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A CENTUKY OF SCOTTISH HISTORY
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A CENTURY
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SCOTTISH HISTOKY
FROM THE DAYS BEFORE THE '45
TO THOSE WITHIN LIVINO MEMORY
BY
Sm HENRY CRAIK
K.C.B., M.A. (OxoN.), Hon. LL.D. (Glasgow)
VOL. II.
^
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS . ' V-w^lj^
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MOM I
& p.! »s
CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
CHAPTER XIII.
SOCIAL AND ECOjrOMIC CHANGES.
The new task before the country
Edinburgh improvements .
The Forth and Clyde Canal
Development of roads
Scottish banking
Competition amongst the banks .
Abuse of the system .
The Ayr Bank and its failure
Change in the bankruptcy law .
Conditions of labour .
Combinations of labourers .
Poor relief .....
Assessment proposed in Edinburgh
The law of Entail
Its modification ....
PAGE
1
Contrasts between different parts
of Scotland .
20
The Highlands .
22
Efforts at improvement in the
Highlands
23
Methods of agriculture
24
Growth of wealth
27
Agricultural projectors
29
Literary activity
30
The romantic spirit .
35
The Douglas Case
36
Popular excitement roused
by it
37
Pennant's account
38
Johnson's journey
39
CHAPTER XIV.
FROM 1770 TO 175
Importance of this decade .
42
Self-government and police
55
Closer bond between England and
Emigration
57
Scotland
43
Scottish trade depressed .
58
This tendency checked
44
Henry Dundas becomes Lore
English prejudices .
46
Advocate
59
Effect of these in binding Scot-
Parliamentary reform mooted
60
land together.
49
Dundas's sympathies .
60
Absence of party feeling at this
The basis of his power
61
time .....
50
His friends
62
Foundations of Scottish Toryism
52
Lockhart of Covington
63
Pressure of hard times
53
Macqueen of Braxfield
64
The Meal Mobs ....
53
Further extension of Edinburgh
65
VI
CONTENTS.
Emancipation of the colliers
Local struggles ...
Sliding-scale of prices for impor
tation . . . . ,
Development of party spirit
The Volunteers .
Question of Catholic disabilities
Opposition to their repeal .
Anti-Cathohc riots
The project abandoned
CHAPTEE XV
FROM 1780 TO 1784.
Continuance of anti-Catholic feel
ing.
Injury to the Government .
Lord North and the Opposition
Weight of the Ministerial party
in Scotland
Scottish sense of nationality
Concentration of life in the Capital
Indifference to English politics
Close of the American "War .
The Government blamed in Scot
land as in England .
Sir John Sinclair
The Rockingham Ministry .
The Shelburne Ministry
Coalition between Fox and North
The Peace of 1783
Continuance of the power
Dundas ....
Henry Erskine's short tenure of
78
92
The Ministry of Pitt . . .92
Alliance between Pitt and Dundas 92
The Dissolution of 1784 . . 93
Secret of Dundas's influence . 94
His family 95
His character . . . .98
His love of Scotland . . ,100
His unquestioned supremacy . 1 02
Extent of Scottish sympathy with
the Whigs . . . .104
Shaken by the coalition between
Fox and North . . .105
Acceptance of ^Pitt's predomi-
nance 106
Influence of the Moderates . . 106
Their aims in the Church . . 110
Healing old feuds . . .111
Toleration to the Episcopal Church 113
The Militia dispute again . . 114
Changes in Scottish life . .116
Gathering storms . . .119
CHAPTER XVI.
THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
Advancing prosperity
Religious opinions
Literary outburst
Projects of reform
Burgh administration
Its abuses .
A weapon in the hands of party
Checked by fear of revolution
The Court of Session attacked ,
Opposition to Church patronage ,
The charges against Warren Hast
inga ....
Scottish view of them
120
122
123
125
125
126
127
128
129
131
131
133
Illness of George III. . . .134
Scottish loyalty to the king . 135
The French Revolution . .135
The Tory and Whig parties in
Scotland . . . .136
Extent of the revolutionary move-
ment in Scotland . . . 138
The Friends of the People . .140
Reaction and alarm . . .141
Agitation for reform . . . 142
Proclamation against seditious
meetings .... 144
Prosecutions . . . .145
CONTENTS.
VU
Action of the Court of Session
Scottish judicial bench
Sedition trials .
Thomas Muir
Braxfield as judge
Trial of Thomas Fyshe Palmer
Of William Skir%'ing ,
Of Margarot and Gerald ,
Protests in Parliament
The Habeas Corpus Act suspended
Trial of Watt and Downie .
146
147
149
149
153
155
155
156
157
158
159
Poverty and discontent . .160
The Younger Whigs . . .161
Policy of repression . . .162
Henry Erskiue . . . .163
Deposed from the Deanship of
Faculty 164
War between the Tories and the
Whigs 165
Riots and repression . . .166
Financial pressure . . .167
CHAPTEE XVII.
THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
Its general features .
169
His discursiveness
194
Its academic influence
170
Adam Smith ....
196
Its field of operation .
171
His political economy .
198
The Scottish University system
172
Flaws in his system .
200
Its changes
173
Thomas Reid ....
203
The professors .
174
His works and teaching
205
Francis Hutcheson
175
Contrast with his contemporaries
206
His life in Ireland
176
His central principle .
208
His system
178
Adam Ferguson ....
210
His work in Glasgow .
179
Appointment as professor .
213
His Theory of a Moral Sense
181
His ethical teaching .
214
His personal character and in
His personality ....
216
fluence ....
183
Beattie's Essay on Truth .
218
Professor John Stevenson .
184
Dugald Stewart ....
220
David Hume
186
His wide influence
223
His treatise on ' Human Nature
' 188
His connection with the Whigs .
224
Reception of his work . .
190
End of the Scottish School .
226
Henry Home
192
Its limitations and its strength .
227
CHAPTER XVIII.
HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
The deposition of Erskine from
the Deanship .
New political combinations
Shifting of population
Strength of the older traditions
Edinburgh as their centre .
Life at the Capital
Its aspect to strangers
Shelley and Hogg in Edinburgh
230
231
232
233
233
234
236
237
Struggle between the Old and the
New ....
Erskine's family .
His personal character
Qualifications as a party leader
Position at the Bar .
Strange clients .
Increasing bitterness of party
The younger AMiigs .
240
241
243
245
246
247
248
Vlll
Francis Jeffrey .
The Tories .
Chances of reform
An opportunity missed
The ' Edinburgh Review '
Its political partisanship
' Blackwood's Magazine '
Pitt's resignation
CONTENTS.
. 250
His return to power .
264
253
Death
264
255
Impeachment of Lord Melville
265
255
His acquittal . . . .
266
258
The Ministry of All the Talents .
267
260
Henry Erskine in Parliament
267
263
Tories in power again .
268
264
Reforms in Court of Session
269
CHAPTER XIX.
THE OLDER TORYISM AND ITS FAILURE.
The battle of Waterloo
Its different effects
Strength of Tory feeling
Increasing discontent .
Social changes .
Poverty and disaffection
Lord Liverpool's Premiership
Its different phases
Threatenings in Scotland .
Trials of Maclaren and Baird
The prosecution and the defence
271
Trial of Neil Douglas .
288
. 272
Of M'Kinlay ....
289
. 273
Collapse of the prosecution .
290
. 275
Damage to the Government
291
. 276
Secret societies ....
293
. 278
The Radical war ...
294
. 280
Meetings to denounce the Govern-
. 281
ment .....
297
. 282
Truculence of the press
298
. 284
Its evil consequences .
300
e 286
Attacks on the Lord Advocate .
301
CHAPTEE XX.
LARGER AIMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
The Castlereagh influence dis
appears . . . . ,
New spirit in the Government
Peel and Canning
Progress of reform
Changes in the Court of Session
Canning Prime Minister
The narrower phase of the party
fight ....
Wider movements in the nation
Religious revival
Andrew Thomson
Thomas Chalmers
His early ambitions .
His passing attachment to the
Moderates
His innate Conservatism
304
305
306
307
307
309
310
313
313
314
315
316
318
319
Changes over to the Evangelicals 320
Qualities of his eloquence . . 321
His work in connection with Poor
Relief 322
Phases of Poor Relief in Scotland 323
His ideal Church . . . 325
Poor relief in St John's parish,
Glasgow 323
Success of his efforts . . . 330
Peculiarity of his position . . 331
His loyalty . . . .332
His respect for Church establish-
ments ..... 333
Opposition to pluralities . .334
Revival of the Evangelical party . 337
The Catholic Relief Bill . . 338
CONTENTS.
IX
CHAPTER XXL
TO 1834.
More enlightened statesmanship
Eemains of the older Toryism
Scott's opinions .
His defence of Scottish banking
His appeal to national instincts
His suspicion of the "Whigs .
Dislike of compromise with reform
Influence of the new spirit in the
Church
Decay of the Moderates
Chalmers as Evangelical leader .
Strength of the religious revival .
Change in the Whig party .
Their alliance with the Evangeli-
cal party ....
Chalmers drifting from the Con-
servatives ....
Courted by the Whigs
340
341
341
342
345
345
347
348
350
351
353
355
357
358
The Non-Intrusion controversy .
Patronage as exercised in the
past
Relations between ecclesiastical
and civil politics .
Fall of the Tory Ministry .
Jeffrey as Lord Advocate .
The Reform Bills
Parliamentary reform accom-
pUshed .....
The new Scottish Administration
Burgh reform ....
