they dang down the Quaker's kirkyard dyke, and houket up dead
Quakers out o' their graves; that the young boys at the college
printed a buke, and maist naebody wad buy it, and they cam out to
Ury, near Stonehaven, and took twelve stots frae Davie Barclay to
pay the printer.

"Dinna forget to speer at ----, if it was true that he flogget
three laddies in the beginning o' last year, for the three
following crimes: first, for the crime of being born of puir,
ignorant parents; second, for the crime of being left in
ignorance; and, third, for the crime of having nothing to eat.

"Dinna be telling when ye gang hame that ye rode on the Aberdeen
railway, made by a hundred men, who were all in the Stonehaven
prison for drunkenness; nor above five could sign their names.

"If the Scotch kill ye with ower feeding and making speeches, be
sure to send this hame to tell your fouk, that it was Queen
Elizabeth who made the first European law to buy and sell human
beings like brute beasts. She was England's glory as a Protestant,
and Scotland's shame as the murderer of their bonnie Mary. The auld
hag skulked away like a coward in the hour of death. Mary, on the
other hand, with calmness and dignity, repeated a Latin prayer to
the Great Spirit and Author of her being, and calmly resigned
herself into the hands of her murderers.

"In the capital of her ancient kingdom, when ye are in our country,
there are eight hundred women, sent to prison every year for the
first time. Of fifteen thousand prisoners examined in Scotland in
the year 1845, eight thousand could not write at all, and three
thousand could not read.

"At present there are about twenty thousand prisoners in Scotland.
In Stonehaven they are fed at about seventeen pounds each,
annually. The honest poor, outside the prison upon the parish roll,
are fed at the rate of five farthings a day, or two pounds a year.
The employment of the prisoners is grinding the wind, we ca' it;
turning the crank, in plain English. The latest improvement is the
streekin board; it's a whig improvement o' Lord Jonnie Russell's.

"I ken brawly ye are a curious wife, and would like to ken a' about
the Scotch bodies. Weel, they are a gay, ignorant, proud, drunken
pack; they manage to pay ilka year for whuskey one millio