HUGH MILLER 67 



from all sides, civil as well as ecclesiastical. But it is 

 fitting that here, at least, an attempt be made to connect 

 the struggle with the history and the peculiar mental 

 and moral characteristics of the Scottish people. It 

 will be seen that the question involves far-reaching, 

 deep-rooted, and closely connected points of issue. It 

 will therefore be the attempt of the next chapter to 

 show the really national and democratic features of the 

 conflict, and to briefly indicate how the civil and re- 

 ligious rights of the people, long before staked and won 

 by the early Reformers, were again, when surrendered 

 by an alien nobility, saved for them from the point, 

 at least, of abiding literature by two men ; who, sprung 

 themselves from the people, the one the son of a 

 Cromarty sailor and the other of an Aberdeenshire 

 crofter, wrote the leaders in The Witness and Johnny 

 Gibb of Gushetneuk. The best years of Miller's own 

 life, sixteen years of unceasing turmoil and overwork, 

 were spent in making these issues abundantly clear to 

 the people. No apology need then be made for an 

 effort to reset these positions in their historical con- 

 nection, and to exhibit the logical nexus of affairs from 

 1560 to 1843. 



