I am sorry to write with such severity--but, indeed, I confess that I have felt deep indignation that some of the most respected and distinguished agriculturists of the kingdom should have been insulted by such a _novus homo_ as you are. I can scarcely trust myself to speak of the manner in which you have written of Professor Low and Mr Stephens. There are no two authors in the kingdom who have contributed more largely to advance the cause of agriculture, both as a science and an art, than these two gentlemen have done by their writings. They are universally respected. And yet you write of them with a puerile and vulgar rudeness, discreditable at once to your feelings as a gentleman, and to your position as a farmer. Your plucking out solitary expressions from Professor Low's _Appeal to the Common Sense of the Country_, and attaching a meaning to them which, in their original position, they did not bear, is sufficiently unscrupulous, and marks your candour as a controversialist. I believe nothing in your pamphlet has excited deeper disapprobation than the manner in which you have presumed to speak of Mr Stephens. You entitle your last pamphlet _High Farming Vindicated_. High farming vindicated against the attacks of whom? A vindication presupposes an assault, and injury inflicted. By your titlepage, you affect to insinuate that high farming has been depreciated. In the name of the tenant-farmers of Scotland, I repel the insinuation. If by high farming you mean good farming, (that is, a liberal treatment of the soil and of stock, and an earnest application of the discoveries of science to the practice of husbandry,) I believe there never was a time when agriculturists were more alive to the advantages of high farming, or more desirous of adopting it, as far as their circumstances will allow. You seem foolishly to fancy that there is no high farming, saving at Auchness; and because the system there, as exhibited by you, has been subjected to some criticism, you rush to its defence, as if high farming were in the abstract attacked; and you indite a pamphlet, presumptuously entitling it _High Farming Vindicated_!