took,
after various degrees of resistance according to his peculiar fashion,
his own _Leetle Anderson_. The doer took a brace. On the event I
am silent. None had reason to congratulate himself on his complaisance.
The laird has slept with his ancestors for some years, remembered
sometimes with a smile on account of his humorous eccentricities, always
with a sigh when his surviving friends and neighbours reflect on his
kindliness and genuine beneficence. I have only to add that I hope he
has not bequeathed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, otherwise so
highly gifted, his invincible powers of persuading folks to take
medicine, which their constitutions do not require.

Have I argued my case too high in supposing that the present intended
legislative enactment is as inapplicable to Scotland as a pair of
elaborate knee-buckles would be to the dress of a kilted Highlander? I
think not.

I understand Lord Liverpool and the Chancellor of the Exchequer
distinctly to have admitted the fact, that no distress whatever had
originated in Scotland from the present issuing of small notes of the
bankers established there, whether provincial in the strict sense, or
sent abroad by branches of the larger establishments set