Renewal of the Patronage struggle
The Veto Act ....
Opposition to the Annuity Tax .
Defence by Chalmers .
His confidence in political help
undermined ....
359
361
365
367
369
370
371
373
375
377
CHAPTEE XXIL
THE DISRUPTION.
The past of the Scottish Church
The objects of the Patronage Act
of 1711 ....
Its results ....
Growing discontent against it
The place of Chalmers in the
struggle ....
His dislike of the "WTiigs
His London lectures on Church
Establishments
His relations to the Low Church
Anglicans
Legality of the Veto Act tested
The Church and the civil courts
at issue ....
Temporising of the Government
New cases of friction .
The Presbytery of Strathbogie
Bold statement of the Church's
claim ....
The Court of Session defied
Negotiations with the Government
381
382
383
387
392
393
394
395
399
401
Their failure ....
402
The issues become more clear
403
The Constitutional party in the
Church
404
Disruption contemplated .
407
Measures in advance .
407
The Claim of Right .
409
The plan of campaign
411
Convocation at Edinburgh .
411
Firmness of the Tory Govern-
ment .....
412
The last united Assembly of the
Church
413
The exodus ....
415
The prospect for the Church
417
Martyrs on both sides
419
Renunciation of Voluntaryism by
the new Church
420
The attitude of Chalmers .
421
Later attempts at conciliation .
422
The Free Church accepts the
Education Grants .
424
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXIII.
CONCLUSION.
Significance of the ecclesiastical
Development of wealth
435
struggle .....
425
Railways ....
436
Stubbornness of the new political
Coal and iron industries
437
opinions .....
425
Woollen manufactures
438
Mistakes of the Whigs
427
Disappearance of older types
439
Their weakness in general politics
428
The epoch of the middle class
441
Strength of their hold on the
Scottish national education
443
middle class ....
429
The parish school
444
Close alliance with the Free
The Act of 1803 .
445
Church
430
Imperial grants .
447
The Poor Law ....
431
Destitution of the Highlands
448
Chalmers's hopes disappointed .
432
The Act of 1861 .
449
Further social changes
433
The Act of 1872 .
449
The law of Entail further modified
433
Cost of the educational system
450
Growth of the commercial class .
434
Recapitulation .
451
Index
453
A CENTURY OF SCOTTISH HISTORY.
CHAPTER XIIL
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
It would be a complete mistake to fancy that Scot-
land during these years was occupied exclusively
with disputes as to ecclesiastical government, or even
with arranging the terms on which she was to live
with that partner whose predominance was sometimes
asserted with brutal and irritating bluntness. On the
contrary, she was in tlie throes of a very acute period
of economical transition, with the usual disturbances
that such a transition brings in its wake. With no
lack of energy, she was striving to cope with a new
state of matters in her own borders. What is most
characteristic of the nation in these years is the
growing prevalence of a public spirit, interested in
the development of her institutions, not unwilling to
remove abuses, and prepared generously to extend the
benefits of her rapidly increasing prosperity to those
regions which but a few years before had been
beyond the range of her law and her police.
To begin with the capital, we have already alluded
VOL. IL A
^ SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
to the scheme for extending her boundaries beyond
the narrow ridge which ran between Holyrood and
the Castle. The scheme had long been afoot.
Even so early as the beginning of the century it
had been a favourite object with the Earl of Mar,
whose influence ended with the ill-fated attempt of
1715. Since then it had been revived. New powers,
which encountered much opposition from those whose
more precise notions of the rights of proprietor-
ship were shocked by them, were given to the autho-
rities of the city for the prosecution of the work; and
even powers of compulsory purchase, which seemed
to be a violent and socialistic innovation, had been
obtained. The best engineering skill which could be
secured was employed upon the task ; but alas ! in
the first instance, with dismal failure. Possibly the
business arrangements of the unreformed Corporation
(washed down as these always were by copious liba-
tions) were not exactly of a kind to secure the most
sound and honest workmanship. The foundations of
the structure w^ere scamped. Scarcely had the first
span of the bridge been constructed before the piers
were found to be insecure ; and new expenses, which
then seemed enormous, but now-a-days would seem
trifling to a petty provincial town, had to be faced.
But there was enough of public spirit to push the
scheme ; and Edinburgh began to develop from the
huddled crowd of dwellings which had been her
limit for centuries, into a spacious, luxurious, and
dignified modern city. She lost, indeed, some of her
old picturesqueness, and the miserable taste of the day
threw away a splendid opportunity in rectangular
streets of a monotonous architecture, which banished
all the diversity and beauty that might have been
FORTH AND CLYDE CANAL. 3
gained by preserving some of the trees which were
ruthlessly destroyed. But the extension of the city
did at least provide for decent sanitation, and for a
life in which some attention was paid to the embel-
lishments of modern civilisation.
Another project of material improvement, more
extended in its range, was that of a navigable canal
from the Forth to the Clyde. When first mooted, this
seemed a chimerical design ; and to increase the diffi-
culties of the promoters divergent views as -to its size
and direction soon appeared. Some proposed a small
canal which should join the Forth at Carron, and lead
direct to Glasgow, Its object was to open a ready
access from the eastern seaboard to the Glasgow
market, and the promoters were chiefly Glasgow
merchants. The estimated cost was £40,000. Over a
sum which would scarcely cover the transactions of a
day in a hundred merchants' offices in Glasgow at our
own time, the whole of the west of Scotland was
keenly excited. The other scheme, for a much larger
canal, which would be navigable for sea-going vessels,
and was to join the Clyde, not at Glasgow, but at
Dumbarton, was chiefly promoted by the Board of
Manufactures. This scheme, it was argued, was alone
worthy of Scotland ; but the public mind was staggered
at the estimated cost, which was no less than £80,000 !
The bolder spirits were not daunted by this cost, great
as it might seem. If the project were to be carried out,
let it be done once for all on a scale that would satisfy
posterity. Why should Glasgow only, and not all
Scotland, benefit? With equal energy it was main-
tained on the other side that Glasgow's commercial
interests were something to be weighed even against
the amenities of Edinburgh. A practical and possible
4 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
scheme should be proceeded with, even although the
fashionable world of Edinburgh should not have a
broad and magnificent canal upon whose banks they
might construct an ornamental promenade. To indulge
vain hopes of a scheme which involved impossible ex-
penditure would only be to postpone indefinitely a
feasible project of high commercial promise. The
matter came to be a struggle between Edinburgh and
Glasgow, and abundant floods of rhetoric, of argument,
and of sarcasm were poured forth on either side. If it
were only as an early symptom of the growing jealousy
between the East and the West the dispute would be of
interest. Eventually a compromise vs^as arranged. The
large canal was undertaken, and although it was to
debouch at Dumbarton, a branch canal was to open an
easy access to Glasgow. The estimate for this was
£100,000; but so far did the resources of Scotland
even then exceed her own calculations, that a larger
ultimate cost was found to be no crushing burden.
The whole, story illustrates how the commercial im-
portance of the country was' then passing through the
day of smdl things. It is -only such incidents that
enable us to realise the difference that a century has
made.
Other schemes were on foot for increasing the
facilities for transit. Up to the beginning of last
century roads were few and ill constructed. Since the
rebellions of 1715 and 1745 Government had been busy
in constructing the great military roads that were to
open up the Highlands. Partly from Jacobite dis-
affection, which saw in these roads a strategic movement
fatal to their hopes, and partly, also, from simple
obstinate attachment to old habits, the districts chiefly
affected viewed these efforts with disgust. But their
SCOTTISH BANKING. 5
advantages forced themselves on attention, and the
opposition died away. Every country now 'saw the
urgent need of decent roads, but the only method by
which this could be secured was the clumsy one of
exacting six days of statutory labour due annually
from every tenant The burden was heavy : it was
unequal : and it produced poor results. The bolder
spirits were now advocating a road assessment, and
their proposal was making way.
Besides material improvements, the time was also
marked by commercial activity, and by the study of
the conditions under which that was possible. No
branch of this was more important than the banking
system. Its history in Scotland is so peculiar that it
merits some notice even in a general history of the
country. It shows the national characteristics in their
most pronounced form.
It is curious that the first legislative recognition of
banking is almost synchronous in England and in
Scotland. It was in 1694 that the Bank of England
was established: the Act of the Scots Parliament
establishing the Bank of Scotland was passed in 1695.
Oddly enough, the chief founder of the Bank of
England was William Paterson, a Scotsman who was
the prime mover in the ill-fated Darien scheme: the
foremost in forming the constitution of the Bank of
Scotland was one Holland, an English merchant. But
after the first start was given each nation assumed and
maintained the exclusive management of its own
concern.
Except for almost simultaneous origin, the two
schemes were as different as they well could be. The
wealth of England was already great. The financiers
of London could make their own terms with Govern-
b SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
ment, whose exigencies they met, and from whom they
obtained in return a monopoly which shaped the future
system of English banking, and to which critics of that
system ascribe all its artificial restrictions, involving as
they did the necessity for the constant intervention of
the Legislature. In Scotland the system started as it
remained, with few exceptions, for a century and a half,
almost entirely unrestricted. The Act of 1695 autho-
rised the formation of the Bank of Scotland and gave
to it a monopoly ; but that monopoly was not made
perpetual, as it subsequently became in England. It
was to endure only for twenty-one years. Such limited
monopoly was absolutely necessary to secure any
chance of success ; it was fortunate that it did not last
long enough to prevent the free competition which
enabled the tender seedling of Scottish financial effort
to thrive in a sterile soil.
