HUGH MILLER 99 



This, though in a sense exaggerated, is true to the ex- 

 tent that he entered the Usts not as a mere servant, but 

 as a convinced defender of the liberties of the people. 

 To touch on anything that infringed upon the Presby- 

 terian history of the country be it by the Duke of 

 Buccleuch, the Duke of Sutherland, or other site-refus- 

 ing landlords of the day, or by some flippant alien and 

 Episcopalian pamphleteer among the briefless of the 

 Parliament House, was certainly to court a bout from 

 which the unwary disputant emerged in a highly bat- 

 tered condition. Yet his pugnacity was really foreign 

 to the nature of the man. His surviving daughter in- 

 forms the writer he was ' a very mild and gentle father, 

 and his whole attitude was one depressed with humility.' 

 It was, however, well for site-refusers and factors riding 

 on the top of their commission from absentee landlords 

 to feel that attacks upon their policy in The Witness 

 were not to be lightened by any hopes of an apology 

 or by appeals to fear. ' The watchman,' he writes in 

 a letter before us, dated 9th October 1840, 'is crying 

 half-past twelve o'clock, and I have more than half a 

 mile to walk out of town between two rows of trees on 

 a solitary road. Fine opportunity for cudgel-beating 

 factors I carry, however, with me a five-shilling stick, 

 strong enough to break heads of the ordinary thickness, 

 and like quite as well to appeal to an antagonist's fears 

 as to his mercy.' 



The Witness started with a circulation of six hundred. 

 Its position among the Scottish papers was at once 



