The paradox of scottish identity: When cultural sentiment fails to forge political unity

“ Scotland is unique among European nations in its failure to develop a nationalist sentiment strong enough to be a vital factor in its affairs—a failure inconsistent alike with our traditional love of country and reputation for practicality. The reason probably lies in the fact that no comprehensive-enough agency has emerged; and the commonsense of our people has rejected one-sided expedients incapable of addressing the organic complexity of our national life. For it must be recognized that the absence of Scottish nationalism is, paradoxically enough, a form of Scottish self-determination. ”

“ The point at which I am aiming is to answer the question, whether national idiosyncrasy and national pride are necessarily hostile to the union of two or more distinct races. Speaking for my own side, I should be surprised to learn that as a race the Scots are less proud of their nationality and its heroes, or less attached to their historical memories, than they ever were at any period in the past. ”

“ Fond memory shall your strains repeat, Like distant echoes, doubly sweet, That on the wild the traveller hears.”
Scott went on to expatiate on the popular songs of Scotland. “They are a part of our national inheritance,” said he, “and something that we may truly call our own. They have no foreign taint; they have the pure breath of the heather and the mountain breeze. All genuine legitimate races that have descended from the ancient Britons; such as the Scotch, the Welsh, and the Irish, have national airs. ”

“ Even in Scotland, we have comparatively few national songs in the eastern part, where we have had most influx of strangers. A real old Scottish song is a cairngorm—a gem of our own mountains; or rather, it is a precious relic of old times, that bears the national character stamped upon it—like a cameo, that shows what the national visage was in former days, before the breed was crossed.”
While Scott was thus discoursing, we were passing up a narrow glen, with the dogs beating about, to right and left, when suddenly a blackcock burst upon the wing. ”

“ If feeling constitutes the nursery of much that is desirable in national character, it is no less true that well assorted and confirmed nationality will always prove the most trustworthy and lasting safeguard of freedom. It is the combination of heart—the universal unity of sentiment—which renders a people powerful in the preservation of right and privilege, home and hearth; and few things of merely human origin will serve more thoroughly to promote such unity, than the [Pg xxv] songs of a song-loving people. ”

“ The outlook for the Scottish race is exceedingly grave. If ever there was a call to the Church of Scotland to stand fast for what men rightly contend dearest—their nationality and their traditions—that call is surely [73] sounding now, when our race and our culture are faced with a peril which, though silent and unostentatious, is the gravest with which the Scottish people has ever been confronted. ”

“ No race of men protest their love of country so perfervidly as the Scots—no country in its actual conditions justifies any such protestations less. Every recent reference book in any department of human activity shows the position to which Scotland has degenerated. ”

“ There would neither be wanting Scottish parasites to beg the lands of the foundation, nor an army from England to burn and harry the Halidome. The men of Scotland were once Scotsmen, firm and united in the love of their country, and throwing every other consideration aside when the frontier was menaced—now they are—what shall I call them—the one part French, the other part English, considering their dear native country merely as a prize-fighting stage, upon which foreigners are welcome to decide their quarrels.”
“Benedictine!” replied the Abbot, “they are indeed slippery and evil times.” ”

“ In a matter purely Scottish, it would, indeed, be gross despotism if any British cabinet should employ its power and its interest to overwhelm the voice of Scotland, as fairly enunciated by her representatives. ”

“ They live after their authors are forgotten, are repeated with local modifications, and so become common property. It is, of course, not denied that this process must have been at work in Scotland through many centuries before the eighteenth. The proof exists in scraps of fine old Scottish song still preserved, the earliest perhaps the famous verse on the death of Alexander III., and in lists, such as that in The Complaint of Scotland, of the titles of clusters of old Scottish songs and tales that were popular throughout the country in the sixteenth century, but have perished since. ”

“ If it be true that national musics embalm peculiar humanities, of no country is this so true as of Scotland, for no people and no history is so highly picturesque and so full of the broadest lights and shadows. ”

“ A Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist, who does not love Scotland better than truth: he will always love it better than inquiry; and if falsehood flatters his vanity, will not be very diligent to detect it. ”

“ So when a Scotsman criticises Scotch poetry viewed by itself alone, he is apt to be carried away by his patriotism,—he sees only the delightful side of the subject, and he ventures on assertions which flatter himself and his country at the expense of all other nations. If, however, we place the productions of our own country side by side with those of another, the excellences and the deficiencies of both are seen in stronger relief ”

“ Had not these men held up the heart of Scotland, and kept alive the fire of liberty on her altars, the very literature which has been used to defame them could not have had its existence. The very literary celebrity of Scotland has grown out of their grave; for a vigorous and original literature is impossible, except to a strong, free, self-respecting people. The literature of a people must spring from the sense of its nationality; and nationality is impossible without self-respect, and self-respect is impossible without liberty. ”

“ Indeed, so flushed and riotous can the Scottish mind become over a commercial prospect that it sometimes sends native caution by the board, and a man's really fine idea becomes an empty balloon, to carry him off to the limbo of vanities. There is a megalomaniac in every parish of Scotland. Well, not so much as that; they're owre canny for that to be said of them. ”

“ The national gravity is against the first: the national caution is against the last. To a Scotchman if a thing is, it is; there is an end of the question with his opinion about it. He is positive and abrupt, and is not in the habit of conciliating the feelings or soothing the follies of others. His only way therefore to produce a popular effect is to sail with the stream of prejudice, and to vent common dogmas, ‘the total grist, unsifted, husks and all,’ from some evangelical pulpit. ”