Its nominal capital was only £1,200,000 Scots, or
£100,000 sterling ; and even of this moderate amount
only £10,000 was paid up, and for several years was
amply sufficient to cover the operations. But its power
was enormously extended by what became one of its
chief functions — the issue of paper money. The circu-
lating medium of Scotland was at that time, as we have
seen, something like £600,000 or £800,000 in nominal
value, but was seriously depreciated. With such defi-
cient machinery growth in commerce was impossible,
and the issue of notes gave to it a much needed exten-
sion. As was natural when the laws upon which a paper
circulation must be based were little understood, the
experiment was hazardous, and difficulties arose even so
early as 1704. But Scotland was a small nation, where
the credit and the good sense of prominent citizens were
readily known and appreciated. The Bank for a time
BANK OF SCOTLAND. /
was obliged to suspend its money payments. But some
of the leading citizens examined its financial state and
pronounced it sound ; and such a certificate was amply
sufficient to restore public confidence. The infant
enterprise resumed its course strengthened by the
lesson which it had received as to the necessity of a
bullion reserve. Its success was great, and equally
marked was the benefit it brought to a commerce which
was only then making its first slow and faltering steps
in advance. The profits of the shareholders were large,
amounting on an average of nine-and-twenty years to
17 per cent. ; but such profits naturally led to competi-
tion, and fortunately for Scotland that competition was
not prevented by monopoly, as in England. By an Act
of 1708 the Bank of England had been effectually
secured against any rival by the prohibition of any
other company of more than six persons for the purpose
of carrying on -the business of banking. Joint-stock
enterprise was thus shut out from the field, and the
only rivals which the Government Bank had thus to
meet were the private banks, which could ofi"er only a
feeble and ineffectual opposition. Not so in Scotland.
There the Bank of Scotland had only its own energies
to trust to, and, unfortunately for itself, it became in-
volved in suspicion of Jacobite leanings — proclivities
hardly suitable to the unromantic conditions of com-
mercial success — and incurred the disfavour of the
Hanoverian Government. Competitors were ready to
share its gains, and the proprietors of the Equivalent
Stock — Government securities by means of which the
payment of a Scottish indemnity for the financial con-
sequences of the Union was guaranteed — obtained in
1 727 a charter authorising them to carry on the business
of. banking under the name of the Eoyal Bank of Scot-
8 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
land. But it must be noticed that although their
charter was useful as an authority, it did not confer the
power of issuing notes, but only recognised what was
an unrestricted right. The charter was a sign of Govern-
ment patronage, but it was nothing more. The paid-
up capital of the new enterprise was only £22,000.
The ensuing year saw a fierce warfare between the
two companies, in which each endeavoured to destroy
the credit of its rival. Each bought up as far as it
could the paper money of the other, and endeavoured
to force it to suspension of payment by sudden
presentation of the notes. To protect themselves, the
pernicious device of an optional clause was introduced,
permitting the notes to be payable on demand, or, with
a small interest, six months after presentation. It was
a necessity for self-preservation, but it eventually forced
on the first legislative restriction of banking powers in
Scotland. For the present, however, it did not destroy
the system. Gradually the folly of an internecine
warfare was recognised. Terms were arranged between
the rivals, and each was content to tolerate the exist-
ence of the other. Meanwhile their rivalry enormously
increased the opportunities for commercial enterprise
in Scotland, by providing it with the necessary instru-
ments of a currency, which the poverty of the nation
would otherwise have rendered impossible, and by
permitting the system of cash credits (first adopted in
1729), by means of which brain and energy unprovided
with capital were enabled to devote themselves to
the improvement of the country, and to develop new
openings for trade.
Amidst storm and stress, in spite of unpropitious
circumstances, and amidst the disturbing influences of
the rebellion of 1745, the system still went on and
MULTIPLICATION OF BANKS. ' 9
prospered, and the field of banking enterprise was
shared freely by many private banks, started by men
whose recognised credit in the eyes of their countrymen
secured the necessary confidence. After the rebellion
a new and important rival came into the field in the
shape of the British Linen Company, originally formed
for the encouragement of the linen industry, but
now embracing banking within the range of its opera-
tions. The impulse towards improvement of the
country and the development of commerce was im-
mensely stimulated. The slow and feeble steps by
which former advances had been made were exchanged
for bold and rapid strides. Banking increased by the
very efforts for which it gave facilities, and its enterprise
took more dubious shapes. It seemed as if there
could be no bounds to the increase of wealth by the
simple expedient of increasing the paper circulation,
and making it a more convenient medium. Notes
for trifling amounts — frequently for a shilling — were
issued, and the optional clauses took a dangerous and
pernicious form. They were often made payable in kind
as well as in specie, and the issuer pledged himself
only to pay " in money or in drink." The currency
was thus absolutely debased ; and it was no exaggera-
tion which satirised the absurdity by the issue in
Glasgow of a note of the Bank of Wasps, with the
motto " We swarm," promising to pay on demand " one
penny sterling, or, at the option of the Directors, three
ballads, six days after demand ! "
The freedom which had distinguished Scottish bank-
ing, and which had saved it from the galling fetters of
monopoly, had been of immense advantage. It had
given enormous facilities to a country whose poverty
prevented it from reaping the benefit of its energy.
10 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
The multiplicity of private banks, great as it was, had
not — thanks to the pressure of public opinion and to
the national character — led to the dangers which might
have been expected. But now it was evident that it
had been abused, and that some protection against
the abuse was absolutely necessary, unless the system
of credit was to break down. The larger banks now
pressed for some check upon the scandals which had
grown up; and in 1765 the Lord-Advocate Miller
was induced to bring in a Bill dealing with the subject.
By this any optional clause, either as regards time
or mode of payment, upon paper money was pro-
hibited, and no notes were to be issued for less than
£1 sterling.
But while this checked the most glaring evils
which were threatened from the abuse of the system,
it did not secure the country against the dangers
involved in the free banking system. The nation
was becoming more and more eager in the race
for wealth, and it was not unreasonably convinced
that great opportunities lay before it. Manufactures
were more actively carried on. New openings for
commerce were offered by our successful wars. Im-
proved agriculture was a favourite occupation, and
seemed likely to redouble the value of the soil.
Luxury in living had enormously increased, and the
extension of the Scottish metropolis had given rise,
with more ample accommodation, to a style of living
hitherto unknown. It might well seem that the only
requirement was capital, or what might seem to be
the same thing as capital, in a circulating medium
easily procured. The opportunity for rash and specu-
lative banking was only too tempting.
In these circumstances a new banking enterprise
AYR COMPANY. 11
was undertaken, ofiering facilities hitherto unkno%Yn,
A bank was opened at Ayr by a company known
as Douglas, Heron & Co. in 1769. It had a large
number of subscribers, including some of the greatest
names of Scotland, whose credit was based upon vast
landed estates. Its nominal capital was £150,000;
but that by no means represented the extent of its
operations, which altogether dwarfed the scanty begin-
nings, and cautious advances of the older banks. It
offered accommodation on the most easy terms, and it
seemed likely to usher in a new era for the smaller
landowner, who lacked the capital for the development
of his land, and for the penniless adventurer who
thought that his brains, if supported by a nominal
credit, could open to him a commercial Eldorado.
Meanwhile its operations were carried on by an un-
limited supply of paper money, which was produced
without stint. The engine which in cautious hands
had sufficed to raise Scotland from the torpor of poverty
was now, under reckless and misguided impulse, hurry-
ing her over a precipice.
It did not take long to work the inevitable ruin.
In 1772 the crash came. The bills of the bank were
returned, protested, from London, and its credit sank
as quickly as it had risen. Its total liabilities were
£1,250,000 — a sum which, a few years before, it
would have seemed impossible for any Scottish credit
to have raised. The crash produced widespread dis-
tress. Families, whose landed possessions had for
generations given them a high position, were irretriev-
ably ruined. The greater part of Ayrshire changed
hands. But the disaster was not without its good
side. Ruinous as it proved, yet it is satisfactory to
find that the liabilities were eventually — only, it is
12 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
true, after long years of effort — discharged by the share-
holders, and did not fall on the creditors of the bank.
The land changed hands, but the stimulus which even
ill-based capital had given to its improvement had a
lasting effect. It is to the credit of the Scottish
banking system that all the larger and older banks,
and many of the sounder private banks, weathered
the storm with no loss of stability. The national
system had grown with the growth of the country,
and had been developed by the energy and steadiness
of the national character. It had the strength of a
national product, and it survived this shock, even
although — save for the Act of 1765 — it had none of
the securities which a restrictive legislation might
have given to it. We shall see later how, on at least
two occasions, it met critical circumstances by methods
of its own, and resisted with indomitable pertinacity
the restrictions, founded upon English principles, which
the British Parliament sought to impose upon it.^
It is important to notice, as an additional sign of
commercial enterprise in Scotland, that in the very
year when the fall of the Ayr bank occurred, there was
an important change in the bankruptcy law of Scot-
land. Hitherto that law had been singularly unjust,
and seemed to be framed with the express purpose
of defrauding certain creditors. These had been
allowed to reckon by priority of arrestment, and every
opportunity had been given for a debtor to make a
fraudulent arrangement with a selected creditor, by
giving him timely notice, and thus enabling him to
secure himself to the prejudice of the rest. The Court
of Session had endeavoured to remedy this to some
* Viz. the restriction of cash i)ayiiients in 1797, and the small-uote scare
ill 1826.
CONDITIONS OF LABOUR. 13
extent by ordering that all arrestments within thirty
days after bankruptcy should be of equal force.
