WCP6738

[1] [p. lxxx]

Hall Grove, Bagshot

November 30, 1882.

Sir,-I have deferred replying to your letter of October 27, until I should have it in my power to send to you, as you suggested, some contemporaneous reports of the trial. I have had a diligent search made for such both in Edinburgh and Inverness; and I enclose everything that I have been able to procure, namely, the account of the trial contained in the ‘Inverness Journal’ of April 26, 1816, that in the ‘Edinburgh Evening Courant' of May 2, 1816, and that in the ' Scots' Magazine' of May 1816. These are substantially one and the same report, and appear to have been all derived from the local journal. I know of no other Edinburgh or Inverness newspapers existing at that date.

But I cannot think that these or any other contemporaneous [2] [p. lxxxi] records, if any such exist, can approach in authenticity the published ‘Report of the Trial' — an authenticity surpassed, I venture to say, by the records of few events in history. I am surprised to observe that you distrust it, alleging as the ground of your distrust, that, being published by the junior counsel for my father, it would be his duty [underlined] to garble the evidence in my father's favour. I on the contrary, think, and I believe you will find it to be the case, that his duty would be the reverse of this; for to garble or misquote evidence in a report either to the court or to the public is a grave breach of professional honour. But in the preface to the report in question the following statement is made: ‘The accuracy of this report may be depended on. It is published by the junior counsel for Mr. Sellar, from notes taken in court, and omits nothing but the arguments of counsel.' That junior counsel was Patrick Robertson, afterwards Lord Robertson.

That Lord Robertson was capable of giving to the world a garbled report of evidence, making at the same time the declaration just quoted, is surely an incredible assumption, whether the question is considered from a professional point of view, or on grounds of common honesty.

Besides, the report was published in 1816, the year of the trial, and was thus open to the immediate scrutiny of that portion of society which took the side of the prosecution; and any unfairness on the part of Lord Robertson would have been at once detected, and would have been a scandal which could only have injured his client and disgraced himself.

But though the evidence contained in Lord Robertson's report is, as I have ventured to say, of an authenticity such as can be claimed for the records of few events in history, you put it aside, and ascribe superior authority to the letters of Donald McLeod, written upwards of five-and-twenty years subsequently, on the ground, as it would appear, of their not having been contradicted when they were first published, and still more on account of their not having been contradicted when subsequently they were re-published by four independent residents of Greenock in a collected form.

At the time when this republication took place-in the year 1856, I understand-my father had been dead for some years, and I was his representative, but I never saw or heard of the book (which was not entered at Stationers' Hall, nor does it, I understand, bear on its face the name of any publisher) till almost [3] [p. lxxxii] simultaneously I found it quoted by yourself and Professor Blackie; and I then at once proceeded to take the steps of which you are aware, to vindicate my father's memory, attacked as it was by a gentleman of your position. Failure to contradict at an earlier period the republished letters cannot, therefore, be justly alleged as a ground for your believing in them, seeing they were entirely unknown to me until this summer.

I do not know what occurred at the time the letters originally appeared, in or shortly after the year 1840. It might well have been thought that it was unnecessary to take notice of them-emanating, as they did, from an unknown man, and published in an obscure Edinburgh journal, then in its last days (for though it appears in Oliver & Boyd's list of Edinburgh newspapers previously to 1840, it does not, I understand, appear in their list for that year or for subsequent years)-more especially so, as they were contradicted in every important detail by the sworn evidence at the trial as reported by Lord Robertson, were in direct variance with the opinion of the jury and the judge, and exceeded in extravagance, and went beyond the discredited evidence of the witnesses for the prosecution. But my father printed a Statement in his vindication in the year 1826, and he circulated it wherever he thought information respecting the matter was wanted; and he reissued it between 1840 and 1860; but exactly when, I do not know. This was the contradiction he gave to the calumnies with which from time to time Celtic partisans assailed him; and he thought it sufficient contradiction, for, as he says in the Statement referred to, the circumstances were perfectly understood in the small circle of his own acquaintance, and in the north of Scotland generally, at the time. I enclose for your perusal a copy of the Statement in question.

But you further say you distrust the evidence given at the trial, and not merely the report of it, because of your own experience of the blundering of lawyers and the cowardice of witnesses -in other words, you mean, I presume, to say that some lawyers are blunderers and some witnesses are cowards, not, I suppose that lawyers in general, or witnesses as a rule, are one or the other. To me it appears that the prosecuting counsel at the trial of my father conducted his case with persistence and discretion; and as to the witnesses, you cannot surely suppose that the twelve individuals-residents of the locality-who were examined, were all such cowards that (with reference, for instance, to McLeod's allegations of the tenants' timber, furniture, and everything being [4] [p. lxxxiii] destroyed by fire, or of the heath-pasture being illegally and maliciously burnt) none of them had the heart to say that their houses were burnt, if such was the case, or that they had seen the houses of their neighbours consumed by fire, or that their heath-pasture had been burnt without their consent, if it had been so.

