in district belong to these two
classes--that the Disruption of the Scottish Church has thrown the
classes apart--that the residuaries are not men of personal
piety--they have seen no conversions attending their ministry--nor
have they lacked reason to deem them unconverted themselves. Unlike
his Grace the Duke, the people have been intelligent enough to see two
sets of principles ranged in decided antagonism in the Church
question; but still more clearly have they seen two sets of men. They
have identified the cause of the gospel with that of the-Free Church
in their district; and neither the Duke of Sutherland nor the
Establishment which he is 'engaged in endeavouring to maintain,' will
be able to reverse the opinion.

We have said that his Grace's ancestors, the old earls, did much to
foster this spirit. The history of Sutherland, as a county, differs
from all our other Highland districts. Its two great families were
those of Reay and Sutherland, both of which, from an early period of
the Reformation, were not only Protestant, but also thoroughly
evangelical. It was the venerable Earl of Sutherland who first
subscribed the National Covenant in the Greyfriars. It was a scion of
the Reay family--a man of great personal piety--who led the troops of
William against Dundee at Killiecrankie. Their influence was
all-powerful in Sutherland, and directed to the best ends; and we find
it stated by Captain Henderson, in his general view of the agriculture
of the country, as a well-established and surely not uninteresting
fact, that 'the crimes of rapine, murder, and plunder, though not
unusual in the county during the feuds and conflicts of the clans,
were put an end to about the year 1640'--a full century before our
other Highland districts had become even partially civilised. 'Pious
earls and barons of former times,' says a native of the county, in a
small work published in Edinburgh about sixteen years ago, 'encouraged
and patronized pious ministers, and a high tone of religious feeling
came thus to be diffused throughout the country.' Its piety was
strongly of the Presbyterian type; and in no district of the south
were the questions which received such prominence in our late
ecclesiastical controversy better understood by both the people and
the patrons, than in Sutherland a full century ago. We have before us
an interesting document, the invitation of the elders, parishioners,
and heritors of Lairg, to the Rev. Thomas M'K