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CHAPTER XII. 



IN CHARACTER OF VILLAGE JUNIUS. 



HP HOUGH an interested and intelligent observer of 

 JL the political occurrences of his time, and a cordial 

 supporter of Catholic Emancipation, the Reform Bill, and 

 those other measures by which the genius of liberalism 

 was then putting its mark on the institutions of the 

 country, Miller was never what is commonly understood 

 as an ardent politician. One of the ideas which he 

 most firmly grasped, and which had throughout his whole 

 career a powerful influence on his mind, was that the share 

 which the inhabitants of any particular locality can take 

 in shaping the legislation or directing the policy of the 

 country at large is necessarily too small to deserve their 

 close and constant attention. When a great constitu- 

 tional battle was to be fought when the fate of an im- 

 portant measure depended, as in the case of the Reform 

 Bill, on the unanimity and vehemence of the popular 

 support he would exert himself to the utmost. But he 

 held that, in ordinary times, it was business of a more 

 local and less political kind which came home to the 

 bosoms of sensible men. He was keenly alive to every- 

 thing which touched upon the relation in which he stood 

 to his parish minister, and became naturally the spokes- 