Then you say that the consequences to the people of their giving evidence would have been ruin: what evidence have you of this? The people were not deterred by any such apprehension from openly organising the proceedings against my father, as the evidence in court amply shows, or in coming before McKid and giving the exaggerated evidence of which he speaks. Nor should you forget that, if a comparatively small part of what McLeod alleges could have been proved, my father would have been an imprisoned and a ruined man, who could have done harm to no one, and for whom no one would have raised a hand.

I observe that in your letter you make no allusion to the proceedings taken by my father against Sheriff-substitute McKid subsequently to the trial, or to McKid's confession of his conviction and belief that the statements to my father's prejudice contained in the evidence which he took, and on which the indictment was founded, were to such an extent exaggerations as to amount to ‘absolute falsehoods.' That, I think, is a remarkable confirmation of the truth of the evidence given in court, and of the verdict being a true and a just one, which was deserving of your notice.

But you say, notwithstanding all this, that you consider McLeod's allegations to be primâ facie true, because he could have had nothing to gain by telling deliberate falsehoods, known to be so by other witnesses. At the end of five-and-twenty years not many original witnesses of the events in question (and few of them able to read his allegations) probably remained, and we know from McKid the sort of statements that would be likely to be acceptable to those original witnesses of McLeod's own class. But as to the motives under which McLeod acted, they are to me sufficiently clear. What of a solid nature he was to gain from his sensational tales cannot, of course, be known; but on the face of his narrative he shows himself to have been a violent, unscrupulous partisan, in regard to matters which were the subject of heated party controversy; ruined, he alleged, by the tyranny and oppression of those in authority; a man prone to exaggeration, reckless in his statements, and bent, as he avows, on revenge. Such motives and such influences give rise, I [5] [p. lxxxiv] venture to say, to half the lies that are circulated in the world.

At the close of your letter you appear to be less confident of the accuracy of McLeod, for though you still think that the main character of the events which happened is fairly given, you dmit [sic] that many of his details may be inaccurate.

I wish you had informed me, with reference to the allegations of McLeod enumerated by me in my last letter, which of his details you still think are true, and which are the many you say may be inaccurate; and I confess I think I am entitled to ask you kindly to give me this information. But with reference to the main character of the events which happened, I challenge your opinion that it is fairly given. I presume, of course, that the events which you here refer to are events which took place through my father's agency and no others, for, as you are aware, I express no opinion on the general relations of landlord and tenant, or as to the character of the clearances generally-the sole question between you and me being whether the acts of culpability which occurred, you allege during my father's factorship, and which McLeod attributes directly to him, did or did not take place.

In challenging your opinion, that the main character of the events which happened during my father's factorship is correctly given by McLeod, I shall pass over details (confirming only and referring to the examination and contradiction of them which I laid before you in my last, and referring also to the printed Statement which I send to you herewith under a separate cover), and I shall confine myself to the sweeping allegation as to the tenants' timber, furniture, and everything not instantly removed being burnt or otherwise utterly destroyed, amid scenes of horror which, he says, beggared all description.

As to this allegation which I select for examination, both because, if true, it is descriptive of a character of events ' of a very dreadful nature, and also because it imputes a greater amount of wickedness to my father than any other of McLeod's allegations, let me ask you to consider for a moment how inconceivable-nay, impossible-it is that bands of men in any society emerged from savagery, should have gone about as described by him burning and destroying all before them; above all, that this could have been done with impunity. What, let me ask, if this allegation were true, must have been the result of the trial? The prosecution did their utmost to show that property of the tenants had been destroyed. They tried to prove that 3L., which Chisholm [6] [p. lxxxv] swore he had, were burned; they even endeavoured to show 'injury' by the fact of a few yards of Chisholm's growing corn being accidentally scorched; and they strove hard to obtain a verdict on the ground of certain barns being pulled down. Why should they have resorted to such attempts to obtain a conviction, if it had been the case that timber, furniture, and everything not instantly removed, was consumed by fire or otherwise destroyed? Not a witness was produced who could allege an act of setting fire to any portion of any premises, except in Chisholm's case; not one alleged any injury having been done to his furniture; and it is the fact, that my father narrated to one now living, and he undoubtedly related truly, that during his factorship fire was not set by his orders to any portion of any premises except to the timber appertaining to the house of Chisholm.

How is it possible to believe in the face of those facts that McLeod gives a fair description of the ‘main character of the events' which took place during my father's factorship, any more than he correctly relates the details?

I have felt it to be due to the spirit of candour which you evinced in your first letter to Messrs. Trübner and Co., namely, that of July last, to state to you at so great length the evidence and arguments on which I consider your present position to be untenable; and I cannot but believe that, if fairly considered by you apart from extraneous influences, they must bring conviction to your mind, and that you will agree to eliminate from subsequent editions of your book the allegations which I enumerated in my last letter. The erroneous date of the later Kildonan evictions you will, of course, correct.

Under any circumstances, I do not propose to continue this correspondence, though I may in case of need find it necessary to let others have the opportunity of judging between us. I beg, in conclusion, to thank you for the courtesy which you have shown to me personally, and

I am, Sir, Your obedient Servant | THOMAS SELLAR.