SOURCE: Rosie, George. “Hugh Miller: A Biography.” In Hugh Miller: Outrage and Order, pp. 13-87. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1981.

In the following excerpt, Rosie discusses Miller's editorship of the Witness.

Sturm Und Drang

The first issue of Hugh Miller's Witness made its appearance on the streets of Edinburgh on 15 January 1840 (under a slogan coined by John Knox: “I am in the place where I am demanded of conscience to speak the truth, and therefore the truth I speak, impugn it whoso list”). From the outset Miller made it plain he meant business. “We enter upon our labours at a period emphatically momentous,” he wrote in his first, very wordy, editorial, “at the commencement, it is probable, of one of the most important eras, never forgotten by a country, which influences for ages the conditions and character of the people, and from which the events of their future history take...