step in the
process, that copies of the Gaelic minister's document should be served
upon them. The Presbytery decided, in terms of their prayer, that copies
should be served; and the Gaelic minister, on the somewhat extreme
ground that the people had no right to appear in the business at all,
appealed to the General Assembly. And so the people had next to petition
that venerable court in behalf of what they deemed their imperilled
rights; while the Gaelic congregation, under the full impression that
their overbearing English neighbours were treating them "as if they had
no souls," got up a counter petition, virtually to the effect that the
parish might be either cut in two, and the half of it given to their
minister, or that he might be at least made second minister to every man
in it. The minister, however, finding at the General Assembly that the
ecclesiastical party on whose support he had relied were opposed _in
toto_ to the erection of chapels of ease into regular charges, and that
the peculiarities of the case were such as to cut off all chance of his
being supported by their opponents, fell from his appeal, and the case
was never called in Court. Some of our Cromarty fisher-folk, who were
staunch on the English side, though they could not quite see the merits,
had rather a different version of the business. "The Gaelic man had no
sooner entered the Kirk o' the General Assembly," they said, "than the
maister of the Assembly rose, and, speaking very rough, said, 'Ye
contrarious rascal, what tak's you here? What are ye aye troubling that
decent lad Mr. Stewart for? I'm sure he's no meddling wi' you! Get about
your business, ye contrarious rascal!'"

I took an active part in this controversy; wrote petitions and
statements for my brother parishioners, with paragraphs for the local
newspapers, and a long letter for the _Caledonian Mercury_, in reply to
a tissue of misrepresentation which appeared in that print, from the pen
of one of the Gaelic minister's legal agents; and, finally, I replied to
a pamphlet by the same hand, which, though miserable as a piece of
writing--for it resembled no other composition ever produced, save,
mayhap, a very badly-written law paper--contained statements which I
deemed it necessary to meet. And such were my first attempts in the
rough field of ecclesiastical controversy--a field into which
inclination would never have led me, but which has certainly lain very
much in my way, and in wh