Blair Collection > Collection of Gaelic proverbs and familiar phrases

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what unnecessary display of wit and loyalty on tlie part of the
Court, the Lord President, Sir Hay Campbell, remarking that he
was "at a loss whether to frown at the audaciousness of the
pursuer, or to smile at the high pitch of folly of his witless
advisers, in wantonly thrusting a plea of so extraordinary a
nature into his Majesty's Supreme Court of Justice. What ! a
person claiming a right in virtue of his refractory adherence to
obsolete opinion, long since exploded — nay, glorying in his dis-
loyalty to the best of kings and existing governments."
From the ' Session Papers ' (Campbell's Coll., 103) containing
some of the Prints in this case, the following additional facts have
been got. The Petition, with which the case commenced, sets
forth that the Petitioner is " a minister of the Scots Episcopal
Church, and pastor of a congregation of that persuasion, which,
though respectable, is far from being numerous ; that the income
he derives from them is, and always has been, altogether insuffi-
cient to raise him above indigence, from which he was for many
years saved almost entirely by a small pension of £9 a-year, paid
him from a fund held by Trustees for the relief of Scots Episcopal
Clergymen in his situation ; that of this salary he has been de-
privecl by the present defenders," &c. The prayer of the petition
was to ordain the defenders to pay him this £9 per annum from
1795 onwards, "or such salary as to the Court seems proper".
The ground for refusing the petition seems to have been, that the
Petitioner declined to take the oaths to the existing government,
and to pray by name for King George, which an Act passed in
1792, repealing all penal statutes against the Episcopal Clergy,
and restoring the privileges formerly conferred on them, prescribed
as a condition of such restoration.
In 1801 Macintosh was appointed Gaelic Translator and Keeper
of Gaelic Records to the Highland Society of Scotland, in succes-
sion to Mr. Robert Macfarlane, which office he held till his death.
A salary of £10 a-year was attached to it. That it was not a
sineciire is indicated by the Catalogues of Gaelic MSS. belonging to
the Highland Society and others, given in Vol. III. of the London
Highland Society's Ossian, pp. 566-573. These were compiled by
Macintosh, who also transcribed some of the MSS. The office of
Gaelic Translator and Keeper of MSS. to the Highland Society
was conferred after Macintosh's death on the Rev. John Campbell,
who held it till 1814, after which it was not again filled up.
Macintosh's circumstances were somewhat improved in his later
years, though his income was but small. Campbell mentions two
legacies left to him by kindly members of his scattered but faith-
ful flock, one of £100, by Mrs. Eagle, Edinburgh, another of £150
by Mrs. Paterson, Banff. " These sums," says Campbell, " together
with his annual savings, enabled him to leave behind him a pro-
perty, which he apportioned in several small legacies, as specified
in his vsdll." In that will, which Campbell had before him, but
of which, with all his other MSS., no other trace can be found,