“Well then, dinna forget to speer at the Aberdeenians if it be true they ance kidnappet little laddies, and selt them for slaves; that they dang down the Quaker’s kirkyard dyke, and houket up dead Quakers out o’ their graves; that the young boys at the college printed a buke, and maist naebody wad buy it, and they cam out to Ury, near Stonehaven, and took twelve stots frae Davie Barclay to pay the printer.

“Dinna forget to speer at ——­, if it was true that he flogget three laddies in the beginning o’ last year, for the three following crimes:  first, for the crime of being born of puir, ignorant parents; second, for the crime of being left in ignorance; and, third, for the crime of having nothing to eat.

     “Dinna be telling when ye gang hame that ye rode on the Aberdeen
     railway, made by a hundred men, who were all in the Stonehaven
     prison for drunkenness; nor above five could sign their names.

“If the Scotch kill ye with ower feeding and making speeches, be sure to send this hame to tell your fouk, that it was Queen Elizabeth who made the first European law to buy and sell human beings like brute beasts.  She was England’s glory as a Protestant, and Scotland’s shame as the murderer of their bonnie Mary.  The auld hag skulked away like a coward in the hour of death.  Mary, on the other hand, with calmness and dignity, repeated a Latin prayer to the Great Spirit and Author of her being, and calmly resigned herself into the hands of her murderers.

“In the capital of her ancient kingdom, when ye are in our country, there are eight hundred women, sent to prison every year for the first time.  Of fifteen thousand prisoners examined in Scotland in the year 1845, eight thousand could not write at all, and three thousand could not read.

“At present there are about twenty thousand prisoners in Scotland.  In Stonehaven they are fed at about seventeen pounds each, annually.  The honest poor, outside the prison upon the parish roll, are fed at the rate of five farthings a day, or two pounds a year.  The employment of the prisoners is grinding the wind, we ca’ it; turning the crank, in plain English.  The latest improvement is the streekin board; it’s a whig improvement o’ Lord Jonnie Russell’s.

“I ken brawly ye are a curious wife, and would like to ken a’ about the Scotch bodies.  Weel, they are a gay, ignorant, proud, drunken pack; they manage to pay ilka year for whuskey one million three hundred and forty-eight thousand pounds.

     “But then their piety, their piety; weel, let’s luke at it; hing it
     up by the nape o’ the neck, and turn it round atween our finger and
     thumb on all sides.

     “Is there one school in all Scotland where the helpless, homeless
     poor are fed and clothed at the public expense?  None.

     “Is there a hame in all Scotland for the cleanly but sick servant
     maid to go till, until health be restored?  Alas! there is none.