SomE LETTERS OF Patrick MILLER. 139 
egregiousness and some insult, jeering at the amateur and 
gentleman farmer, and wanting his father to sell Dalswinton. 
‘* No person in looking over that letter [written by 
Peter and dated 18 Dec., 1809] could have conjectured 
that an answer so foreign to the purpose could have been 
written after a month’s consideration. I wrote for your 
assistance how to borrow, and not for your advice how to 
gain money. You know that you could not make three or 
four shillings a day by your own exertions, and yet such is 
your folly and conceit that you think yourself qualified to 
give advice to a man of experience for the better manage- 
ment of his affairs, who has not only made his own fortune 
from nothing but who has also assisted many other men by 
his advice to make a great deal of money. And this advice 
is given on a subject of agriculture to a man who in the 
last six years has brought a rent of land from £45 to be 
worth £700, and who can in two years more by an addi- 
tional outlay of £800 to £1000 raise that rent to £900 
or 41000. Before offering any further remarks upon your 
letter, I must make you acquainted with a part of my his- 
tory, which from delicacy and a regard for my best friend I 
kept secret for many years. I had every reason to fear 
that had I continued in the house of Mansfield & Co. I 
would very soon have had a serious difference with that 
friend to whom I lay under the greatest obligations and 
for whom I had the most sincere and warm friendship. 
Rather than hazard the risk of such an event taking place, 
I determined to leave the house under the pretext of bad 
health. When I did so, I resolved to take the benefit of 
my habits and experience to improve my fortune by every 
honourable means which should appear calculated to pro- 
duce that effect. A life of useless sloth was ever despicable, 
if not criminal, in my estimation. With a view to profit 
I bought Pilnacree, the most extensive colliery in Scot- 
land, lands in America to the extent of 22,000 acres, and 
the estates of Dalswinton and Ellisland, with a design to 
sell all as soon as I could do so to advantage. After seeing 
Dalswinton I was so disgusted with the appearance of it 
