There would be no end of a statement of the complaints which I found the independent Caledonians had to make against their delegated authorities. From what I saw in the Athens, and from what I heard in my excursion over the country, I could plainly discover that the people of Scotland are perhaps more uniformly and more sincerely devoted to all the better parts of the constitution, and to the person and family of the King, than the people of England; but I could at the same time perceive that they felt towards the immediate holders of Scottish power and office, a much stronger dislike than is to be found in England. At the same time, they all seemed anxious to make it appear that those official men wished to identify themselves, and even their failings, so much with the general government of the country, that they were ever ready to denounce accusations against themselves as attacks on the government; and many instances were mentioned to me in which a very excusable, and, as I would have thought, a very deserved ridicule of a small man of office, had been considered and represented as the very next step to levying war upon the King. The tendency which the Athenians have to make themselves, their sayings, and their doings, the grand objects of thought and conversation, helps to give currency and additional bitterness to this political rancour. If a scrap of paper which a procurator fiscal cannot read, or a sharp instrument of which a loyal magistrate cannot exactly understand the use, happen to be found in any district, more especially in any of the populous and manufacturing districts of Scotland, the chance is, that if there be any symptom in the public mind which sophistry can twist into an attitude of irritation, the one shall find its way to the Athens as a seditious circular, and the other as a rebellious pike. The official men of the Athens have no great knowledge of articles of these descriptions, and as of late years the lords advocates in particular have not only been a very sensitive and vigilant race, but have been of those mental dimensions which are the better for a discovery or two to give them importance, there have, during those years, been things suspected of rebellious propensities, which would have been regarded as quite harmless in any other part of the island. A merchant who has extensive dealings with Russia, and who is also concerned in the north sea whale fishing, informed me that in the memorable year 1819, a few letters written in the Russian character, and two dozen of harpoons, were taken from his warehouse with great ceremony, forwarded to Edinburgh at considerable expense, and, as he supposed, cost the authorities there, not only much profound cogitation among themselves, but an application to the secretary of state, ere they were sent back to him. Indeed, were I to recount all the transactions of this description that were mentioned to me during