'"An' it's perfectly true, ilka word o't. They're nae better o' the ae han' nor incendiaries, wan'erin' here an' there to raise strife amo' peaceable fowk; and syne their harangues--a clean perversion o' the constitutional law, an' veelint abuse o' the institutions o' the countra."' How many specimens of that style of 'calm and temperate article' were produced in the North, no one with a recollection for either history or for humour need recall at this hour. Somewhat later, Miller could say in _The Witness_ that in a few days he had clipped out of the papers what he had seen written against such a man of position and courtesy as Mr. Makgill Crichton of Rankeilour in the course of a fortnight. It amounted to eleven feet six inches when pieced together, and was for the most part gross abuse and vulgar personalities. The hour, then, had come and the man. Miller was invited to Edinburgh to meet the leaders of the Evangelical party, and he was offered the position of editor of the newspaper, which started its first issue on January 15, 1840, appearing bi-weekly upon Wednesdays and Saturdays. At the end of the bank's financial year, he was presented by his fellow-townsmen with a breakfast service of plate, and the presence of his uncle Alexander was to Miller a circumstance of peculiar satisfaction. In a few days later he was seated at the editorial desk. For sixteen years he was with undiminished success to edit _The Witness_. But here we pause. The conflict in which he was to engage calls for a special chapter. The question has been approached 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 religious 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 connection, and to exhibit the logical nexus of affairs from 1560 to 1843. CHAPTER III THE SCOTTISH CHURCH, 1560-1843--'THE WITNESS' 'The fate of a nation was riding that night.' _Paul Revere's Ride_, LONGFELLOW.