278 EDITOR. 



in supporting them, the difference must, in many points, 

 be irreconcileable. The Parliament-House Editor who 

 produced a Witness suited to satisfy them, would fail most 

 egregiously in his duty to the Free Church and its 

 people. I may here state, as not quite out of place, that 

 I entertain no factious dislike of our Whig members of 

 Parliament. I am not Tory, Conservative, Radical, 

 Chartist. I am a Whig, and have been so ever since I 

 was able to form an opinion. When many of my 

 respected friends in the north country, alarmed, some 

 ten or twelve years ago, by the Whig measures of the 

 day, were casting their influence into the Conservative 

 scale, I remained a Whig still ; nor have I yet laid down 

 any one of the political principles which I then held. 

 That I am now no thorough supporter of the Whig 

 Ministry, is a consequence, not of my having changed 

 my Whiggism, but of my being more a Protestant than 

 a politician, and that my real party principles are those of 

 the Free Church of Scotland. 



' I have of late heard much regarding the faults of the 

 Witness, and I am, I trust, not blind to them. It may 

 be well known, however, for on scarce any other topic 

 do newspaper Editors so frequently insist, that what 

 one reader deems a fault, another does not deem a fault 

 at all ; and that a Paper thoroughly to the mind of one 

 class, would be in utter discordance with the taste of 

 another. The Witness has many faults which Dr Cand- 

 lish has observed, it has perhaps some others which he 

 has not discovered yet. There are occasional complaints 

 made at the Witness Office, which at certain times bear 

 on a particular point ; and the following extract from 

 a letter dated the 21st November, which I received in 

 Cromarty from my partner Mr Fairly, ere the present 

 storm arose, indicates its nature very directly : " You 



