He was led to ponder the social as well as the religious problem presented by life in the slums. In the events of the year of revolution he took a keen interest. ‘The Chartists are put down,’ he remarked scornfully, seeing with Carlyle that the matter would by no means end with the victory of the special constable. ‘Snug the joiner,’ he observed, ‘is a man as other men are, having a body finely fashioned and tempered, which in rags shivers in the cold, while the “special” goes to his fireside, with triumph draws in his chair, saying, “The scoundrels are put down.” We demand from them patience while starving--do we meet their demands for bread? Special! what hast thou done for thy brother? Ay--don’t stare at me or at thy baton--thy brother, I say! Hast thou ever troubled thyself about healing his broken heart as thou hast about giving him a broken head?’ He rejected the remedies of the politicians--reform of taxation, high wages, the suffrage,--holding that the only cure lay ‘in the personal and regular communion of the better with the worse--man with man--until each Christian, like his Saviour, becomes one with those who are to be saved.’ Such was the spirit in which he toiled among the poor. In the east as in the west he at once made a reputation. It was a common thing for divinity students to walk out from Edinburgh on a frosty Sunday to see and hear Norman Macleod. He was no sooner settled in Dalkeith than he began to take part in the reparation of the ecclesiastical agencies that had been ruined by the Disruption. Of these the chief was in his eyes the India Mission. In 1844 he went, as one of a deputation, to the north of Scotland, in order to organise societies for the furtherance of female education in Hindostan. This was the first of a long series of religious embassies which compassed the round earth. Thirty associations were formed, but he returned from the tour lamenting the general apathy. The year following he was charged, along with his uncle the minister of Morven, and another, with a more distinguished errand. In the Colonies, wherever there were people connected with the Church of Scotland, the Secession had been felt; shrieks of _Veto, Cæsar, Headship_, mingled with the strokes of axes in the backwoods. The deputies were for British North America; their business was to preach, and to explain the action of the constitutional side in the recent conflict. To deal with Highland exiles who so fit as the famed Macleods of Morven? And such an expedition would peculiarly suit Norman, involving the delight of ships and foreign countries, and having an object that excited his religious enthusiasm.