“ The masses of the working-people of Scotland have read history, and are no revolutionary levelers. They rejoice in the memories of "Wallace and Bruce and a' the lave," who are still much revered as the former champions of freedom. And while foreigners imagine that we want the spirit only to overturn capitalists and aristocracy, we are content to respect our laws till we can change them, and hate those stupid revolutions which might sweep away time-honored institutions, dear alike to rich and poor. ”

“ In a country where, owing to the religious difference, it was peculiarly necessary that a vigorous lay public opinion should be fostered to dilute or restrain the sectarian spirit, it suppressed the centre and organ of political life, directed the energies of the community into the channels of sectarianism, drove its humours inwards, and thus began a perversion of public opinion which has almost destroyed the elements of political progress. ”

“ It is utterly irrational to find a whole electorate bemused and misled (for all practical purposes) by such an abracadabra. That is the position of Scotland to-day. All the Scottish papers aver that the demand for Scottish nationalism is made by “a handful of fanatics,” and [83] has no real weight of “public opinion” behind it—but what is “public opinion,” and how far is it reflected by a Press which, in a country which has always been overwhelmingly radical and republican, and where to-day a third of the entire electorate vote Socialist, is solidly sycophantic and anti-socialist? ”

“ Reform movements tend to become negative and to lose their educational value for the mass of the people. The reformers take the role of the opposition. They give themselves largely to criticisms of the present state of affairs, to writing and talking of what the future must be and of certain results which should be obtained. In trying to better matters, however, they have in mind only political achievements which they detach in a curious way from the rest of life, and they speak and write of the purification of politics as of a thing set apart from daily life. ”

“ It occurs to you to join the other party, and induce that party to advocate a positive good, whereby the people may be appealed to and the iniquities voted down. But your trouble here begins afresh, for it seems as hard to induce the “outs” to make a square attack on the evil as it is to get the “ins” to desist from doing the evil. Your struggle, your antagonism, your waste of energy continues. At last you leave the outs and form a new party, a reform party of your own. ”

“ It is not only the moral obliquity of place-hunters or popularity-hunters that can fix on patriotism the stigma of offence. Its healthy development depends on intellectual as well as on moral guidance. When the patriotic instinct, however honestly it be cherished, is freed of intellectual restraint, it works even more mischief than when it is deliberately counterfeited. Among the empty-headed it very easily degenerates into an over-assertive, a swollen selfishness, which ignores or defies the just rights and feelings of those who do not chance to be their fellow-countrymen. ”

“ If people are to endure it, there must be a supreme exaltation of mass sentiment, to support the weak by herding them more closely together. This is artificially effected by the newspaper press. The result is appalling. Patriotism concentrates all the energies of the human mind upon love for one’s own country and upon hatred for the enemy. Hatred becomes a religion. ”

“ Resulting from these conditions in a manner not difficult to trace, wholesome national sentiment is threatened with utter perversion. All sorts of misconceptions pervade the public thought, and jealousies, rapidly taking on the complexion of class hatred, are found in every corner of the land. A new meaning has been given to national prosperity. With a hardihood that savors of insolence, an old pretext, which has preceded the doom of ancient experiments in popular vote, is daily and hourly dinned in our ears. ”

“ What too many people in Ireland mistake for thoughts are feelings. It is enough to them to vent likes or dislikes, inherited prejudices or passions, and they think when they have expressed feeling they have given utterance to thought. The nature of our political controversies provoked passion, and passion has become dominant in our politics. Passion truly is a power in humanity, but it should never enter into national policy. ”

“ Public taste, which may be styled the protectress of literature in every country, instead of being refined and elevated, is corrupted and debased. In short, our literary mind, which, under the influence of our free institutions, might, like the eagle, soar with might and majesty, is chained down and impeded in its action.
It cannot be expected, that such a state of society would patronize noble, intellectual effort. Genuine literary merit, is unnoticed amid the whirl of party. The beauteous and serene beams of the star of science, are lost in the dazzling brightness of the political sun. ”

“ Each prejudice is natural and amiable, but neither the one nor the other is exempt from the charge of puerility. Patriotism is a meaningless term in literary criticism. To prefer what has been written in our own city, or state, or country, for that reason alone, is simply to drop the balance and to relinquish all claims to form a judgment. The true and reasonable lover of literature refuses to be constrained by any meaner or homelier bond than that of good writing. ”

“ After all, a nation gets the politics that it deserves. The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings. If the tone of public life is a low one it is because the tone of society is not a high one. ”

“ But creative statesmanship requires a culture to support it. It can neither be taught by rule nor produced out of a vacuum. A community that clatters along with its rusty habits of thought unquestioned, making no distinction between instruments and idols, with a dull consumption of machine-made romantic fiction, no criticism, an empty pulpit and an unreliable press, will find itself faithfully mirrored in public affairs. ”

“ The more need of a withdrawal from the crowd, and a resort to the fountain of right, by the brave. The timidity of our public opinion, is our disease, or, shall I say, the publicness of opinion, the absence of private opinion. Good-nature is plentiful, but we want justice, with heart of steel, to fight down the proud. The private mind has the access to the totality of goodness and truth, that it may be a balance to a corrupt society; and to stand for the private verdict against popular clamor, is the office of the noble. ”