Witness entered largely into details; Chalmers only indicated general principles. But though united in principle and aim, we rather suspect they would have parted company upon these details. The editor of the Witness appears to have borrowed his conception of the popular basis on which he sought to place national education, from the common-school system of New England. And so utterly divested of all those centralizing features, hitherto the chief objection to modern state education, is his scheme so completely has he made it a thing, not only for the people, but of the people, we are apt to wonder he stopped short of even the voluntary principle. Like Dr. Chalmers, however, Hugh Miller was singularly sceptical of that principle upon certain questions, though, like him also, reposing the amplest faith in its virtues with respect to others. The extremest voluntary could not have resisted the imposition of a poor-rate with more zealous tenacity than both these distinguished men. With that graphic power of illustrating a principle by the reminiscences of his experience, the editor of the Witness thus demonstrated to his own satisfaction the injustice of a statutory support of the pauper class.

"We resided and laboured in this part of the country (Edinburgh) for a summer and autumn about eighteen years ago, at a time when wages were high and employment abundant. There was much dissipation among the working classes of the period; and one of our brother workmen, Jock Laidlie, was an extreme specimen of the more dissipated class. Pay-day came round once a fortnight, and then we were sure to lose sight of Jock for about three days. When he came

back to resume his labour, he had always a miserable, par-boiled sort of look, as if he had been simmering for half an hour in a caldron over a slow fire. He was invariably, too, in that wretched state of spirits which in those days workmen used to term 'the horrors;' and as men can't get par-boiled and into the 'horrors' for nothing, it was found in every instance, that Jock's whole wages had been dissipated in the process. And such, fortnight after fortnight, was the course pursued by Jock. Now, employment, though easily enough procured in summer and autumn in Jock's profession, was always uncertain in winter, even when the winter proved fine and open; and when frosts were keen and prolonged, and the snow lay long on the ground, there was no employment for even the more fortunate. It was essentially necessary, therefore, in the busier seasons, to make provision for the seasons in which business failed. For our own part, we were desirous, we remember, to have the winter all to ourselves, and when Hallowday came round, and employment failed, we found ourselves in the possession of twelve pounds, which we had laid by just as its price, we may so speak. Twelve pounds relieved us from the necessity of labouring for twice twelve weeks. Twelve pounds were sufficient to purchase for us leisure and independence-two very excellent thingsfrom the end of October to the beginning of May; and we were desirous to employ the time thus fairly earned in cultivating a little inheritance which in lesser or larger measure descends to all, and of which no law of appropriation can rob even working men, but which, unless resolutely broken in, and sedulously improved, must lie fallow and unproductive of no benefit to the possessor, and useless to the community. Jock Laidlie had not laid by a single farthing. We, on a very small scale, were a capitalist determined on making an investment. Jock was a pauper; and here, in a state of great simplicity, in comes the question at issue-Had Jock Laidlie any right to our twelve pounds? To not one copper farthing of it, say we. It was all our own-all honestly earned by the sweat of our brow. We had never claimed to share with Jock in a single gill. We had never enjoyed one whiff of his tobacco. We had never meddled with his earnings; he had no right to intermeddle with ours. But Jock Laidlie had an aged mother, who, without any fault on her part, was miserably poor, just because Jock had failed in his duty towards her. Had Jock Laidlie's mother any right to our twelve pounds? No!-no right. It might doubtless be a duty to help the poor suffering woman, but her claim on us was merely a claim of compassion. She had no right,

nor had any third party a right to thrust his hand into our pocket, and out of our hard-earned twelve pounds, to assist Jock Laidlie's mother."

We are not about to enter upon any argument in behalf of voluntaryism, educational or ecclesiastical : all we say of this illustration is, that it points to principles more fatal to state education than they can ever become to any argument in behalf of state provision for the poor. If the unfortunate have no right to life, what claim-what state claim, we mean, have they for instruction? As the greater includes the less, if the right to life is denied, we necessarily deny the right to education.

But we refrain from doing more than simply indicating the path on which such a discussion would inevitably lead. To enter in extenso upon the question of voluntary versus state education, would be to enter "neither a vineyard nor an oliveyard, but an intricate jungle of briers and thorns, from which those who lose themselves therein, may bring back many scratches, but no food." The issues raised by the controversy have not yet been decided, though the unsatisfactory position in which the whole question of popular education has been left during the last ten years, cannot much longer be tolerated. The chief good Hugh Miller's discussion of the subject accomplished, was an indirect good. It formed the thin edge of the wedge by which successive assemblies of the Free Church have been shattering the vicious system of management that, from the Disruption downwards, has been the bane of that important ecclesiastical

organization. It may, indeed, be regretted the good was not achieved without attendant evils. The personalities with which the discussion was garnished, might have been spared, while yet the argument retained its undiminished power But it is not given to man to accomplish unmixed good. As even the finest gold is not wholly free from alloy, so in the loftiest human wisdom there lurks a grain of folly, and in man's noblest efforts, a something amiss—

"There's something in this world amiss,

Shall be unriddled by and by."

The keen eye of Francis Jeffrey noted in the vigorous self-assertion of Burns, rather too fierce and defiant a tone. In the estimation of the great Reviewer, our national bard sometimes mistook the pride of the sturdy peasant for the natural elevation of a generous mind. The shadow of this same vice has occasionally marred the exquisite delicacy of taste and feeling, by which almost all Hugh Miller has done is distinguished. Esteeming him substantially right in his educational controversies, there are yet episodes in these controversies where we cannot veil from ourselves the conviction, swagger is mistaken for strength. A morbid jealousy of his independence seduced him into this error-this weakness.

We are quite aware that, from a very early period, attempts were made to control the Witness, and that probably any two men less resolute than its proprietors, would have succumbed to the cumulative influences

that sought to seduce from its integrity the solitary independent organ of the Free Church. Dictation and intrigue were, however, equally impotent, equally futile: turning neither to the right hand nor the left, the Witness pursued the even tenor of its way, not only undismayed, but inflicting the most terrible chastisement upon all who presumed to cross its path. Doubtless, many of the men with whom its editor dealt so cavalierly, merited his lusty lash, but there were old friends whom the recollections of the days of other years might have spared the merciless castigations he occasionally indulged; and "glimmering through the dream of things that were," was at least one ancient friendship which needed not to have been so rudely sundered. Mistaken as was the earlier course of Dr. Candlish on the education question, he had surely done nothing that might legitimately warrant the scathing scarcasm of these sentences so replete with the extremest susceptibility. "It has been insinuated to us," says Hugh Miller, "that the Witness newspaper is pursuing on the educational question a course perilous to itself. We are not careful, we at once say, to answer for ourselves in this matter. The editor of the Witness is a humble man, but he stands on other ground than mere salaried functionaries, of whom with all deference it may be affirmed, that ‘a breath can make them, as a breath has made.' It is to God, not to patronage clerical or lay, that he owes that voice with which he addresses himself to a large circle of certainly not the least intelligent of his countrymen,