This order of the Court — perhaps of doubtful authority
— Avas now confirmed and extended by Act of Parlia-
ment. Had the amendment of the law not taken
place, it is obvious that no sound system of commercial
credit would have been possible. That it did take
place proves that the nation was alive to the neces-
sities of a new state of economical conditions.
But economical changes do not come about without
producing serious difficulties, and of these Scotland
had her full share. Certain troubles, of which we find
a periodical recrudescence in the larger towns during
these early years of the reign of George III., are
symptomatic of a revolution in the conditions of em-
ployment. Up to a date not very far removed, labour
at a daily or weekly wage had been almost unknown.
Even now, it was very rare in the country districts,
and for agricultural employment was practically non-
existent. For many years yet to come, the domestic
servant in Scotland was a permanent member of the
family, with a practical partnership in all the family
affairs, and exercising that freedom of speech and
action which long familiarity, coupled Avith indubitable
fidelity, necessarily gives. But, at an earlier stage, out-
door labour was almost on the same footing. Each
estate had its workmen, whose position was handed
down from father to son, and who rarely contemplated
a change either of habitation or of master. The
labourer was not, indeed, attached to the soil by law,
but by custom and habit he seldom moved, and formed
a member of a household rather than a hired employee.
Even in towns this state of things had almost been
paralleled up to a recent date. Now it was fast pass-
14 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
iiig away. The old system gave a raciness and an
interest to the earlier phases of Scottish social life
which one parts with regretfully ; but it could not meet
the advancing requirements of trade and manufactures
which were to revolutionise the country during the
next two generations. Again and again in these years
we find ominous symptoms in combinations of labourers
in a particular trade, striking for a rise of wages.
Such combinations were pounced upon by the law, and
met with drastic treatment at the hands of the magis-
trates. Heavy fines and imprisonment were rigorously
dealt out to all who took part in them. They checked
the manufacturing prosperity of the town — which was
interpreted strictly as the commercial prosperity of the
master — and that was enough to procure their con-
demnation. It had not even dawned on the minds of
men that freedom involved the right to dispose of
one's labour for the highest price which legitimate
combination could extort. But we must not forget
that summary discipline in these matters was not
confined to workmen. Only a few years before, the
brewers of Edinburgh had resolved to close their
breweries in consequence of an obnoxious tax. It
was deemed no excessive straining of the law when
the authorities stepped in to force them to carry on
their trade, in order that the lieges might not be
deprived of their beer, whether the manufacture was
carried on at a loss or not ; and strange to say, the
brewers resumed their trade, and yet did not find
themselves entirely ruined. It is one of the advan-
tages of a paternal government that it can generally
distinguish between a fit of sulking and a real financial
difiiculty. The same summary measures were now
dealt out to the workmen, and even an employer who
POOR RELIEF. 15
presumed to grant demands which his fellow-employers
had refused to yield found his generosity dealt with
as a crime and punished by a fine ! It was just as
well that restrictive laws should be courageously
impartial in their operation.
But economical changes, new conditions of labour,
increasing population, and the constant migration
of a thriftless and useless country surplus into the
towns, soon forced to the front another question.
The problem of the support of the poor was one of
the most serious which the next century had to face.
At a later day, we shall find it dividing men of equally
honest convictions, and to whom it is only fair to
ascribe equal benevolence of intention, into two hostile
camps, sundered from one another by radical differ-
ences as to the ethical aspects of the question. At
present the controversy was only at its earliest stage.
In former days the problem of the poor had not been
one of great difficulty in Scotland. The humbler class
were linked to their betters as their domestic depen-
dents, or as members of their clan. Where such bonds
were insufficient, many quaint and kindly usages pre-
vailed which helped the poor to eke out some kind of
existence, and licensed beggary was a common incident
of Scottish life, and lent to it a trait which w^as not
lacking in interest and picturesqueness. Only a hundred
years before, an assessment was made permissive for
each parish by the Legislature ; and where it was
adopted, the funds, eked down by the collections at
the church doors, were administered by the heritors
and kirk-session of the parish. How far assessment
was prevalent over Scotland in 1770 it is impossible
to say with accuracy. When Sinclair's " Statistical
Account" was compiled some twenty years later, it
16 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
prevailed over some two-thirds of the population ;
but the progress in the interval had probably been
large. In 1770 the question of the poor in Edin-
burgh had reached an acute stage. Beggary had
grown to the proportions of an intolerable nuisance.
Crowds of Highlanders, shiftless, ignorant, and dirty,
gathered in the most noisome corners of the old town,
and earned a precarious livelihood by running errands
and doing odd jobs as caddies. The provision of edu-
cation was lamentably insufficient, and the whole
machinery of parish administration was unequal to
the task of dealing with this new swarm of immigrants.
Poorhouses were built W'ith the hope of making it
possible to deal with the aged and helpless poor ; but
the existing resources fell appallingly short of the
necessities. The only means by which they were
supported were the church -door collections; and
church-going was so sure a mark of all who claimed
respectability that this yielded a regular, if insufficient,
revenue. It appears that something like 30s. or £2
might be counted upon as the contribution to the
poor which each adult church-goer would give ; and
the fact that the collection was made in open "plates"
at the church door rendered it no easy matter to elude
the contribution. But it still fell short of the needs ;
and even with the niggard expenditure of £3500 a
year on houses which contained 680 inmates, the
church collections failed to meet it. In such circum-
stances an assessment was proposed under the statute
of 1672.
The proposal aroused in Edinburgh the fiercest
opposition, and the detailed facts that are recorded
give us some interesting particulars as to the valuation
of the capital. If an assessment were imposed, it was
ASSESSMENT IX EDINBURGH. 17
considered certain that the church-door collections
would cease ; charity and rate-paying for the same
object do not naturally go well together. And in that
case, appalling estimates were drawn of the probable
assessment. The total valuation of the old town was
£34,000 : that of the new town (so soon to be the
abode of all the wealthy in Edinburgh) was reckoned at
£3000 only. But to add to the iniquity of the tax,
it was pointed out that houses to the value of more
than £12,000 — or nearly one-third of the whole — were
exempt from taxation as belonging to the "privileged"
class — that is, the senators and various dependants of
the College of Justice. On the remainder a tax of
10 per cent, would yield only £2500 ! It would be
lendered all the more galling because the richest class
would be exempt. The legal aristocracy of Edinburgh
was to be free from an oppressive tax, while at the
same time the old and time-honoured source of income,
which connected the support of the poor with religious
ordinances, and which had all the soothing gratification
of an act of charity, was to be swept away. It is no
wonder that the proposal was rejected. The poor law
expenditure grew apace. Spasmodic efforts were started,
and some attempt was made to board out the children,
and so free them from the degrading associations of
the poorhouse. But even in 1790, when Sinclair's
"Account" was compiled, Edinburgh gave no statistics
of an assessment for the poor. It was at length forced
upon her ; and we shall find, when energetic attempts
were next made to deal with a difficulty of which the
dimensions were constantly growing, that the assess-
ment principle was opposed, not in the interests of the
ratepayers, but in the proud belief that individual and
congregational zeal in the performance af a charitable
VOL. II. B
18 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
duty, were better agents than a legal rate, administered
by paid agents. The struggle will come before us at
a later date.
The economical changes through ^vhich the
country was passing acted equally upon the opposite
scale of society. The system of land tenure was
undergoing a revolution. The landed aristocracy
had always been jealous of their privileges and
tenacious of those conditions of property that safe-
guarded their class. Pride of birth and aristocratic
exclusiveness taught them to guard their position
even by provisions which severely restricted the rights
of the nominal proprietor, and kept him bound to
his paternal domain under conditions which often
involved grinding poverty. The Entail Act of 1685
had limited the proprietor of an entailed estate to
the strictest life ownership. He could not burden
the estate to plant a single tree, to bring the most
barren moor into cultivation, or to carry out the most
necessary improvements. He could not meet the de-
mands of his creditors to the extent of a single penny
beyond his annual rents ; and estates passed under
the strictest settlement from father to son, which
formed nothing but a claimiosa hcereditas, but which
nevertheless kept an old family in secure possession,
albeit restricted to the soil like the veriest serfs.
In 1690 the aristocracy managed to pass another
statute, which prevented the forfeiture of an entailed
estate for treason. This w^as done away with by the
Act of 1708, which assimilated the law^ of treason to
that of England, and which thus rendered a man's
direct heirs, although not the remainder men, subject
to forfeiture.
The policy which the aristocracy pursued — that of
THE LAW OF ENTAIL. 19
protection of the permanence of their own order —
was sound enough from their own point of view. But
the economical difficulties of the existing law sterilised
the land, and prevented the improvement of the most
important national asset. Public opinion grew more
and more strong in condemnation of a state of things
so thoroughly harmful to the public interest ; and even
the judges, bound as they were by sympathy and
association to the territorial aristocracy, were almost
unanimous in their denunciation of the system. Land,
it was seen, could not safely be excluded from
the ordinary laws of a commercial community,
and doubtless the pressure of the law upon indi-
vidual heirs of entail made them not unwilling, even
against the abstract interests of their class, to turn a
ready ear to proposals for a modification. This was
pushed most strongly by Sir John Dalrymple, and at
length in 1770 an Act, commonly known (from the
name of the Lord- Advocate of the day) as the Mont-
gomery Act, was passed, which permitted a tenant of
an entailed estate to grant leases of farms for nine-
teen years, and building leases for ninety-nine, and
to burden the estate with the cost of permanent
improvements up to a certain amount and under
certain conditions. In 1824, by the Aberdeen Act,
tenants for life could burden their estates with pro-
visions for their widows and children ; and the change
thus wrought was carried much further by the sub-
sequent legislation.
