VII. THE PARABLE OF JOTHAM. 139 



the consummation of which into pure lignite, or 

 rather black Devil's charcoal — the sap of the birks 

 of Aberfeldy become cinder, and the blessed juices 

 of them, deadly gas, — you may know in its pure 

 blackness best in the work of the greatest of these 

 ground-growing Scotchmen, Adam Smith. 



13. No man of like capacity, I believe, born of 

 any other nation, could have deliberately, and with 

 no momentary shadow of suspicion or question, 

 formalized the spinous and monstrous fallacy that 

 human commerce and policy are naturally founded on 

 the desire of every man to possess his neighbour's 

 goods. 



This is the ' release unto us Barabbas,' with a 

 witness ; and the deliberate systematization of that 

 cry, and choice, for perpetual repetition and fulfil- 

 ment in Christian statesmanship, has been, with 

 the strange precision of natural symbolism and 

 retribution, signed, (as of old, by strewing of ashes 

 on Kidron,) by strewing of ashes on the brooks of 

 Scotland ; waters once of life, health, music, and 

 divine tradition ; but to whose festering scum you 

 may now set fire with a candle ; and of which, 

 round the once excelling palace of Scotland, modern 

 sanitary science is now helplessly contending with 

 the poisonous exhalation. 



14. I gave this chapter its heading, because I had it 



