WCP6740

[[1] [p. xxxviii]

THE SUTHERLAND EVICTIONS¹ OF 1814.

erroneously stated in the later edition of your book (an error not committed in your first edition), that the Kildonan² clearances to which you refer on page 58 took place in the year 1816. They were carried out in 1819 and 1820, after my father³ had ceased to be factor⁴, as you may see by examining Mr. Loch's⁵ book on the 'Sutherland Improvements,' page 85 of the edition of 1820.

I am, Sir,

Yours faithfully,

(Signed) THO[MA]S. SELLAR.

A. R. Wallace, Esq.

If you mean to imply that educated opinion in Scotland has ever accepted Donald McLeod's⁶ letters as trustworthy, or his allegations as true, I entirely dissent from that statement.

Frith Hill, Godalming: December 27, 1882.

Dear Sir, — I return you the report of the trial, which I have carefully read. While admitting fully the legal exculpation of Mr. Sellar by the verdict and the balance of evidence taken, I do not see that that evidence in any way invalidates the general statements of McLeod.

I have written to Messrs. Trübner to correct the date you refer to, both in the stereo plates and the copies unsold.

Yours faithfully,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

Thomas Sellar, Esq.

55 Cromwell Houses, London, S.W.: January 2, 1883.

Sir, — I have received your letter of the 27th ult., and with the present reply our correspondence is closed, so far as I am concerned.

While you fully admit the legal exculpation of my father, and you have also admitted that many of McLeod's details may be inaccurate, you yet say that you do not see that the evidence at the trial invalidates the general statements of McLeod.

I am not sure that I quite know what you mean by the phrase 'the general statements of McLeod.'

If you mean the only statements which are in question between [[2] [p. xxxix]

APPENDIX.

us, namely those quoted by you which allege the burning of houses, and the wholesale destruction of tenants property by fire or otherwise under my father's directions; or if you mean the allegations, also quoted by you, of culpable inhumanity — nay, even of brutality — on his part, I say that they are not true, and I have furnished you with exact and precise evidence of their untruth.

I have challenged you to produce evidence that they are true. You have produced none, and I venture to say can produce none. Nevertheless, and though you fully admit my father's legal exculpation from the very charges contained in those statements, you will not withdraw them.

I desire to abstain in this closing letter, as I trust I have abstained throughout in my correspondence with you, from the use of discourteous or offensive words; but I am, I think, entitled to ask whether between man and man this is fair or candid: nay, whether from another point of view it is even logical or rational?

On every principle of fair dealing, you are required, I submit, to substantiate by exact evidence any calumnious statements which you publish, or to withdraw them. And this, it seems to me, is especially incumbent on you when publishing calumnious statements respecting a dead man, whose representatives have not the legal remedies which living men so calumniated would possess.

Your obedient servant,

THO[MA]S. SELLAR.

A. R. Wallace, Esq.

Frith Hill, Godalming: January 3, 1883.

Dear Sir, — I think you are unreasonable in expecting me to do more than I have done; but I will endeavour to explain precisely my present standpoint.

The jury and the judge acquitted your father of the offences charged against him on a balance of evidence. This the judge expressly stated. I accept that acquittal. But the acquittal does not disprove the facts alleged, only that Mr. Sellar was not responsible for them. I, however, have additional evidence of these facts — not laid before the jury — in the narrative of McLeod, and taking the whole together, I am of opinion that the facts of injury done to the people are substantially proved. When there is a conflict of evidence I claim a right to form my own judgment