Throughout every class of society and in all parts
of Scotland changes of the first importance were in
progress. Scottish character does not at least lack
the charm of variety, and each part of the country
had its own marked peculiarities. The Border counties
20 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
were settling down after the days of the old Border
raids, when the insecurity of the police system had
made each man's arm the chief protection of his life
and his property. After the long waste of mutual
plunderings, the inhabitants on both sides of the line
were acquiring, wdth greater stability of order, new pros-
perity ; but they retained much of the old independ-
ence that had always marked them, and that rugged
physical courage and sturdy force of intellect that
make them even now a type that ranks high amongst the
citizens of Great Britain. In no part of the country
were the farmers more prosperous than were the
tenants of these wide pasture-lands, and nowhere
did they approach so closely in tastes and habits to'
the old type of English yeomen. In the eastern
Lowlands, whose tradition and romance had entwined
itself with every mountain and valley, and lived in
a thousand lays that had grown into the hearts of
the people, the lingering memories of an older state
of society were even more powerful, and it is no
wonder that in such a region Scottish romance found
its chosen home. In the west, the old covenanting
spirit was still strong. It was there that the re-
ligious revival which soon after swept over the land
found its securest settlement, recalling as it did the
older days when religious feeling was stirred to en-
thusiasm by persecution. As in these older days, the
passion of religious feeling was found side by side
with a keen and acute grasp of worldly wisdom —
a combination which satire may easily ridicule, which
not unnaturally provokes suspicions of hypocrisy, but
which to students of human nature is not perhaps
without a suggestive interest. On the north-eastern
coast there was to be found a population — chiefly
VARIETY OF TYPES IN THE NATION. 21
Scandinavian in origin — which was sharply divided
from the rest of the people both in character and
in habits. The county of Fife had been the chief
nursery of dissent, and held itself aloof from the
rest of Scotland with a tenacity of purpose that be-
came proverbial. On the other hand, the fishermen
who dwelt along the northern part of the coast seemed
to have absorbed into their nature some of the hard
air of the sea from which they drew their livelihood,
and kept themselves jealously apart from the agri-
cultural population that peopled the Mearns. Many
a Mucklebackit family were to be found along that
coast, and the great limner of Scottish manners drew
from a familiar type. Their life of hardship and stern
combat with the elements was one that passed by in-
heritance from father to son. They intermarried with
one another, and sought neither kinship nor inter-
course with the upland folk. With the religious and
ecclesiastical disputes of Scotland they had little sym-
pathy ; and, curiously enough, with other traits which
even to this day mark them off from their neighbours,
they have inherited also a predilection for the Epis-
copalian form. Nowhere has that form retained from
the past a stronger hold upon the humbler class than
it has amongst the fishermen of the east coast, un-
aided by the zeal of any intrusive proselytism.
In all these regions, however, with much variety of
phase, there was one preponderating type of character
— strong, rugged, and quick in intellectual effort ;
tenacious of old habits, self-centred and reserved in its
pride of race, and accustomed by long habit of en-
durance to master difficulties and to force a livelihood
out of unpromising materials. But there remained
the v\-ider mountain tracts where the population was
22 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES,
purely Celtic, where the memories of enmity were the
inheritance of centuries, and which, down to a late
day, had lived outside the pale of the ordinary law.
To settle the new economical position of these regions,
and to conciliate their inhabitants, was the most
difficult problem that Scotland had to face. The clan
system had broken up : what was to take its place ?
How could these barren mountain tracts become
amenable to law, and share in the general prosperity
of the country? The Highlands could no longer be
left in ignorance and poverty. The pastime and
precarious subsistence which they had hitherto found
in war were now denied them ; and they could not be
abandoned to the life of thieving which seemed the
only alternative to starvation. Already they had
flocked in large numbers to the towns, and con-
gregated there, gaining a scanty and precarious liveli-
hood— neglected, sordid, ignorant. Such a destiny
was a poor one for a race which possessed many of the
finest qualities that can exist in humanity. Friends
and enemies could, with almost equal grounds, ascribe
to them strangely different characters. Lazy, dirty,
treacherous, thieving, and untruthful — such might be
the epithets that an enemy would apply to them, and
he might adduce no weak arguments to justify the
condemnation. Romantic, loyal, and devoted ; gener-
ous and hospitable ; with singular grace of manner,
and incomparable power of intellectual adaptiveness —
all these were the qualities which a more sympathetic
study of the race might reveal. It is to the credit of
Scotland that she did not shirk the task which fate
Hung upon her, and the Church was not the last
agency to attempt that task. Every effort was made —
often in spite of scanty success — to establish new
EFFORTS TO IMPROVE THE HIGHLANDS. 23
industries in the Highlands, and to bring to them
some share of the new commercial prosperity. Many
of the landlords oiitstript their own class elsewhere
in enlightened efforts to break the vicious system of
agriculture and to encourage modern methods. The
Assembly of the Church appointed a Commission of
Inquiry, and Dr. John Walker, one of her ministers,
as a result of most careful investigation, made pro-
posals for dealing with the Celtic question, which
have their practical interest even for our own day. He
saw that the one essential condition was the spread of
the English language — an opinion which the senti-
mentalists of our own day have vainly tried to con-
trovert. To do this by means of English ministrations
he pronounced a hopeless task : the only possible
machinery was that of English schools. Already the
English schools, established by benevolent effort, had
done a world of good ; but much more remained to
be done. Every effort must be made to check the
influence of the Roman Catholic Church ; and however
suitable the policy of toleration might be for a later day
and under more easy conditions, it can scarcely be ques-
tioned that to bring the Highlands within the fold of one
religious communion was an indispensable instrument
in making them share the common life of the nation.
Nor was the condition of the Highlanders in the large
cities forgotten. Every effort was made to raise their
state, to educate their cnildren, and to bring them
within the influence of religious ministrations. In
1768, by means of a public subscription, a Gaelic
Church was opened in Edinburgh. There was to be
no violent breaking with their old habits and customs :
but the influence for good was to carry out its mission
by enlisting these habits on its side. The difficulties
24 SOCIAL AND ECOXOAIIC CHANGES.
indeed were great. The sledge - hammer force of
economical truths was making it every day more clear
that these barren regions could not, under natural con-
ditions, support the surplus population that had grown
amongst them. But against the hard teaching of these
economical truths there was a powerful feeling of
attachment to the soil, which made the Highlander
cling to his mountains and his glens with a passionate
intensity of love. These mountains and glens, aided
by the characteristics of his race, had impressed his
mind with a heavy shroud of superstition which was
strangely blended with the poetry and romance that
formed a part of his being. To make light of these
would be a poor means of developing the character-
istics of the race. To find in them an interest and a
charm was the only means of reaching the heart of the
Highlander, and of enabling him to find new fields in
which the strongest of his characteristics might find
a fitting sphere. The Highlands had not yet become
the playground of the wealthy Englishman, who
brought to them a new and not always very healthy
source of life : and it was no small thing that before
that day arrived, the work of Scotland for the develop-
ment of the Highlands had already borne good fruit.
During the first decade of the reign of George III.
Scotland was thus busily engaged with the problem
of a transition in her economical conditions. One
industry is so closely connected with the national
character that it merits special attention. The agri-
culture of Scotland went through a revolution in the
course of last century. In the earlier part of the
century its conditions were primitive in the extreme,
and these, combined with an ungenial climate and
a soil which was fertile only when skilfully manipii-
SCOTTISH AGRICULTURE. 25
lated, produced a state of the utmost poverty. But
it was a poverty with which the independence of
the national character combined an indomitable thrift,
and to which its many-sided intellectual vigour added
much content and enjoyment. The smaller tenants,
surprising as it may seem, were, in the dearth of
commerce, the chief moneyed men of an unmoneyed
country, and their savings were frequently lent at
good interest to the gentry upon whom the burden
of expense attending their station necessarily fell.
But the savings of thriftiness bring content and satis-
faction not in proportion to their amount, but from
the simple fact that they exist ; and so long as their
existence is possible the motive to increase the rate
at which they swell is comparatively weak, especially
with a nation which had abundance of additional in-
terests. The primitive methods of agriculture, there-
fore, still continued. A community of culture, by
which the neighbours in a hamlet shared field with
field in alternate parcels — what was called the "run-
rig" system — was the general habit. Individual en-
terprise and activity found no encouragement under
such a system. On the other hand, the tenants, if
they did not make the most of their holdings, had
little to fear in the way of extortionate rents from
landlords with whom they claimed kinship, and to
whom it never occurred to prefer a money gain to
the traditional bonds of relationship or family ties in
accordance with which their tenants Avere selected.
But such a system could not endure with the ad-
vance of wealth and the increased incentives to its
accumulation. Nothing is more striking in the his-
tory of Scotland during last century than the rapidity
with which the country passed from an almost patri-
26 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
archal system to the economical arrangements of
modern times. It was in the Highlands where the
primitive system lasted longest in its integrity, but
where also it most rapidly underwent transformation.
