 During his stay in Scotland he lived at Granton House in Edinburgh.He was cofounder in 1851, with Sir Charles Trevelyan, of the Highland and Island Emigration Society which during the Highland Clearances supported an exodus of nearly 5,000 people to Australia between 1851 and 1856.At the outbreak the Crimean War in 1854, McNeill published revised editions in French and English of his pamphlet "Progress and Present Position of Russia in the East", with supplementary chapters dealing with the progress of events since 1836, and insisting on the importance to Britain and to Christendom of the autonomy of Turkey and Persia.