Oor ain folk times

50 THE TEN YEARS' CONFLICT
free from the intellectual strife which raged around ;
and my father, with his bluff, outspoken honesty of
purpose and clear conscientious convictions, could
not remain a callous or disinterested spectator
or actor at such a time. Although a man of the
kindliest temper, he exhibited a dogged persistency
of purpose and an almost audacious pugnacity when
his fighting instincts were roused ; and he threw
himself with intense intellectual enjoyment into the
polemics of the time, which culminated — as every
student of modern Scottish history well knows —
in the great Disruption movement of 1843. His
was such a love - inspiring personality, and he had
such a frank, breezy, healthy sense of humour, that
he could not fail to make the impress of his indi-
viduality felt at a time, when to be frank and
outspoken was looked upon by one party as a crime,
and by the other as a supreme virtue. So it was,
that with his generous instincts for liberty, his
warm sympathy for liberalism in politics, and all
his deep convictions of the value of freedom in
thought and action, my father could not fail to be
found on the side of those who were fighting the
popular battle against exclusive privilege and restric-
tion of the people's rights. As he took a very
active part in 'the ten years' conflict,' he became a
marked man among the many noble examples of those
' who suffered for conscience' sake ' ; and I think it
only fair to his memory, and merely doing bare
justice to his own sense of what his conscience
demanded from him at that time, that I should
allow him, as far as may be, to speak for himself.