ing 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.

CHAPTER I.

There appeared at Paris, about five years ago, a singularly ingenious
work on political economy, from the pen of the late M. de Sismondi, a
writer of European reputation. The greater part of the first volume is
taken up with discussions on territorial wealth, and the condition of
the cultivators of the soil; and in this portion of the work there is
a prominent place assigned to a subject which perhaps few Scotch
readers would expect to see introduced through the medium of a foreign
tongue to the people of a great continental State. We find this
philosophic writer, whose works are known far beyond the limits of his
language, devoting an entire essay to the case of the late Duchess of
Sutherland and her tenants, and forming a judgment on it very unlike
the decision of political economists in our own country, who have not
hesitated to characterize her great and singularly harsh experiment,
whose worst effects we are but beginning to see, as at once
justifiable in itself and happy in its results. It is curious to
observe how