The abolition of the hereditary jurisdiction did much
for the Highlands ; but it accomplished its task at
the expense of much that produced hardship for a
generation. Estates which had been held on terms
approaching very closely to those of feudal service
now lost the weight and dignity which were adjuncts
of proprietorship, and were held as sources of revenue,
to be turned to the most profitable uses. In place of
the black cattle, the rearing of which had been the
chief source of revenue to the Highland proprietor,
it became more profitable to stock the Highland pas-
tures with sheep, for whose guardianship few hands
need be employed. This was an undoubted economi-
cal advantage, and it was pressed with patient and
unremitting zeal by a certain David Loch, who wrote
with much intelligence on Scottish manufactures, and
saw a great future for the Highlands in connection
with the woollen industry, which he desired to see
flourish even at the expense of the linen trade.
For his day, he was undoubtedly a man of foresight
and intelligence ; and he would have been a wild and
visionary dreamer who would then have prophesied
that the future wealth of Scotland was to depend on
her minerals — then scarcely more than guessed at —
and on the many gigantic industries to be based upon
them. But however economically sound might be the
spread of sheep farms, it had another aspect which
was less cheering. The Highland glens lost their
closely packed inhabitants — all bound to the chief
and recognised by him as liot dependants only, but
GROWTH OF WEALTH. It
kinsmen — ^and only roofless walls and deserted garden-
plots preserved the memory of many pdpnlous town-
ships. Those dispossessed refused to find a refuge
amongst the Lowlanders, who were their traditional
foes, and whose manners and language were equally
unintelligible, and preferred emigration beyond the
Atlantic, where their lot was often little above that
of slaves. The old ties were broken ; the Duniewas-
sals, or gentlemen tenants, who claimed kinship with
their chief, and who found in the traditional debt of
military service something that exempted them from
an obligation to industry, rapidly disappeared. With
them any semblance of a middle class between the
greater landlords and the humbler tenants faded away ;
and with its eclipse there came a change of manners
and of ideas that transformed the Highlands.
Something of the same kind went on in the Low-
lands, where no such sacred tie as that between the
chief and his vassals existed. There the smaller
tenants found an easy refuge in the towns, where
growing commerce offered an ever more tempting bait.
By means of the progress of the banking system, and
perhaps still more as a consequence of foreign inter-
course, money increased. Scotsmen who had sought
their fortunes in the East or West Indies returned
with much ready money, which they were eager to
invest in acres on their native soil. Land that was
rarely in the market — and which, indeed, was hardly a
marketable commodity — now commanded a ready sale
at some thirty years' purchase, and its resources had
been so little developed that it amply repaid the outlay
of capital upon it in the way of planting, manuring,
draining, and fencing — occupations which comfortably
occupied the leisure and adequately remunerated the
28 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
investments of the moneyed Scot who had braved the
adventures and dangers of the East, and now sought
to close his days in the dignified ease of a landlord
backed by ample capital. Methods of cultivation
necessarily improved under such conditions. Roads
were constructed, and in almost every county the
moneyed men found in the Road Board a little council
where administrative capacity was not lost, and where
there was a wholesome emulation of zeal. All the
tenants were induced — or forced — to contribute their
share of labour for the common work, and the military
roads constructed by the Government aided in the
work. Carriages became not uncommon, and carts
with spoked wheels, hitherto scarcely known, began
to make the transit of goods more easy, and thus to
widen the markets.
The natural result of this was that the landlords
found themselves in the possession of a marketable
commodity, and their expenses increased. The lavish
style of living practised by the Indian nabob must not
be allowed to obscure the dignity of the older families.
Their family pride, which might have rendered them
secure of rivalry, only tempted them to new expenses,
with the inevitable result. The indebtedness increased ;
the sale of estates led to the breaking of old ties, and
the establishment in their place of merely commer-
cial relations. The necessity of raising rents to their
utmost estranged tenant from master, and made the
new tie a mere colourless reflection of the old one.
Alongside of this there was another tendency — the
result of enlightened notions and of earnest public
spirit — which equally helped to bring about that re-
volution in agriculture which the new commercial
spirit infused into the landlord class rendered inevi-
AGRICULTUKAL PllOJECTORS. 29
table. Amongst the wealthier landlords, accustomed
to spend a large part of the year in England, there
arose a fashionable emulation in the introduction of
English methods of farming. They were aided by a
large class of speculative gentlemen farmers, who re-
lieved their professional labours by agricultural pas-
times, and who prided themselves on the ingenuit}^ of
the schemes which they evolved in their study, and in
tlie midst of philosophical lucubrations. In all this
there was much that was absurd. Money was lavishly
spent on projects which led to nothing but the expen-
diture of much ingenuity and the eventual jeers of the
men who held to the practice of their fathers. But
with all their absurdities the ultimate consequence was
all for good. Their theories were often whimsical.
In their slavish imitation of English methods they
often forgot that they had to deal with the stubborn
factors of a Scottish climate and a Scottish soil. They
lost much money and moved much ridicule. But
they contributed in the end to the breaking down
of antiquated methods, to the use of modern imple-
ments, to a scientific rotation of crops, to the substitu-
tion of convenient appliances for costly manual labour,
and to the abolition of systems of culture that
exhausted the soil. They had to meet with abundant
opposition. Their failures provoked criticism. Ee-
ligious bigotry stood in their way, as when the
Antiburghers objected to the use of "fanners" for
winnowing corn, on the ground that it amounted to
an impious usurpation of the functions of the Deity in
the " creating of wind." But slowly, and in spite, not of
opposition only, but also of their own often whimsical
impracticality, the agricultural reformers won the day.
They learned to adapt English methods to the Scottish
30 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
"tids" or seasons, and the theories Avhich they had
pushed to the detriment of their purses and their credit
for sound judgment were worked to good purpose by
more practical men.
About 1760 successful war still further increased the
capital of the country, and the sale of estates became
still more easy and more lucrative with the competi-
tion amongst purchasers. Prices both for corn and for
stock increased largely, and the extensive use of paper
money, owing to enlarged banking operations, made
the apparent capital still more abundant. Luxury of
living and emulous attention to display became more
common. Various commodities which had before been
of rare occurrence now sprang into common use. Even
the humbler tenants, if their stores, painfully accumu-
lated, were less, indulged themselves in more of those
appliances which later generations have converted into
necessities. But the old content was gone ; the old
ties were broken : a new world had replaced that which
had once prevailed throughout the land.
It does not fall within the scope of a work dealing
with the leading features of Scottish history to enter
into literary criticism or to discuss in detail the succes-
sive phases of poetical composition. But it is necessary,
in order to complete the picture of Scotland in the
eighteenth century, to see what was her contribution to
the literature of imagination and how this reflected the
characteristics of the time.
The opening of the century succeeded a long period
of sterility in poetical composition. Whatever the
opposition offered to the Union, and however both in
its results and in the manner of its adoption it may
have outraged Scottish feeling and inflicted for a
generation or two a rankling wound, it Avas neverthe-
LITERARY ACTIVITY. 31
less inevitable that it should stir men's minds and
produce something of literary activity. Intellectual
movements are not chilled by distaste for legislativ^e
processes ; any important change in the life of a
nation, be it the parent of enthusiasm or of disgust,
quickens the stimulus to imaginative work. It is the
stern experience of long struggle, the absorption in
bitter controversy such as engaged men during the
seventeenth century, that numbs the creative faculty.
However distasteful it might be, the Union brought
peace and brought the germs of a new prosperity.
The clash of weapons was silenced, and peace and
prosperity left men disengaged for calmer and quieter
pursuits. In the opening quarter of the century social
life was lively and engaging. Intellectual activity was
stirred by the clubs that grew in luxuriance in the
capital, where conviviality and wit throve better than
the stern tenets of ecclesiastical and political factions,
and where even those who hated the course of dominant
politics yet cherished their own tenets rather in the guise
of romantic and patriotic sentiments than of political
convictions which compelled a practical struggle. All
that threatened to obscure and obliterate the traditions
of Scotland, all that weakened the sense of her nation-
ality, all that portended her subjection to the moods of
her more powerful neighbour, stirred a sense of patriot-
ism that was not altogether unpleasing even to those
who indulged in jeremiads on her fallen greatness.
Such an atmosphere was eminently fitted to encourage
the literary side of Scottish national life, and the ex-
asperation of offended patriotism found in that sphere
a safer and a more congenial occupation than in the
fierce and more irksome toil of supporting in the
political arena a failing cause.
32 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
The reawakened literary activity took two distinct
lines, linked to one another in some of their aims,
and combining in their ultimate results but diverse in
their methods. The first Avas the revival of the ver-
nacular literature and the adapting to a new generation
the older forms of Scottish song. In this kind the
most active worker was Allan Ramsay, who, from being
a barber's apprentice, gradually achieved a literary
position in his own generation that was unique, and
placed his country under an obligation for greater
results than any which he himself achieved. In the
collections which engaged his first literary efforts he
recalled the Scottish vernacular literature of ballad and
of song, uncritically indeed, and with none of the nice
discrimination which was yet to be applied to the older
treasures by genius greater than his own, but none the
less with a freedom, a homeliness, a sympathy, and a
wit, that breathed into his collections something far
stronger than a mere antiquarian interest, and which at-
tracted the attention of far more than a literary audience.
