TRIAL OF THE BRAES CROFTERS. 45 



not known to the prisoners' advisers at the time, that there 

 was no evidence against the prisoners upon which any sane 

 Jury would convict. But the Lord-Advocate seems never 

 to have forgotten that the officialism of the County of 

 Inverness had involved itself in the mess, and in a sum- 

 mary trial officialism might be left to vindicate its own 

 dignity. This would also vindicate the dignity of the 

 law, and the wisdom of its administrators at least so they 

 thought. This theory was universally accepted outside official 

 circles as the reason for the resolution to try summarily, and 

 but for the protests made by outsiders, and particularly a 

 number of Scottish Members of Parliament to secure a fair 

 trial for the prisoners, most people believed that the trial 

 would have been even a greater farce than it turned out 

 to be, but with a far different ending. 



The efforts of the Scottish Members to obtain a Jury trial 

 did not end with the questions in the House of Commons. 

 Efforts were made privately by some of these gentlemen to 

 save the Administration of Justice in Scotland from being 

 sullied, but without result, and when all their efforts failed, 

 the members who had taken most interest in the matter, 

 published the following protest in the Times of loth May, 

 1882, from which it was quoted by almost every newspaper 

 in the Kingdom : 



The circumstances of the arrest, by a large body of police brought 

 from Glasgow, of half-a-dozen Skye crofters, accused of deforcing a 

 sheriff's officer who went among them to serve writs, and the attempt at 

 a rescue which attended it, must be fresh in the minds of your readers. 

 We need not say that the case has excited great public interest in 

 Scotland. It is most important, therefore, in order to secure any moral 

 effect, that the trial should be conducted under such circumstances as 

 will place the verdict above all suspicion. This, we regret to say, is 

 not to be done, and already many persons who sympathise with the 

 men, and desire that their case shall be fairly heard, openly accuse the 

 Executive of resorting to unworthy means to obtain a conviction. For 



