t, addressed to the editor of the _Inverness
Courier_; in which, as I afterwards found, I was happy enough to
anticipate in some points the line taken up, in his famous emancipation
speech, by a man whom I had early learned to recognise as the greatest
and wisest of Scottish ministers--the late Dr. Chalmers. On glancing
over my letter, however, and then looking round me on the good men among
my townsfolk--including my uncle and my minister--with whom it would
have the effect of placing me in more decided antagonism than any mere
refusal to sign their petition, I resolved, instead of dropping it into
the post-office, to drop it into the fire, which I accordingly did; and
so the matter took end; and what I had to say in my own defence, and in
that of emancipation, was in consequence never said.

This, however, was but the mere shadow of a controversy; it was merely
a possible controversy, strangled in the birth. But some three years
after, the parish was agitated by a dire ecclesiastical dispute, which
set us all together by the ears. The place had not only its parish
church, but also its Gaelic chapel, which, though on the ordinary
foundation of a chapel of ease, was endowed, and under the patronage of
the crown. It had been built about sixty years previous, by a benevolent
proprietor of the lands of Cromarty--"George Ross, the Scotch
agent"--whom Junius ironically described as the "trusted friend and
worthy confidant of Lord Mansfield;" and who, whatever the satirist may
have thought of either, was in reality a man worthy the friendship of
the accomplished and philosophic lawyer. Cromarty, originally a Lowland
settlement, had had from the Reformation down till the latter quarter of
the last century no Gaelic place of worship. On the breaking up of the
feudal system, however, the Highlanders began to drop into the place in
quest of employment; and George Ross, affected by their uncared-for
religious condition, built for them, at his own expense, a chapel, and
had influence enough to get an endowment for its minister from the
Government. Government retained the patronage in its own hands; and as
the Highlanders consisted of but labourers and farm servants, and the
workers in a hempen manufactory, and had no manner of influence, their
wishes were not always consulted in the choice of a minister. About the
time of Mr. Stewart's appointment, through the late Sir Robert Peel, who
had courteously yielded to the wishes of the En