HUGH MILLER 97 



and the belief had been that the conflict was a mere 

 clerical striving for power. It remained for Miller to 

 educate the party, and to such effect was this done 

 that, while the non-intrusion petition to Parliament in 

 1839 from Edinburgh had borne but five thousand signa- 

 tures, the number, says Robert Chambers, mounted in 

 the first year of The Witness to thirteen thousand. It 

 was clear to all Scotland that there was a new Richmond 

 in the field. It is the more necessary to insist on this, 

 because the clerical mind, which after Malebranche is 

 too prone to see everything in itself and its own sur- 

 roundings, has never fully confessed the services to 

 the country of the layman. As Guthrie points out, a 

 silence is maintained all through Buchanan's Ten Years' 

 Conflict on Miller. This he regrets, not only on the 

 ground that it would be Hamlet without the Prince of 

 Denmark, but also for its missing the cardinal principle 

 that at such a time the press and public meetings form 

 the most influential of factors. This such a kindred 

 spirit and public orator as Guthrie is quick to see, nor 

 does he go beyond the facts of the case, or the judg- 

 ment now of the country, in maintaining that 'Miller 

 did more than any dozen ecclesiastical leaders, and 

 that, Chalmers excepted, he was the greatest of all 

 the men of the Ten Years' Conflict.' 



He certainly was no half advocate or mere 'able 

 editor ' in the Carlylean phrase. If Chalmers, Candlish, 

 and Cunningham were the leaders in the ecclesiastical 

 courts, Murray Dunlop the jurist, Miller was the pen- 



