Robert Chambers

“ Loyalty is altogether a paradox, appearances with it being usually in the inverse ratio of its actual existence, and the actuality in the inverse ratio of the deserving. No monarch ever enjoyed so much of it as Charles I. Since the days of his sons, when the bulk of the people of Scotland felt themselves under a civil and ecclesiastical tyranny, the demonstrations at market-crosses on royal birthdays had not been so violent as now, when a new family, about whom nobody cared or could care, occupied the throne. ”

“ Even, however, from one regarding it so fraternally as Defoe, Scotland was little disposed to accept a recommendation of that measure. It was in vain that he published a complaisant poem about the people, under the name of Caledonia, in which he commended their bravery, their learning, and abilities. Vainly did he declare himself their friend, anxious to promote their prosperity by pointing to improved agriculture, to fisheries, to commerce, and to manufactures. The Edinburgh people saw him daily closeted with the leaders of the party for the hated union, and that was enough. ”

“ How it was endured, no modern man can divine; but it certainly is true that, at the time when men dressed themselves in silks and laces, and took as much time for their toilets as a fine lady, they had to pass in all their bravery amongst piles of dung, on the very High Street of Edinburgh, and could not make an evening call upon Dorinda or Celia in one of the alleys, without the risk of an ablution from above sufficient to destroy the most elegant outfit, and put the wearers out of conceit with themselves for a fortnight. ”

“ The hardy little cattle of her pastures, which before the Union had been sent in large droves into England, being doubtless the principal article represented in the two hundred thousand pounds which Scotland was ascertained to obtain annually from her English customers, were now transmitted in still larger numbers, insomuch that men of birth and figure went into the trade. Even a Highland gentleman would think it not beneath him to engage in so lucrative a traffic, however much in his soul he might despise the Saxons whose gluttony he considered himself as gratifying. ”

“ It was a state of things very like what our own advanced age has been fated strangely to see prevalent over large tracts of Ireland and of the Highlands of Scotland—a fearful misapplication and misplacement of human nature, with frightful natural consequences in chronic misery and disorganisation. The landlords, anxious to introduce a better system, began to subdivide and enclose their lands, in order to stock them with black-cattle, and to eject tenants hopelessly sunk in idleness and poverty. ”

“ In the debates on these measures, the Scottish parliament exhibited a degree of eloquence which was wholly a novelty, and the memory of which long survived. It was a remarkable crisis, in which a little nation, merely by the moral power which animated it, contrived to inspire fear and respect in one much its superior in numbers and every other material element of strength.
The general sense of danger thus created in England proved sufficient to overcome that mercantile selfishness which had inflicted so much injustice upon Scotland. ”

“ It was a very great wind, which blew to such a degree, that, with the sparks that came from the fire, there was nothing to be seen through the whole city, but as it had been showers of sparks, like showers of snow, they were so thick.’ [266]
‘There are burnt, by the easiest computation, between three and four hundred families; the pride of Edinburgh is sunk; from the Cowgate to the High Street, all is burnt, and hardly one stone left upon another. ”

“ I have seen, when meal was sold in markets, women clapping their hands and tearing the clothes off their heads, crying: “How shall we go home and see our children die of hunger? They have got no meat these two days, and we have nothing to give them!” Through the long continuance of these manifold judgments, deaths and burials were so many and common, that the living were wearied with the burying of the dead. ”

“ Now, the Bank of Scotland had been going on very quietly for some years, with its ten thousand pounds of paid-up capital, realising, as we can infer from some particulars, about a thousand a year of profit from its business. A prosperity so great could not then exist in Scotland without exciting some degree of envy, and also raising up thoughts of rivalry in a certain ardent class of minds. ”

“ Under our present multiplication of newspapers, a piece of false intelligence is so quickly detected, that there is no temptation for the most perverse politician to put such a thing in circulation. In King William’s days, when the printed newspaper barely existed, and the few who were curious about state-affairs had to content themselves with what was called a news-letter—a written circular emanating from a centre in London—a falsehood would now and then prove serviceable to a party, particularly a depressed one. ”

“ Thomas Mackie, being now at last apprehended by the magistrates, and ordained to remove immediately out of Britain, was so bold as to call for a suspension of their act in the Court of Session, setting forth that he had lived for many years inoffensively in Edinburgh—the vestments, altar, crucifixes, &c., found in his house belonged to the Countess of Seaforth—he had not been taken in the act of saying mass, and it had not been proved that he was a priest—finally, and above all, the magistrates of Edinburgh were going beyond their powers in banishing any one forth of the island. ”

“ A curious class of cases, of importance for any theory on the subject, was that in which a visionary figure or spectre intervened for the production of the phenomena. A spirit in great vogue in the Highlands in old times—as, indeed, in the Lowlands also—was known by the name of Browny. From the accounts we have of him, it seems as if he were in a great measure identical with the drudging goblin of Milton, whose shadowy flail by night would thrash the corn
‘That ten day-labourers could not end.’ Among our Highlanders, he presented himself as a tall man. ”

“ It was concluded that the people of the Worcester had captured the Speedy Return, and murdered its crew, and that Providence had arranged for their punishment, by sending them for shelter from a storm to the neighbourhood of Edinburgh. Vainly might it have been pointed out that there was no right evidence for even the fact of the piracy, still less for the Speedy Return being the subject of the offence. Truth and justice were wholly lost sight of in the universal thirst for vengeance against England and its selfish mercantile companies. ”

“ If such were his feelings, he would not be at the pains to reprove them; still less would he have ever given Dean of Guild Neilson a speaking-trumpet for a seat in the kirk, not worth twenty shillings sterling, seeing it is but a back-seat, where he may fall asleep, and the minister never once call on him to sit up. ‘This,’ however, ‘is only a word by the by.’
One great charge which the Tinkler has to make against the clergy is, that they are afraid to preach freely to the consciences of men, for fear of angering the great. ‘If ye be feared to anger them, God will not be feared to anger you. ”