It is easy to find fault with his methods, to decry his
free handling of the older traditional forms, and to
point out where he falls below the grace and simplicity
of the older national muse. But yet it is doubtful
whether a nicer scholarship or a more refined literary
taste would have accomplished what the homely in-
dustry and the racy wit of the Edinburgh bookseller
wrought for our old literature. The simplicity of the
national genius was not lost. The characteristic touch
of humour blended with romance, that formed its most
distinctive feature, was preserved, with a certain fresh-
ness and verve, by the individuality of Ramsay, and
his sympathy with the realities of life and with nature
made him keep in touch with what was the most
ALLAN RAMSAY AND HIS SUCCESSORS. 33
valuable inheritance of Scottish song. His geniality
won for him the favour of the leading spirits of the
nation. His revival of the older forms harmonised not
with the taste only, but with the deeper feelings of his
day ; and whatever the limitations of his genius, the
author of the " Gentle Shepherd " claims the profound
gratitude of his nation as one who transmitted a tradi-
tion, and who passed on the torch through the hands
of Robert Fergusson to thp more powerful arm and
more commanding genius of Burns.
But he did not stand alone, although in this line his
work is vastly more important than that of any com-
peer. There were others who passed away from the
vernacular, and who carried into the main stream of
English poetry something of the spirit of the Scottish
muse. Scottish poetry had other qualities besides those
of quaint dialect, rustic humour, and legendary story.
Its first instinct, and that which gave to it its most
enduring influence, was that of sympathy with nature
— a sympathy not based on any pathetic fallacy, not
weighted with any burthen of ethical allusion, but
direct, simple, and real. Of those who carried this
strain into English poetry and breathed into it a breath
of freshness after a long period of restraint and artifi-
ciality, by far the greatest was Thomson, Ramsay's
contemporary. But there were others who, in a lesser
degree, laboured with Thomson to acquire what was
a foreign diction, and who accomplished the painful
task, it may be with some loss to the vigour and free-
dom of their own genius, but certainly with vast and
far-reaching influence on English poetry.
But it is no part of our present task to trace the
course of the national stream after it mingles its waters
with the mightier river of English literature. It is our
VOL. II. c
34 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
business rather to trace the reflex influence on Scottish
thought and life. Thomson found a home in England,
like his weaker compeers, Mallet, and Armstrong, and
Falconer ; but his genius still exercised a great influ-
ence on his countrymen. Some of his pictures of
nature are drawn from his own land ; some of his por-
traits are painted from his fellow-countrymen ; and
undoubtedly the place his genius gained for him tended
to foster and encourage the cultivation of an English
style by Scottish writers. The vernacular was kept
alive, and its embers were yet to be rekindled in one
glorious blaze by the matchless genius of Burns. But
this was but a tradition to which only consummate
genius could impart that vitality and permanence which
fixed it for all time in the form in which its immortality
was to be enshrined. Another medium was needed for
the large body of the Scottish contribution to English
literature ; and there can be no doubt that the success
of the Scottish aspirants to a place in English literature
was the most direct and effective encouragement to the
literary activity shown in Edinburgh during the latter
half of the eighteenth century. In the sphere of
poetry, if there were no stars of the first or even of the
second magnitude which appeared in Edinburgh, yet
there was a long line which reflected a very respectable
brilliance on the Scottish capital. In the generation
which followed that of Ramsay and Thomson there
came Home, the author of "Douglas;" Wilkie, the
author of the " Epigoniad ; " Falconer and Logan,
Beattie and Michael Bruce. Each merits some atten-
tion, and from among the forgotten pages of their
poems, once popular and greedily read, there may still
be culled passages of high merit that have lingered
somehow in the mouths of men long after the fountain
THE ROMANTIC SPIRIT. 35
from which they are drawn has been lost in oblivion.
But one characteristic they all partook of, and it was
one which not only affected all the literature of the
coming age, but gave Scotland a powerful place in
determining the predominant spirit of that literature,
and that characteristic was the strong and lasting one
of E-omance. In spirit and in form, in subject and in
treatment, this fresh inspiration, which was to bring new
colour and new animation into the conventionalities of
life, was the most pervading influence in all their work.
They had adopted a foreign tongue ; they wrote very
largely for a foreign public ; they imitated foreign
models and foreign mannerisms. In much they re-
peated the artificial tricks of the older school of Eng-
lish poetry, but they had given to it a new note in their
instinct for nature, and now they added a new inspira-
tion in lighting up the music and the fire of Romance.
They had sought their medium and their language,
even their manner, in the English school, and not only
did they never entirely break away from it, but the
alliance produced an effect on Scottish literature that
never died away as long as that literature retained any
separate existence. No one who studies the prose
style, the temperament, even the poetic diction of Scott,
can fail to see that, with all his romance, it has become
familiar to him in a diction which echoed something of
the school, not of Pope and Dryden only, but of their
less gifted and more artificial successors. It was this
traditional colouring which prevented Scotland from
indulging in that forced and laboured simplicity of
diction which to some enhances, and to others perhaps
detracts from, the genius of Wordsworth and his school.
It may not be amiss here to note one singular out-
burst of popular feeling which turned upon an almost
36 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
forgotten lawsuit, and which serves as an illustration of
the immense interest aroused by the fate of her historic
houses. For some years about this period, there was
probably no subject of greater interest to the majority
of Scotsmen than the great Douglas lawsuit. During
these years, it is not too much to say that it divided
the nation into two hostile camps. For a time it
seemed likely to establish new principles of law. It
set class against class. It provoked bitter family feuds.
It directly influenced political parties. It has now
sunk below the stream of history, and emerges only as
an illustration of the social features of the day.
The case turned upon the succession to the Duke-
dom of Douglas. The last Duke died childless, and the
succession would naturally have passed to the family of
the Duke of Hamilton, which would then have absorbed
the two premier dukedoms of the country. But a
claim was put forward by Archibald Douglas, as the
son of Lady Jane Douglas, the niece of the late Duke.
The circumstances of his birth were undoubtedly
suspicious. It was alleged to have taken place in
an obscure lodging-house in Paris — hardly the fitting
scene of birth for the probable heir to one of the
leading families of Scotland — and when his mother
had passed the mature age of fifty years. It was
easy to see how a fraud could well have been
perpetrated, and the starting of such a claim was
not likely to be looked upon with favour by the
adherents of the great family of Hamilton. On the
other hand, it was clear that the birth had been
acknowledged by the parents ; and even had a wrong
motive been proved on their part, it was unlikely
to have been pressed to the length of a death-bed
acknowledgment, as was the case here. The cause
THE DOUGLAS CASE. 37
divided Scotland, as we might expect. On the one
hand, the upper classes generally strongly supported
the Hamilton claim, and did not scruple to accuse that
of Douglas as a self-evident fraud. His rights found
sympathy, as a rule, only amongst the lower classes ;
but that sympathy took very tangible form. The
claimant appeared to rise from poverty and obscurity.
The evidence on his behalf was undoubtedly strange
and hard to credit. The broad principle of law, that
children were the offspring of their apparent parents,
unless these parents expressly disallowed paternity,
seemed here to be pushed to dangerous lengths. It
demanded, in this instance, a severe strain on credulity,
and it was urged in subversion of the long-admitted
claim of a great family. On the one hand, there
was sympathy for that family, and undoubtedly a
preponderance of probability. On the other hand,
there was a principle of law which was ordinarily
applied, and which, it was argued, ought not to be
set aside because it told in favour of an obscure and
almost friendless claimant against a powerful family.
This is not the place to canvass minutely the legal
arguments : it is sufficient to point to the popular
aspect of the case. After a long and careful hearing
before the Court of Session, the judges were evenly
divided, and a decision adverse to the claimant was
given by the casting vote of the Lord President
Dundas. This was the signal for an unthinking burst
of popular fury ; and so strong was the feeling, that
the houses of the adverse judges were attacked, and
the dignity of the Court seemed to be assailed. On
appeal, the case was carried to the more impartial
tribunal of the House of Lords, and there, apart
from the excitement of partisanship, a decision which
38 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
favoured the popular view was given by the unanimous
voice of the law lords. The general principle of the
law prevailed, and was affirmed by the dispassionate
voices of such men as Lord Mansfield and Lord
Camden. The popular opinion obtained a triumph.
But the decision was an unfortunate one for the aristo-
cracy of Scotland. It undoubtedly appeared to rebuke
the sympathy which the Scottish Court had shown for
that aristocracy ; and it did not serve to increase their
love for the supreme arbitration of what might still be
held to be a foreign tribunal.
Before we leave this phase of Scottish life that
existed in the early years of the reign of George IIL,
let us glance at two pictures of our country, draw^n
by the hands of strangers of very different character.
Both help us "to see ourselves as others see us,"
though the value of the pictures is vastly different.
In 1769 the indefatigable tourist, Pennant, paid a
visit to Scotland, and his description so stirred
Anglican curiosity, that he was tempted to that pit-
fall of authors — a second and a longer book, de-
scribing a new tour over much the same ground. It
shows the practised hand of the hardened globe-trotter
— quick to catch impressions, faithful in its records,
describing with painstaking accuracy the leading
features of the scenes through which he passed. He
is impressed by the neatness and trimness of the
towns — above all, by the air of solidity given by
their stone-built houses. He doubtless astonished the
Saxon, accustomed to regard Scotland as little more
than the home of barbarism and poverty, by telling
of the noble domains that he found scattered through
the land. Now and then he gives long descriptions of
strange and characteristic customs — doubtless gathered
pennant's account. 39
at second-hand — and he enlarges them by copious
illustrations of other customs elsewhere which he had
read or heard of in his multifarious journeyings.
Occasionally he gives his own experiences ; and he
helps us to know the clergy of Scotland by telling
how they were " the most decent and consistent in
their conduct of any set of men I ever met with in
their order," and how they were " very much changed
from the furious, illiterate, and enthusiastic teachers of
the old times " — those old times which had served to
give the prevailing impression to himself and his
countrymen. We have abundant information about
the fauna of Scotland, and about its antiquities which
he had pictured to illustrate his book. Bishop Percy
thought Pennant's volumes insuflerably dull and tame,
and probably most modern readers will agree with the
verdict. From beginning to end it is the Cockney de-
scribing a life into which he could not enter, whose
strangeness he did not really comprehend, the romance
of which he was incapable of picturing to himself in
the prosaic surroundings of his own plodding life.
