But it is a significant fact, that in the knot of five the ex-councillors of the movement party were included; and that had _they_ been in the Council still, a majority would to a certainty have voted in the wake of the Edinburgh Town Council. There is much instruction in facts such as these; and they may be turned to great practical account. Why should not the sentiments of every voter in Scotland be taken on this same Sabbath question now? or what is there to prevent us from taking the sentiments of every voter in Scotland on the Popish endowment question by and by? It is a tedious and expensive matter to get up petitions, to which all and sundry affix their names; but the franchise-holders of Scotland are comparatively a not very numerous class; and about the same amount of labour that goes to a monthly collection for the Sustentation Fund, would be quite sufficient to place before Government and the country the full expression of _their_ feelings and opinions on the two leading questions of the day. But enough for the present--'a word to the wise.' _January 20, 1847._ SUTHERLAND AS IT WAS AND IS;{1} OR, HOW A COUNTRY MAY BE RUINED. CHAPTER I. There appeared at Paris, about five years ago, a singularly ingenious work on political economy, from the pen of the late M. de Sismondi, a writer of European reputation. The greater part of the first volume is taken up with discussions on territorial wealth, and the condition of the cultivators of the soil; and in this portion of the work there is a prominent place assigned to a subject which perhaps few Scotch readers would expect to see introduced through the medium of a foreign tongue to the people of a great continental State. We find this philosophic writer, whose works are known far beyond the limits of his language, devoting an entire essay to the case of the late Duchess of Sutherland and her tenants, and forming a judgment on it very unlike the decision of political economists in our own country, who have not hesitated to characterize her great and singularly harsh experiment, whose worst effects we are but beginning to see, as at once justifiable in itself and happy in its results. It is curious to observe how deeds done as if in darkness and a corner, are beginning, after the lapse of nearly thirty years, to be proclaimed on the house-tops. The experiment of the late Duchess was not intended to be made in the eye of Europe. Its details would ill bear the exposure. When Cobbett simply referred to it only ten years ago, the noble proprietrix was startled, as if a rather delicate family secret was on the eve of being divulged; and yet nothing seems more evident now than that civilised man all over the world is to be made aware of how the experiment was accomplished, and what it is ultimately to produce. It must be obvious, further, that the infatuation of the present proprietor, in virtually setting aside the Toleration Act on his