Salt-foot controversy

10 LETTER OF CANDIDUS.
at the transaction ; quietly observing, that his neigh-
bour's estate was " bonny and bield, and all lying on
the Clyde ;" whereas his own (he said) was " but
cauld muirland, as every body knew, and naething
like Camnethan's." Accordingly, the two proper-
ties stand thus taxed and rated in the cess-books,
down to the present period.
The bitterness with which Lord Somerville speaks
of all his political opponents, and the soreness with
which he details his friend's contest with his neigh-
bour about changing the site of the parish church,
and Sir Walter's successful application against him
to the General Assembly (which, I find, are also
given at length in the Stewart MSS.), are a suffi-
cient evidence of his entering with eagerness into
all the family quarrels. Hence his anxious desire,
on every occasion, to detract from the character, and
lessen the importance of both the brothers, Sir Wal-
ter and Sir James ; to represent them as fewars,
" from some antiquity? however, of the Earl of
Tweedale's in Allcathmuir ; to describe them as
persons whose ancestors " sat below the salt," &c. &c. ;
all of which he himself must have felt, were what
Tacitus calls Ignorantia recti, et invidia, * the mere
ebullitions of party animosity, — of animosity of all
others the most likely to go down with the unin-
formed among his own adherents, that it vilified
their adversaries, and contained withal a certain in-
* " Insensibility to merit, and envy of the possession." See
Tacit, in Vit. Agricol. sub initio.