Statistical Account of Scotland

“ We must advert to a peculiarity of our Scottish countrymen, which can be set down only on the credit side of their character—their sympathy with each other when they meet as wanderers in foreign countries. Scotland is just a small enough country to cause a certain unity of feeling amongst the people. Wherever they are, they feel that Scotsmen should stand, as their proverb has it, shoulder to shoulder. ”

“ The young lawyer was, indeed, unwittingly preparing for his mission to paint Scottish scenery so vividly, and Scottish character so charmingly, that he may almost be said to have created a new country which succeeding generations delight to visit. No man was ever a greater benefactor to Scotland, whose glories and beauties he was the first to reveal, showing how the most thrifty, practical, and parsimonious people may be at the same time the most poetic. ”

“ The Scotch people are not high livers. Whatever cannot be made out of oats and mutton is too high-priced for the ordinary citizen. The farm-house is generally divided by a solid wall, the family on one side and the cows and sheep on the other. The people of Scotland always [218] have been poor, and they are not ashamed of it ”

“ In 1072 William the Conqueror compelled the Scottish King to acknowledge him as Overlord, and eventually so many Norman nobles established themselves in Scotland that they constituted the chief landed aristocracy of the country. The modern Scottish nation, though it keeps its Celtic name (Scotland) , is made up in great measure of inhabitants of English descent, the pure Scotch being confined mostly to the Highlands, and ranking in population only as about one to three of the former. ”

“ It belongs to the character and antecedents of Scotsmen that the attribute of national independence should take so high a place among the objects of human effort and desire. It was because Scotland settled for all time, six hundred years ago, her place as an independent State that she proved herself capable of begetting men like John Knox, Robert Burns and Walter Scott. It is because the vigor of the Scottish race and the adaptiveness of the Scottish genius remain to-day unimpaired, that the lustre of Scottish-names shone so brilliantly during the World War. ”

“ The population of Scotland is about a ninth of that of the United Kingdom. The Scot is well educated. He has less loose cash than his brother John Bull, and consequently prefers the sweets of office to the costly incense of the hustings and the senate. ”

“ The affairs of Scotland will always occupy an honourable and conspicuous place in the grand drama of national development which makes up the history of the British Empire. It has been the destiny of the Scottish people to influence the general fortunes of England in a larger degree, and more permanently, than could have been expected from their mere numbers, or their position in the north of our island. In the years which succeeded the Norman Conquest, Scotland was, in some measure, a place of refuge for the English name from foreign oppression ”

“ His colleagues, on the one hand, made Scotland entirely over to him; and he, on the other, contracted to keep Scotland quiet for them, and to give them the full use of the united Scottish influence in Parliament. His means, as regarded his countrymen, were very efficient. They consisted, apart from the mere power of his own tact and talent, in the uncontrolled use of patronage. The population of Scotland at that time did not exceed a million and a half,—a population in which, according to the ordinary calculation, there could not be more than about three hundred and fifty thousand adult males. ”

“ The marriage register is also unavailable to statistical purposes, by reason of the practice of double enrolment—in the parish of each party. In many parishes no record of burials exists: in others, those of paupers are omitted. In short, there is scarcely a country in Europe that does not, by proper arrangements, furnish better information on these important points; and no industry of individuals can remedy that defect. It is therefore among the postulates of a work like this, for Scotland, that its vital statistics should be imperfect. ”

“ How few of us can realise at the first blush what a thousand millions represents!
While the average number of letters to each person in the United Kingdom in 1875 was thirty-one, it was as high as thirty-five in England and Wales, and as low as thirteen in Ireland. Scotland occupies the happy medium between the two, shewing an average exactly double that of Ireland, and about twenty-five per cent. ”

“ The idea that Scottish Home Rule is at variance with Imperial tendencies and requirements is, in fact, an erroneous and short-sighted one, while the contrary opinion is supported by the recollection of the great part Scotland has played in Imperial affairs in the past—and cannot, assuredly, continue to play if its [64] population is to be decimated, its industries ruined, and its countryside depopulated and thrown out of cultivation. Yet the latter is the effect of the neglect of Scottish affairs which is the settled—and natural—policy of the overwhelmingly English House of Commons. ”

“ Nothing can get published that attempts to relate facts and figures in regard to Scottish subjects to each other, and thus, to a national policy of any kind. There is not a single paper that dare publish a series of articles dealing thoroughly and systematically either with the case for Scottish Home Rule or with any of the major social or economic problems of Scotland. ”

“ From the steeple of Glasgow Cathedral Wesley surveys the country.
“A more fruitful and better cultivated plain is scarce to be seen in England. Indeed nothing is wanted but more trade (which would naturally bring more people) to make a great part of Scotland in no way inferior to the best counties in England.” ”

“ Now, though England growls, and Ireland brawls and fights, neither of them is perhaps so degraded in its political system as Scotland. The great body of the Scottish people may indeed be [168] said to have no political rights at all; and the members that are sent to the House of Commons as the representatives of Scotland, may just as properly be considered the representatives of Bengal or Barbadoes, with which they have often fully as much connexion, and in the welfare of which they are fully as much interested. ”

“ And thus Scotland, instead of being one of the idlest and most backward countries in Europe, has, within the compass of little more than a lifetime, issued in one of the most active, contented, and prosperous,—exercising an amount of influence upon the literature, science, political economy, and industry of modern times, out of all proportion to the natural resources of its soil or the amount of its population. ”

