Comments in refutation of pretensions advanced for the first time, and statements in a recent work "The Stirlings of Keir and their family papers"

PEEFACE. V
him, if we may use the phrase, to " walk the course," and attain his
object without the slightest legal demur and objection — a forbear-
ance, too, which his family have wisely exercised down to the present
moment.
The previous conviction and belief, therefore, of the Drumpellier family,
in the justice and reality of their gentilitial rights and Cadder represen-
tation, being thus sanctioned and confirmed by the joint findings and
awards of two public legal judicatories, reddendo singula singulis — as
will be seen, where opposition by any party, thinking himself in the
least aggrieved or compromised by the counter-procedure of another,
was quite open and practicable — they at once might be held fairly con-
ceded and admitted.
But further also, without any subsequent rei inferventus either,
to give a different cast to the case, or challenge or opposition whatever,
the same undenied rights and status necessarily came, in 1859, over
and above, to be hermetically sealed in favour of Drumpellier against
the utmost efforts of cavil and disceptation, by the longest prescription
of forty years that had elapsed since the epoch of the important legal
proceedings stated in 1818; and a fortiori, too, if that require to be
added by the later increase of time — still ccBteris paribus — down to
the present 1860, evidently rendering them quite impregnable and
indefeasible.
, His mind, as was natural, therefore, being deeply imbued with the ' waiter
Stirlinf?,
preceding facts, it was not without some interest that the present repre- ^on'^g^eet
sentative of the Drumpellier family^ learned in 1859 — in the previous year London.'
stated — that a book had recently made its appearance under the title of c^LteV"^
Dec. 28,
"The Stirlings of Keir and their Family Papers."^ When he succeeded ^^ss.
in obtaining a perusal of this work, which he did at a public library
(no copy having been forwarded to him or his family, though, as he
understood, all others of the name had been supplied with them), '