HUGH MILLER 61 



1839, to the electors of Edinburgh. In Ross-shire, the 

 tension of affairs had been rendered more acute by a 

 wave of Tory reaction which induced the Church of 

 Scotland to cast the weight of her influence against the 

 Whigs ; but the people, as has ever been the case upon 

 such aberrations from the national policy, had steadily 

 declined to follow this lead, although the endowment 

 scheme for new chapels had been dealt with by the 

 Whigs in a niggard and unsatisfactory way. 



In Cromarty the cause of the Church was strong. 

 Since the Revolution, the succession in the parish had 

 been at once popular and able. The position taken up 

 hitherto by Miller and his uncles had been a middle 

 one. With strong hereditary attachment to the national 

 establishment they united personal leanings which led 

 them to a sympathy with the standpoint and the theo- 

 logy of the Seceders. But as yet Miller was, he says, 

 1 thoroughly an Established man.' The revenues of the 

 Church he regarded as the patrimony of the people; 

 and he looked not unnaturally to a time 'when that 

 unwarrantable appropriation of them, through which the 

 aristocracy had sought to extend its influence, but 

 which had served only greatly to reduce its power in 

 the country, would come to an end.' Still he confesses 

 that as yet there were no signs of what he would him- 

 self have desired to see a general and popular agitation 

 against patronage though he noted with approval the 

 'revival of the old spirit in the Church.' The time 

 had, however, come when he could hesitate no longer. 



