As a politician he first served as a Bailie representing the Gorbals then became a Bailie of Glasgow and Chief Magistrate. He was elected Lord Provost in 1834. In 1837 he was succeeded as Lord Provost by Henry Dunlop of Craigton in 1837. He died at 7 Woodside Terrace in the Sandyford district of Glasgow on 8 November 1857. He is buried in the family vault in the Glasgow Necropolis. He was father to the Glasgow shipbuilder George Mills (1808-1881). He was portrayed in office in the style of Henry Raeburn.   1946 British Embassy bombing  The bombing of the British Embassy at Porta Pia in Rome was a terrorist action perpetrated by the Irgun that occurred on 31 October 1946. Two timed explosives encased in suitcases were planted by the Embassy's front entrance; the resulting blast injured two people and damaged the building's residential section beyond repair. The Irgun targeted the Embassy because they considered it an obstacle to illegal Jewish immigration into Mandatory Palestine. One of the Irgun's intended targets, ambassador Noel Charles, was away on leave during the attack. It was quickly determined that foreign militants from Mandatory Palestine were behind the attack and under pressure from Great Britain, the Italian police, Carabinieri and the Allied Police Force rounded up numerous members of the Betar organization, which had recruited militants from among the displaced refugees. Confirming fears of the expansion of Jewish terrorism beyond Mandatory Palestine, the bombing of the Embassy was the first attack against British personnel by the Irgun on European soil. The British and Italian governments commenced an extensive investigation and concluded that Irgun operatives from Mandatory Palestine organized the attack. The attack was condemned by the leaders of Jewish agencies superintending their refugees. Italy subsequently enacted strict immigration reform and antisemitic sentiment heightened in the United Kingdom. During the early 1950s, Israel lobbied the British to pressure the Italian government not to pursue the militants. In 1952, eight suspects–including ringleader Moishe Deitel–were tried "in absentia" and received light sentences ranging from 8 to 16 months. The British government anticipated the threat of Jewish terrorism emanating outside Mandatory Palestine in the aftermath of the Second World War. The Irgun had been founded before the Holocaust out of discontent with the Haganah's policy of havlagah, or self-restraint. It became the armed wing of Revisionist Zionism in 1936, a turn related to the Arab recourse to insurrectionary violence in that year, itself a protest against British policy regarding Jewish immigration.