HUGH MILLER 117 



before glorious revolutions can successfully march over 

 in their pumps and silk stockings, giving their victorious 

 three-times-three. It has been sought to minimise 

 these issues, to explain them away after the manner of 

 * able editors ' and complacent philosophers cheerfully 

 'at ease in Zion,' and to maintain, with the hardy 

 gravity of ignorance, that the combatants really knew 

 not what they fought for the Headship of Christ, 

 Anti - Patronage, or resistance to the civil courts. 

 Similar futilities we have seen ventilated over the 

 American Civil War. The North, say the philosophic 

 thinkers, or tinkers, did not know whether it fought for 

 the preservation of the Union or against slavery. Such 

 speculations are too thin to carry much weight. In 

 both cases many went to their grave for what they 

 believed to be principle, and all such men may be 

 safely trusted to have reached some conclusions and 

 clear issues. These issues obviously all met; after 

 Auchterarder on the one hand, and South Carolina 

 on the other, had led the way, no such easy subterfuge 

 was possible for either party. 



The lesson then learned at such a cost might never 

 have been necessary, with a better adjustment of the 

 political balance, which has been again found wanting 

 and craves a final and a rational settlement. What 

 Fairfoul in 1662 told Middleton had been simply again 

 repeated in 1843 by Muir and Hope, who held the ear 

 of Sir James Graham, to whom Peel had resigned the 

 whole management of Scottish affairs. For all that 