“ Sir William Lockhart, the solicitor-general for Scotland, residing in London, then coolly wrote to the Earl of Melville, secretary of state at Edinburgh, regarding Payne, that there was no doubt he knew as much as would hang a thousand; ‘but,’ says he, ‘except you put him to the torture, he will shame you all. Pray you put him in such hands as will have no pity on him; for, in the opinion of all, he is a desperate cowardly fellow.’
The Privy Council had in reality by this time put Payne to the torture; but the ‘cowardly fellow’ proved able to bear it without confession. ”

“ The people of Scotland were poor, and lived in the most sparing manner. When they made an honourable attempt to extend their industry, that they might live a little better, their sovereign permitted the English to ‘frustrate the endeavour.’ He then told them to humble themselves for the sins which had procured their afflictions, and reproached them with a luxury which they had never enjoyed. ”

“ William Paterson, indeed, had set the pattern of a non-sectarian feeling from the beginning, for, writing from London to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh in July 1695, we find him using this strain of language, hitherto unwonted in Scotland: ‘Above all, it is needful for us to make no distinction of parties in this great undertaking; but of whatever nation or religion a man be, he ought to be looked upon, if one of us, to be of the same interest and inclination. ”

“ The failure of the Darien settlement was a death-blow to the African Company, the whole capital being absorbed and lost. So large a loss of means to so poor a country, amidst the home-troubles of famine and disease, was felt severely. It seemed to the people of Scotland that the hostility of the king’s government, rather than that of the Spaniards, had been chiefly to blame for their misfortunes; and certainly there is some truth in the allegation. ”

“ His noted power and probity as a Whig pamphleteer suggested to the English ministry the propriety of sending him down for a time to Edinburgh, to help on the cause of the Union. He came with sympathies for the people of Scotland, founded on what they had suffered under the last Stuart reigns. Instead of believing all to be barren and hopeless north of the Tweed, he viewed the country as one of great capabilities, requiring only peace and industry to become a scene of prosperity equal to what prevailed in England. ”

“ James Wilson, Robert Neilson, Francis Hislop, and myself were standing close by them. Francis Hislop with force thrust Robert Neilson upon them; their heads went hard upon one another. But there being so many enemies in the city, fretting and gnashing their teeth, waiting for an occasion to raise a mob, where undoubtedly blood would have been shed; and we having laid down conclusions among ourselves to guard against giving the least occasion to all mobs ”

“ Jacobites pointing to it with mingled howls and jeers as a proof of the enslavement of Scotland—Whigs carried off by irresistible sympathy, and unable to say a word in its defence—attested how much the government did by such acts to retard the desirable amalgamation of the two nations. Under the warm feeling of the moment, a subscription was opened to provide legal defences for the unfortunate Scotsmen, and contributions came literally from all sorts and conditions of men. ”

“ Strange to say, the court, sacrificing rationality to form and statute, overruled the defence: they found the fact that the prisoner having really given the wound whereof the Earl of Strathmore died, to be relevant to infer the pains of law against him. The killing being indisputable, Carnegie would have been condemned if the jury should merely give a verdict on the point of fact. In these circumstances, his counsel, Robert Dundas of Arniston, stood forth to tell the jury that they were entitled to judge on the point of law as well as the point of fact. ”

“ On the other hand, when rulers are truly worthy of a faithful affection on the part of their people—as in our happy age—one never hears the word loyalty mentioned.
All through the reign of the first George and a great part of that of his successor, the newspaper estimate of human character seems to have had but one element—the attachment of the individual to ‘our present happy establishment in church and state.’ At the end of every paragraph announcing a choice of magistrates in Scotland, it is pointedly stated that they are all friends of the Hanover succession. ”

“ It was long before justice in Scotland took any qualm about this free-and-easy way of dealing with accused persons. So late as 1732, two men of humble rank—Henderson, a sedan-carrier, and Hamilton, a street-cadie—suspected of being accessory to the murder of an exciseman, having petitioned for banishment before trial, were sent from the jail in Edinburgh to Glasgow, there to wait a vessel for the plantations. ”

“ Burt, who, as an Englishman, could not have any general relish for a residence in the Scotland of that day, owns it to be one of the redeeming circumstances attending life in our northern region, that there was an abundance of ‘wholesome and agreeable drink’ in the form of French claret, which he found in every public-house of any note, ‘except in the heart of the Highlands, and sometimes even there.’ For what he here tells us, there is certainly abundance of support in the traditions of the country. ”

“ To return to personal matters connected with the speculative baronet of Stanhope—the beauty, accomplishments, and moral graces of Lady Murray made it the more unfortunate that she should have been united to one who, with whatever merits, was of too unsteady nature to have ever made any woman happy. It is alleged that, on the second day of their wedded life, a ferocious and unsatisfiable jealousy took possession of his mind, in consequence of seeing his young wife dancing with a friend of his own named Hamilton. He could not dispossess himself of the idea that she loved another better than him. ”

“ There was Ensign Fleming of a Scots regiment in the Dutch service (son of Sir James Fleming, late provost of Edinburgh) ; there were Thomas Burnet, one of the guards; and John, son of the late George Galbraith, merchant. The ten o’clock bell had rung, to warn all good citizens home. The three bacchanals were enjoying their frolic in the decent Lawnmarket, where there was no light but what might come from the windows of the neighbouring houses; when suddenly there approaches a sedan-chair, attended by one or two footmen, one of them carrying a lantern. ”