TRIAL OF PATRICK SELLAR. 173 



persons, that the panel ought to be hanged that Botany 

 Bay was too good for him ; and that they, though willing to 

 find bail for him, ought to have nothing to do with him. 



ANSWERED by the Advocate-Depute : That if it be true 

 that the panel was imprisoned without a regular complaint, 

 it was only an irregularity in the proceedings ; and that the 

 Court of Justiciary stated, in their finding on the petition for 

 liberation, irregularity as a ground for allowing bail : That 

 the prisoner was committed for a capital offence ; and but 

 for their irregularity in point of form, he could not have been 

 bailed : That the mere circumstance of the panel being 

 struck off the roll of procurators, if true, is no. ground of 

 malice, and may have been justified in the circumstances 

 of the* case: That the relevancy of the statement sent 

 to the Marquis of Stafford, must depend on the expressions 

 it contains, of which the prosecutor is totally ignorant : 

 That the expressions condescended upon, do not infer such 

 deadly malice as to render the witness inadmissible : That 

 the only point on which the prosecutor proposes to examine 

 Mr. M'Kid, is as to the practice of Sutherland, with respect 

 to the rights of out-going tenants, to retain possession of 

 their barns until the term of removal from the arable 

 ground, as to which he conceives him the fittest person to 

 speak as Judge Ordinary of the bounds. 



The Court having allowed a proof of the objections ; 



Mr. M'Kid himself was examined in initialibus. Witness has no 

 malice, or ill-will against Mr. Sellar ; remembers that he imprisoned 

 that gentleman in the jail of Dornoch ; the warrant proceeded on a 

 petition from the tenants of Strathnaver to Lord Gower, transmitted to 

 witness by his Lordship ; there was no other complaint to witness 

 personally, before the warrant was granted. Witness refused to grant 

 bail, as Mr. Sellar was imprisoned for a capital crime. Witness 

 remembers having taken a precognition in Mr. Sellar's case ; he had 

 not the assistance of the Procurator-Fiscal, as at the time that gentle- 



