_Daily News_ announced that the new convert "had taken up his honours, wealth, and influence, and laid them in the lap of the Church of Rome," adding that it was "of course a pity when a man believed too much in religion"; a West of Scotland journal was "sure that the acquisition would, except in a pecuniary way, be of little advantage to those who had wheedled him out {81} of his wits and into their snares"; a Glasgow evening paper denounced the "Jesuitism" with which "his perverted lordship" had denied the fact of his reception in 1867, and the "fatal facility" with which he had been received in 1868; and another Scottish journal, after waxing eloquent over the "lithe figure, agile step, and penetrating eye of the handsome young peer," lamented that "the poorest labourer on his vast domains had an immediate access to truth and duty, to conscience, and to God, which since last Christmas was denied to his unfortunate lord." The _Glasgow Herald_, after admitting that Lord Bute "_was believed_ to be a studious, thoughtful youth, with high ideas of the responsibility of his position," dolefully goes on: "If, _as is most likely_, this perversion is the result of priestly influences acting upon a weak, ductile, and naturally superstitious mind, we may expect a continual eclipse of all intellectual vigour." One wonders if this sapient prophet ever had the grace to acknowledge the falsity of his forecast. The _Scotsman_ was an honourable exception to the general tone of the contemporary press. It announced the event "not in the slightest degree in the spirit of taunt or reproach"; and the final sentence of a temperate article repudiated any desire "to reproach Lord Bute with a change of religious opinion, which even those who most deeply regret it must admit to be made at great sacrifices and under the influence only of conscience." On this reasonable and even generous note the subject may well be left. A man of sensitive and impressionable nature, and one who was himself possessed by an almost passionate love of truth, could not be insensible to public attacks on his {82} candour and honesty, or to mendacious statements of alleged facts, such as he refers to in his letter cited above. But he bore them all in silence, with the quiet dignity characteristic of him, and trusting to time for the vindication of the rectitude of his motives and conduct. How amply this trust was justified was shown by the mutual respect, regard, and affection which daily grew and strengthened between him and his friends, neighbours, and dependents, not only in Bute, but on his extensive estates in other parts of the country, during the next thirty years. [1] Hartwell Grissell. The letter was dated from Mountstuart, November 19, 1872.