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

WITH DRUMPELLIER'S EXPOSITION, &c. 125
is referred to in the declaration by the heiress of Cawder," — clearly the point ,
of identity in question ! !
What can be a greater perversion of fact than this ? How could Drum-
pellier be said to have failed to establish his claim here before a Sheriff and
a jury to whom he had not been allowed to submit it ? This has been most Perfoi-m-
clearly shown.' It is therefore contrary to aU truth to assert that it was so 179. '
submitted ; on the other hand, it was still open, and as much uncompro-
mised as ever, while the failure in the matter (eventually) was wholly on the
other side.
The Keir compilers cannot back out of this dilemma; for, independently
of the plain unqualified import of the passage, which speaks for itself, while
all ambiguity of expression should have been shunned, the term " claim " above
occurring quite unrestrictedly, had been antecedently employed to comprise
the question of identity, which was thus fairly in view, — the whole implying
or denoting, so far as words go, that Mr Stirling had failed in establishing the
identity upon the merits in a discussion actually before the Sheriff and jury to
whom the claim in reference thereto had been submitted, which it never was.
But palpably erroneous and exceptionable as the point just discussed is, other, even
grosser,
and the true construction being so obvious, what will be said of the next misrepre-
sentations
gross misrepresentation in the Keir Performance, that has been alluded to i° *i^« k^'""
° ^ Perform -
and complained of, even more glaringly and unrestrictedly so — viz., that ^eJe'^^"'^
DrumpeUier " 'S'&yy.r followed out his protest," which he had taken before the the same
Sheriff-Substitute in 1818 ; viz., "that it was stiU competent to him to bring ■'^'^^™-
forward the second branch of his claim {the identity) in another shape,"
" or carried his case further ! ! " — When the direct contrary, again, has been
so fully proved, and when, so far from being recreant and passive, as has
been represented, DrumpeUier, as soon as practicable, " followed out his pro-
test," and did " carry his case further," precisely in " another shape," before
a competent tribunal, as was so fully shown, and in a broader and more pre-
ferable form, where he strikingly succeeded, and walked the course unopposed
in any way, even by his former bitter and pertinacious opponents, and had
the question of the identity and the status as nearest Gadder represen-
tative inter alia formally recognised in his favour, and recorded, through
the matriculation, in the unrepealable register of the tribunal. Thus the
Keir Performance, most strangely and unduly, again here inverts the situa-
tion of parties ; for by this it is evinced that DrumpeUier did not cease to