448 MAN OF SCIENCE. 



One of the Scotch People to Lord Brougham. Multi- 

 tudes rejoiced when they heard soon after that the 

 friends of Non-Intrusion and Spiritual Independence 

 had made arrangements for his conducting a newspaper 

 in Edinburgh. They felt that from that day the cause 

 received an accession of strength. We were particularly 

 pleased to find that from the first, and to the end, he 

 maintained an attitude of independence, not only of poli- 

 ticians, but of Church leaders. The movement had 

 hitherto assumed too much of an ecclesiastical aspect. 

 No doubt it had in it all along the popular element of 

 Non-Intrusion ; but the Spiritual Independence side 

 was the one mainly dwelt on in Church courts ; the 

 Scottish people did not always understand what was 

 meant by overtures to the General Assembly about inde- 

 pendence of the civil courts ; and not a few entertained 

 the suspicion that the ministers were seeking for power 

 to themselves which would set them above the law of 

 the land, in the settlement of ministers. Certain it is 

 that the cry of the clergy did not always carry with it 

 the popular sympathy ; and there were times and places 

 in which public meetings called to support it were put 

 down by mob-opposition. It was most important that 

 at that crisis the grand old cause of Scotland should 

 have one of the people to support it, and a shout of joy 

 burst out all over Scotland when Hugh Miller came 

 forth as the champion of popular rights. The newspaper 

 was published twice a week, and Wednesdays and Satur- 

 days, the publishing days, were looked forward to by 

 many, because they brought the Witness. The paper 

 was read not so much for its news, nor even its reports 

 of Church courts, as for its leading articles. Many a 

 retired country minister living, perhaps, in the midst of 

 a body of farmers, who had no appreciation of the 



