Sabbath; but it was all too evident that the heavy
hand of poverty rested upon them, and that its evils were now deepened
by oppression. It might be a mere trick of association; but when their
plaintive Gaelic singing, so melancholy in its tones at all times,
arose from the bare hill-side, it sounded in our ears like a deep wail
of complaint and sorrow. Poor people! 'We were ruined and reduced to
beggary before,' they say, 'and now the gospel is taken from us.'

Nine-tenths of the poor people of Sutherland are adherents of the
Free Church--all of them in whose families the worship of God has been
set up--all who entertain a serious belief in the reality of
religion--all who are not the creatures of the proprietor, and have
not stifled their convictions for a piece of bread--are devotedly
attached to the disestablished ministers, and will endure none other.
The residuary clergy they do not recognise as clergy at all. The
Established churches have become as useless in the district, as if,
like its Druidical circles, they represented some idolatrous belief,
long exploded--the people will not enter them; and they respectfully
petition his Grace to be permitted to build other churches for
themselves. And fain would his Grace indulge them, he says. In
accordance with the suggestions of an innate desire, willingly would
he permit them to build their own churches and support their own
ministers. But then, has he not loyally engaged to support the
Establishment? To permit a religious and inoffensive people to build
their own places of worship, and support their own clergy, would be
sanctioning a sort of persecution against the Establishment; and as
his Grace dislikes religious persecution, and has determined always to
oppose whatever tends to it, he has resolved to make use of his
influence, as the most extensive of Scottish proprietors, in forcing
them back to their parish churches. If they persist in worshipping God
agreeably to the dictates of their conscience, it must be on the
unsheltered hill-side--in winter, amid the frosts and snows of a
severe northern climate--in the milder seasons, exposed to the
scorching sun and the drenching shower. They must not be permitted the
shelter of a roof, for that would be persecuting the Establishment;
and so to the Establishment must the people be forced back, literally
by stress of weather. His Grace owes a debt to the national
institution, and it seems to irk his conscience until som