Instead of writing to the foreman of the deputation, by whom I had been solicited to allow myself to be nominated a candidate, I resolved, after considering the business well, to make my communication to a public meeting. Accordingly it was given out, that on the day I had promised to send my answer, I would explain personally to my friends, in the ball-room of the Eagle tavern, the sentiments by which I was actuated.

At the time appointed a multitude assembled; the room was crowded, and besides my friends, a great number of persons were there from curiosity, and a few, no doubt, for a less commendable purpose. Among others, was our minister, of whom, in the mean time, it was reported that he had openly withdrawn himself from my cause, and had represented me as a weak, vain, and indecisive character, incapable of expressing two consecutive sentences with becoming seriousness.

Whether I merited any thing so derogatory from the lips of Mr. Bell, or whether, from my opinion of the man up to this period, I was likely to have believed he would be guilty of such backbiting, the courteous reader has the means of judging. However, the report was not without foundation; and in the meeting, and at the head of the room, there he was, sitting with the proud and crimson countenance of a conqueror, as he thought himself. But though I must thus speak of him as the truth claims; and though I also must say, that from this epoch I regarded him as a man too much given to secular ambition for a minister of the Gospel; the truth of his doctrines, and his power in the pulpit, still obtained from me the reverence which I entertained towards them from the first time of his preaching at Babelmandel.

Another thing which I heard of just before the hour of meeting, also disconcerted me. It was the part Bailie Waft and Dr. Murdoch were playing: lifted out of themselves by the success of their manoeuvres, they did not wait for the trumpets of others to sound their praises, but went about bragging of what they had done, and how they were the means of obtaining in me, for the state, a man of the greatest natural talents any where to be met with, and other such fustian phraseology.