HUGH MILLER 39 



exorbitant. Altogether it was no favourable school for 

 Miller to learn regard for his own class. Again and 

 again, to the end, do we find not undeserved denuncia- 

 tions of the dangers of Chartism, and his own reiterated 

 belief that for the skilled workman there is no danger, 

 and for the thriftless no hope. 



The collier villages round Niddry have long since 

 disappeared. The seams have for all practical pur- 

 poses been worked out, or have been given up as 

 unprofitable. There he found the last surviving re- 

 mains of slavery in Scotland, for the older men of the 

 place, though born and bred 'within a mile of Edin- 

 burgh toun,' had yet been born slaves. The modern 

 reader will find much curious information upon this 

 subject in Erskine's Institutes ; but, in passing, we may 

 recall the fact that Sir Walter Scott has mentioned the 

 case of Scott of Harden and his lady, who had rescued 

 by law a tumbling-girl who had been sold by her 

 parents to a travelling mountebank, and who was set at 

 liberty after an appeal to the Lords, against the decision 

 of the Chancellor. Scott was assoilzied ; but, even as late 

 as 1799, an Act of Parliament had to be passed dealing 

 specially with this last remnant of feudal slavery the 

 salters and the colliers of Scotland. The old family of 

 the Setons of Winton had, along with others, exercised 

 great political influence and pressure on the Court of 

 Session, and had repeatedly managed to defeat or evade 

 measures of reform. A law had even been passed 

 enacting that no collier or salter, without a certificate 