“ They have produced here a work, which, as a collection of parochial statistics, stands alone, without either rival or resemblance in any other country, representing the state of Scotland, at the period to which it refers, in all its aspects, and so affording the means of a definite comparison between the past and the present, such as, in all cases, it is at once natural and profitable to make. ”

“ Apply the double test of population and revenue, and you will find that Ireland is upon an equality in point of representation with England, but that Scotland is not; and no reason has been, or can be, assigned for this anomaly. The quota for Scotland was fixed by the Act of Union at 45 members. It was increased by the Reform Act of 1832 to 53, but the number is still insufficient. Lord John Russell proposes, out of the 66 disfranchised seats, to give three to Scotland, but he has assigned no reason for doing so. The people of Scotland are not in the position of men supplicating for a boon. ”

“ The old Gaelic institutions and manners were modified, and the power of the clan chieftain was broken. With the last struggle of the exiled Stuart party, which ended in defeat at Culloden, began a new era for Scotland. To the old reign of lawlessness and disorder succeeded measures that were wisely coercive, and which finally secured a unity of Scottish interests, and greatly augmented prosperity in the entire kingdom.
In August, 1502, James IV. of Scotland married Princess Margaret Tudor, sister of Henry VIII. of England. ”

“ The correspondence of the old Scottish families is generally far more interesting than that of English houses of the same rank. Since the civil wars of the seventeenth century, England may be said to have been internally undisturbed, and no private papers contain matters of state, save those of the great families whose ancestors have been high in office. But in Scotland, the various outbreaks, and the unceasing Jacobite intrigues, made almost all the country gentlemen statesmen—made too many of them state offenders. ”

“ Scotland had but little of the constitutional evolution so conspicuous in the history of England. The reason is that while the English kings, with their fiefs and wars in France, had constantly to be asking their parliaments for money, and while Parliament first exacted the redress of grievances, in Scotland the king was expected “to live of his own” on the revenue of crown-lands, rents, feudal aids, fines exacted in Courts of Law, and duties on merchandise. ”

“ Though the English system was sometimes used, it has never obtained to any great extent in Scotland, the practice here being generally to difference by means of a bordure, in which way many more generations are capable of being distinguished than is possible by the English method. The weak point of the Scottish system is that, whilst the general idea is good, there is no definite rule whereby it can be carried out on unchanging lines; much is left to the discretion of the authorities. ”

“ If the Scottish contribution were equitably applied, many millions a year would become available for Scottish commercial and industrial developments, and not only could the flow of Scottish emigration overseas be arrested, but a stream back to Scotland would speedily set in if Scotland could offer its exiled people anything like the conditions they are obtaining in the colonies. ”

“ It is not less unquestionable that the consequence of this Banking system, as conducted in Scotland, has been attended with the greatest advantage to the country. The facility which it has afforded to the industrious and enterprising agriculturalist or manufacturer, as well as to the trustees of the public in executing national works, has converted Scotland from a poor, miserable, and barren country, into one, where, if nature has done less, art and industry have done more, than in perhaps any country in Europe, England herself not excepted. ”

“ But, granting that poverty were really matter of reproach, it cannot be justly imputed to Scotland. No country is poor that can supply its inhabitants with the necessaries of life, and even afford articles for exportation. Scotland is rich in natural advantages: it produces every species of provision in abundance, vast herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, with a great number of horses ”

“ The inhabitants are a tall, barb-wiry, music-loving, pious and joke-fearing race, fond of loud plaids and still Lauder songs.
Their tall spare frames have given rise to the term Bony (or Bonny) Scotland, supposed by some to be derived from “Bonnet,” the national headgear.
[Pg 91] The principal products of Scotland are Porridge, Parsons and Pilbrochs.
The inhabitants of Scotland are the most Moral and Patriotic people in the World, and their army is second to none in bravery and won the World War.
[Pg 92]
CHAPTER XXV IRELAND
“The apparel oft proclaims the man.”—Hamlet. ”

“ Scotland is the country above all others that I have seen, in which a man of imagination may carve out his own pleasures. There are so many inhabited solitudes, and the employments of the people are so immediately connected with the places where you find them, and their dresses so simple, so much alike, yet, from their being folding garments, admitting of an endless variety, and falling often so gracefully.
After some time we descended towards a broad vale, [Pg 185] passed one farm-house, sheltered by fir trees, with a burn close to it; children playing, linen bleaching. ”

“ For several years, there was little to be observed regarding Scotland, but that the non-conformity of its people in several of the more populous provinces provoked an incessant show of severities on the part of the government. During this time, literature and science remained wholly uncultivated; no department of industry shewed any decided tendency to advance. The energies of the nation were arrested by a frightful contention, most degrading to the object for which men were contending, and than which nothing could have been more hostile to the spirit of religion simple and undefiled. ”

“ A hundred and fifty years ago England was one of the best governed and most prosperous countries in the world: Scotland was perhaps the rudest and poorest country that could lay any claim to civilisation. The name of Scotchman was then uttered in this part of the island with contempt. The ablest Scotch statesmen contemplated the degraded state of their poorer countrymen with a feeling approaching to despair. ”

“ The rolls of honor of many countries and many climes bear their names; there is no field of distinction whether it be of thought or of action that has not witnessed their triumphs. That Scotland has yielded more than her share of the men who have gone forth to the conquest of the world is largely due to the fact that it was part of her discipline that men must first conquer themselves. The weakest of them felt that restraining influence, and the striving after the Scottish ideal, however feeble, has been a protection against sinking into utter baseness. ”