Page:(1856, Jul) Letter from Professor Ferrier.pdf/4

 Electors for any particular Candidate must be determined by the degree to which they are satisfied that these two points are established by that Candidate's certificates.

The first of these points is attested—and attested, I venture to say, in no stinted measure—by my supporters. My reputation as an author—such as it is—is vouched for by Brewster, Bulwer, Lockhart, Alison, Hamilton, Morell, Tennyson, Warren, Forster, Grote, Thompson, Grant, Mansel, Blackie, Lushington, Tulloch, Gordon, Chambers, De Quincey, Aird, Neaves, Moir, Inglis (Dean of the Faculty of Advocates), M'Neill. While all of these names are of unimpeachable authority, many of them are of the very highest distinction in the literature, philosophy, and scholarship of the country—an important consideration, which the Electors are again respectfully requested not to lose sight of.

The second point—my success and soundness as a Teacher. My aptitude for dealing with the business of a philosophical class is established—and, as I again venture to think, as strongly established as it could well be—by the attestations of the following gentlemen, most of whom have been eye and ear witnesses of what they certify:—Brewster, Haldane, Hetherington, Swinton, Cook, Buist, Duncan, Day, Jackson, Brown, Pyper, Sellar, Berry, Taylor, Grant, Blackie, Tulloch, Students.

I may be absolved from abridging or quoting anything which these—my too partial friends, as I must admit them to be—have said in my favour on either of the points to which your attention has been directed. If you have any doubts as to the comparative strength and conclusiveness of the testimony, I beg you again to peruse the documents themselves, with an eye in particular to the considerations on which their value depends—namely, the celebrity of the vouchers, and the facts which they bear witness to—these being the Candidate's distinction as an Author, and his success as a Teacher in the department of Metaphysical science.