clergymen
in whose mission they _could_ believe. We have shown that this state
of feeling and belief still pervades the county. It led to an actual
disruption between its evangelized people and its moderate clergy,
long ere the disruption of last May took place: that important event
has had but the effect of marshalling them into one compact body
under a new name. They are adherents of the Free Church now, just
because they have been adherents to its principles for the last two
centuries. And to shake them loose from this adherence is the object
of his Grace; to reverse the belief of ages; to render them
indifferent to that which they feel and believe to be religion; and to
make them regard as religion that which they know to be none. His
task is harder by a great deal than that to which Napoleon barely
ventured to advert; and how very coarse and repulsive his purposed
means of accomplishing it!

These harmonize but too well with the mode in which the interior of
Sutherland was cleared, and the improved cottages of its sea-coasts
erected. The plan has its two items. No sites are to be granted in the
district for Free churches, and no dwelling-houses for Free Church
ministers. The climate is severe; the winters prolonged and stormy;
the roads which connect the chief seats of population with the
neighbouring counties dreary and long. May not ministers and people be
eventually worn out in this way? Such is the portion of the plan which
his Grace and his Grace's creatures can afford to present to the
light. But there are supplementary items of a somewhat darker kind.
The poor cottars are, in the great majority of cases, tenants at will;
and there has been much pains taken to inform them, that to the crime
of entertaining and sheltering a protesting minister, the penalty of
ejection from their holdings must inevitably attach. The laws of
Charles have again returned in this unhappy district; and free and
tolerating Scotland has got, in the nineteenth century, as in the
seventeenth, its intercommuned ministers. We shall not say that the
intimation has emanated from the Duke. It is the misfortune of such
men that there creep around them creatures whose business it is to
anticipate their wishes; but who, at times, doubtless, instead of
anticipating, misinterpret them; and who, even when not very much
mistaken, impart to whatever they do the impress of their own low and
menial natures, and thus exaggerate in the act the intentio