anders of Eigg and of Skye. Nor did he shrink
from very minutely describing what he had witnessed on these
occasions, nor yet from denouncing the persecution that had thrust out
some of the best men and best subjects of the country, to worship
unsheltered amid bleak and desert wastes, or on the bare sea-shore.

And yet, of all the many facts which he thus communicated on his own
authority, because resting on his own observation, not one of them has
ever yet been disproved; nay, scarce one of them has ever yet been so
much as challenged.

Of course, in reference to the statements which he has had to make on
the testimony of others, his position was necessarily different; and a
very delicate matter he has sometimes found it to be, to deal with
these statements. A desire, on the one hand, to expose to the
wholesome breathings of public opinion whatever was really oppressive
and unjust; a fear, on the other, lest he should compromise the
general cause, or injure the character of his paper, by giving
publicity to what either might not be true, or could not be proven to
be true,--have often led him to retain communications beside him for
weeks and months, until some circumstance occurred that enabled him to
determine regarding their real character and value. And such--with
more, however, than the ordinary misgivings, and with an unfavourable
opinion frankly and decidedly expressed--was the course which he took
with the communicated article on the Duke of Buccleuch.

That the testing circumstance which _did_ occur in the course of the
long period during which it was thus held _in retentis_ was not
communicated to him, or to any other official connected with the
_Witness_, he much regrets, but could not possibly help.

In the discussion on the Sites Bill of Wednesday last, the Honourable
Fox Maule is made to say, that 'the _Witness_ contained many articles
which had been condemned by the Church.'

Now this must be surely a misreport, as nothing could be more grossly
incorrect than such a statement. The voice of the Free Church--that by
which she condemns or approves--can be emitted through but her
deliberative courts, and recorded in but the decisions of her solemn
Assemblies. On the merits or demerits of the _Witness_, through these
her only legitimate organs, she has not yet spoken; and Mr. Maule is,
we are sure, by far too intelligent a Churchman to mistake the voice
of a mere political coterie, irritated mayhap by the