Memoir of the Chisholm

PROPOSES THE MASTER OF GRANT. 218
The writer of this Memoir makes no ex-
tract from the speech which the Chisholm
delivered upon that occasion ; for, although
strongly marked throughout by the same abi-
lity and courage and lofty principle which dis-
tinguished his former speeches, it was never-
theless directed, for the most part, to the cor-
rection of what he believed to be certain
errors and misrepresentations, which had
been circulated among some of the most influ-
ential of his constituents, as to the supposed
priority of claim to their support, possessed
by another candidate of the same political
principles. Such vindication of his own con-
duct from the aspersions cast upon it, the Chis-
holm felt, at the time, that it was necessary
for himself to make : and his own quick sense
of honour, and abhorrence of any thing and
every thing which might seem to compromise
it, prompted him to utter, in the boldest terms,
the language of warm and indignant rebuke
against those who, he thought, had judged
unfairly of his conduct. It is possible also,
that the fatal and unseen malady which, in a
few months afterwards, quenched within him
the spark of bodily life, might, even then, have