Hugh Miller / by W. Keith Leask.

  • William Keith Leask
Date:
[pref. 1896]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hugh Miller / by W. Keith Leask. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    43/168 page 39
    exorbitant. Altogether it was no favourable school for Miller to learn regard for his own class. Again and again, to the end, do we find not undeserved denuncia- tions of the dangers of Chartism, and his own reiterated belief that for the skilled workman there is no danger, and for the thriftless no hope. The collier villages round Niddry have long since disappeared. The seams have for all practical pur- poses been worked out, or have been given up as unprofitable. There he found the last surviving re- mains of slavery in Scotland, for the older men of the place, though born and bred ‘within a mile of Edin- burgh toun,’ had yet been born slaves. The modern reader will find much curious information upon this subject in Erskine’s Institutes; but, in passing, we may recall the fact that Sir Walter Scott has mentioned the case of Scott of Harden and his lady, who had rescued by law a tumbling-girl who had been sold by her parents to a travelling mountebank, and who was set at liberty after an appeal to the Lords, against the decision of the Chancellor. Scott was assoilzied; but, even as late as 1799, an Act of Parliament had to be passed dealing specially with this last remnant of feudal slavery—the salters and the colliers of Scotland. The old family of the Setons of Winton had, along with others, exercised great political influence and pressure on the Court of Session, and had repeatedly managed to defeat or evade measures of reform. A law had even been passed enacting that no collier or salter, without a certificate
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