PAMPHLET. 281 



and intelligence to the columns of that Paper. The very 

 superior ability of Mr Fyfe attracted the notice of the 

 Times, and he was lost to us, through an arrangement 

 with that journal which no Scotch Paper could afford to 

 make. I requested him to state, when leaving us, why 

 it was he could not make the Witness what he had pre- 

 viously made the Scotsman, and he did so, assigning 

 three distinct reasons, first, our long and heavy reports, 

 the weight of which the Scotsman and every other Edin- 

 burgh newspaper escape ; second, the insertion of docu- 

 ments, such as the Reports of Committees, &c., which, 

 though highly important in themselves, are unsuited to 

 the columns of a newspaper ; and, third, disturbances 

 from without, of a kind which he had never before ex- 

 perienced : time after time, at a late hour, when the 

 order of the paper had been completed for publication, 

 Mr Fyfe found that some document, or article, or report, 

 had to be inserted, agreeably to instructions, and that the 

 news of the day had in consequence to give place, to 

 be inserted in some succeeding number, when no longer 

 fresh. Such was the decision of a practical man, long 

 conversant with the getting up of a newspaper ; and I 

 submitted it, among others, to Dr Candlish. And the 

 Doctor no*w tells the Proprietors that "on passing topics" 

 the Witness " is often silent or tardy," and that he 

 " attaches no weight to the excuse of long reports having 

 to be inserted." With regard to what Dr Candlish 

 deems the still more serious faults of the Paper, those 

 of the writer of this letter, such as " a want of taste and 

 tact in the handling of public questions," faults of so 

 grave and hopeless a character, that the Doctor is con- 

 vinced " Mr Miller ought not to be Editor " any longer, 

 but reduced to the standard of a mere subordinate con- 

 tributor of articles, I shall go direct to the point at 



