HIS POLEMICAL SEVERITY. 215 



but battering, bruising, and beating out of shape ' his 

 antagonist. But the moment his enemy was vanquished, 

 his anger died away. A magistrate of Edinburgh once 

 awakened his wrath. He thought that the civic digni- 

 tary had used the power of place to annoy or crush a 

 more honest man than himself, and there was a pomp- 

 ousness in his public behaviour, and a meanness in 

 some of his money-making practices, carefully disguised 

 from the public eye, which gave Miller advantage over 

 him. An article appeared in the Witness which made 

 him the laughing-stock of Edinburgh. Next day, when 

 Miller stept into the publishing office, some one made 

 a remark on the severity of his article. ' Ah/ said 

 Miller, in his calmest tone a very dangerous tone 

 ' I have another shot in the locker for the Baillie.' 

 ' Really, Mr Miller,' replied the first speaker, ' I think 

 you ought to forbear. Baillie - - has had his head 

 shaved.' Miller left the second shot in the locker. 



Occasionally he was hounded on his prey by the 

 clerical magnates who took interest in the Witness, 

 never, I believe, by Chalmers ; and he has been heard, 

 on becoming acquainted with persons to whom he 

 had administered the lash, to express his regret, and 

 to add that, ' if he had known what manner of man 

 this was, not all the ministers in the Free Church 

 would have persuaded him to inflict the castigation'/ 

 That his blows should fall sometimes on the wrong head, 

 or descend with undue momentum, was a necessity of 

 the case. Among the contradictions and limitations of 

 our condition none perhaps is more sad than this, that 

 the very intensity of one's devotion to one's principles 

 tends to incapacitate him for dealing fairly with men 

 who deem it their duty to assail them. ' If we clearly 

 perceive any one thing,' says Coleridge, with fine wisdom 



