Grampian Club > Leaves from my autography

LEAVES FROM MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 113
of education. In 1858 I promoted the candidature
of Mr John Dick to the office of chief magistrate, in
the behef that that hberahty which he had hitherto
restrained would, in completing the fabric of the
academy, find a congenial outlet. I was grievously
disappointed, and, in expressing that disappointment,
severely suffered.
About the spring of 1859 I devised a Stir/iw/
Im2')rovement Society; I consulted some persons of
taste and opulence in the place and elsewhere, who
approved and became members, but the enterprise
fliiled. A movement for the erection of a public
hall, which I originated in 1861, also collapsed. In
April of that year Mr Ebenezer Morrison, son of a
respectable burgess, had been appointed joint-secretary
of the committee for rearing a national monument
to Wallace. As Mr Morrison was a young legal
practitioner, I entrusted to him the hall movement,
in the hope that, if he carried out the undertaking,
he would thereby obtain some professional emolument
to compensate him for rendering gratuitous service
in the Imsiness of the monument. Mr Morrison per-
mitted the enterprise to slumber.
In November 1861 I was induced to become a
candidate for a seat in the town council. My address
to the electors proceeded thus :
" Stirling, Novcmler 1, 1861.
" Gentlemen, — A very large and influential body of electors,
representing, I am informed, all shades of civil and ecclesiastical