Archive: Mar 9, 2011, 12:00 AM
Hugh Miller: Dukes and Hinds
In the 1840s few names were better known in Scotland than Hugh Miller’s; and few Scottish names were better known world-wide.
Miller owed his fame to his editorship of the Witness, a newspaper which rivalled, and sometimes outsold, the Scotsman. Established in 1840, the Witness was the voice of the Evangelical Party in the Church of Scotland, then locked in its bitter struggle over lay-patronage: a struggle which would culminate in the tragic Disruption of 1843. Evangelicals argued that the right to choose their own ministers was a sacred right of Christian congregations. Their rivals, the Moderates, were happy to let that right lie with patrons, usually the local lairds. Parliament, the Court of Session and the Scottish press were all on the side of the lairds.