But Dr. Johnson — to whose hand we owe the companion
picture — knew the difficulties of description, and was
more lenient in his judgment than Bishop Percy. He
recognised Pennant's care and accuracy and his power
of observation, and he knew how hard the unwonted
task had been to his own massive intellect. His own
tour had been the cherished aim of many a long year,
spent in the toils of professional literature and
circumscribed by the narrow world of Fleet Street.
He came with imbedded prejudices, which he parades
with a half -humorous and nowise rancorous per-
sistence. But if we wish to see what the country was,
we have to q-q, not to the well-trained and assiduous
40 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CHANGES.
hack, but to the untried but keen-visioned man of
genius, who tested each new incident in the alembic
of his own insight and his own incomparable breadth
of sympathy. The easy flow of his narrative never
strains either the effort of the writer or the patience of
the reader. It ranges over every phase of the subject,
expatiates on its many-sided interest, theorises upon
its meaning, throws a sidelight upon every passing
scene, and gives us to the very life the Scotsman as he
appeared to the old man who had made city life one
with his own, and whose fancy and whose insight were
quick with the liveliness of genius, in spite of the
narrow range of experience in which he had moved for
seventy years. It is to Johnson that we go to see
the life, the houses, the food, the garments — nay, the
very speech and manners of the Scotsmen amongst
whom he passed, and who were attracted to his per-
sonality by the magnetic force of a master-mind. He
alternates with inimitable power grave disquisitions
with quaint humour ; he describes incidents, not as
they assumed importance to the commonplace traveller,
but as they threw a subdued light upon the character
of the people, or as they pointed a striking contrast.
It is to him, and not to Pennant, that we must go if
we are to see how the traits of character that live to
this day were present more than a hundred years ago,
and how traces of the old and barbarous customs of
medisevalism were blended with the new influences of
modern life. He tells us of the wonderful grace of
manner that gave to the humblest Highlander some-
thing of the instinctive grace of a gentleman ; how
their readiness of reply was based upon an anxiety to
please, and how the truth or falsehood of their infor-
mation was a petty accident which the graces of social
Johnson's journey. 41
intercourse taught them to neglect. He enters with
wonderful insight into their religious feeling, and
catches instinctively the lingering symptoms of old
customs. He lingers over their superstitions — half-
sympathetic with their mood, half-humorous in his
grave exposition of their origin. He makes of his
very unfitness for the unwonted role of a cicerone an
added charm, and he disarms our criticism by his
closing words, " My thoughts on national manners are
the thoughts of one who has seen but little." Yet
when we have read his book, we feel that we have
an added insight, not only into the Scotland of this
decade, but into the extent of its contrast with the
English society of the day. Pennant's book is a
useful itinerary ; Johnson's Journal has the inde-
scribable but irresistible charm of a monument of
literary genius.
42
CHAPTER XIV.
FROM 1770 TO 178 0.
The next decade is one of the highest importance in
the history of Scotland, although its results are to be
traced not so much in any outward effects as in the
laying of the foundations upon which the history of
the next generation was to be based. The economic
changes of which we have just spoken were problems
of the deepest interest for Scotland. She found her-
self face to face with a new state of things, which,
throughout all her borders, was working a gradual
change in social conditions. The political results
developed more slowly still. At first sight, it might
appear as if the period from 1770 to 1780 was a
colourless and stationary one ; but in truth it was one
of those periods in the life of a nation when the forces
which were to rule the next generation w^ere taking
shape.
In the first place, it was during this period that the
distinctive character of the Scottish citizen for at least
three generations to follow was most definitely shaped.
As it is conceived by his Southern neighbour, that
character is a strange medley. The conception is one
to which remote history and legendary romance have
alike contributed. It is drawn from the wild fury of
THE englishman's PICTUKE OF SCOTLAND. 43
civil warfare : the lawless recklessness of unrestrained
robbery : the scenes of fierce religious contention and
the gloomy fanaticism w^hich was for a time the inevit-
able inheritance of that contention — all alike have lent
some lurid colour to the picture thus carelessly thrown
on the canvas. It is a picture drawn partly from
intercourse with the quiet and phlegmatic Lowlander,
and partly from the tales of the fiery and romantic
Celt, the hereditary foe of the Lowlander. Such a
conception sank into the mind of the Englishman
when he had little opportunity of correcting it by
personal experience. It has remained ever since as
an irresistible and dominating impression, if not an
actual belief. The barriers between the two nations
have gradually grown weaker or have broken down.
It is only on occasion, now-a-days, that a pasteboard,
painted to look like a barrier which is long since out
of date, is set up by the exigencies of a faction, or to
suit the passing humour of some small and insigni-
ficant group. Even the Cockney might now be found
to smile at the traditionary picture of the Scotsman
which habit and inheritance make him, almost in-
voluntarily, form to himself. But a hundred years
ago that picture had all the force of an elementary
axiom ; and the picture was, in all its principal
features, painted chiefly in the decade of which we
now treat.
For the first half of the century Scotland had been
to all intents and purposes as separate from England
in thought and character as if the Act of Union had
never been passed. That Act had stimulated rather
than checked the mutual dislike. A vague picture of
a country alien in race and language, difiering in law
and custom, from which resistance and danger might
44 FROM 1770 TO 1780.
be expected — such was the aspect in which Scotland
appeared to the Englishman. This dislike and these
fears seemed to be fully justified by the Jacobite
rebellions ; and the fact that these rebellions found
sympathisers in England did not in any degree lessen
the feeling of uneasy perturbation with which England
regarded the country of their inception and of their
passing triumphs. When the final fall of Jacobite
pretensions came, in 1745, there was an opportunity
for the two nations to grow together and each to view
with less asperity the idiosyncrasies of the other.
Signs were not wanting that it might be so. In
Scotland, at least, a large and influential body of the
people were anxious to break down the marks of
separation, to promote intercourse, to pay the flattery
of imitation to English custom and English usages, and
even iti literature to cultivate English models. The
victories of the Empire were hailed by Scotland as
things in which she shared, and the foresight and
genius of Chatham found a means whereby the
"heroism of the Highland clans might be one of the
bulwarks of the dynasty which it had so recently
shaken by an effort of desperate valour. The fringe of
possible disorder being thus turned into a fertile
recruiting ground, it might have seemed natural that
the more peaceable parts of both nations should have
coalesced into one, and have grown into unity of habit
and of custom, of thought, religion, and even of law,
which would have left the lines of demarcation only as
memories.
Whether the Empire as a whole, or Scotland as a
part of it, would have been any the better for such
a peaceable solution of the position, is a matter on
which it is at least permissible to have a doubt. Un-
XATIOXAL DIVERGENCIES. 45
questionably it was a consummation which a statesman
would have been compelled to desire, and which he
would have been justified in pressing forward by all
means in his power. To achieve it would have ap-
peared a model of political strategy. It would have
hastened the commercial prosperity of Scotland by at
least a generation, and by means of it some points of
divergence which even now keep the two nations in
separate grooves of thought and feeling might have
been obliterated. But just as surely much that has
been of vast moment in the development of character,
in the range and variety of the national temperament,
even in the actual product of the national genius, would
have been undreamt of, and neither England nor
Scotland would have been what they are now in
combination.
But however this might have been, events made it
impossible. There is a saying of Johnson with regard
to Bute which is not without interest in this connec-
tion. "It would have been better," said Johnson, "if
Bute had never been Minister, or had never resigned."
What Johnson probably intended was, that the ideal
which stood in a shadowy way behind Bute's Ministry,
the ideal of a nation united under the crown, and con-
tent to forget the separation and distinctions either of
nationality or of party, was a desirable one, if only it
could have been made permanent or real ; but that
without this permanence the influence of such a fancy
was harmful rather than good. Taken in this sense,
the saying is one for which there is ample justification.
The dream which Bute for the moment typified, but
which he in no way originated, was an attractive one ;
but his attempt to realise it left parties exasperated,
and was the beginning of a faction fight of unexampled
46 FROM 1770 TO 1780.
bitterness. It tore the two nations asunder, and made
it certain that each would follow separate lines of
thought, of sympathy, and of politics. Its results were
seen at every turn of our road through the history of
the next eighty years ; and it was largely due to the
events with which the reign of George III. opened that
Scotland has a history of her own to chronicle for at
least two generations more.
The wild outburst of popular feeling that involved
the whole Scottish nation in the prejudice against
Bute ; that united statesman, essayist, poet, and satirist
in an insane crusade against anything that hailed from
the north of the Tweed ; that made no gibe too trite
and no sarcasm too fierce to be an instrument where-
with to provoke the susceptibilities of the Scot ; that
pointed the attack of Junius on Lord Mansfield, and
made a Scottish accent or Scottish descent amply
sufficient grounds for accusations of political corrup-
tion against a statesman — all this was treated by Scot-
land with an apparent apathy that is almost surprising.
The answers to those attacks, as we have already said,
were comparatively few. Some of the chief agents of
the Government in Scotland were not ashamed even to
bend to the storm, and to deprecate the support of
congratulatory addresses from Scotland on the Peace,
lest these should provoke the suspicion of the English.
The attitude of Scotland in this wild outburst of epi-
demic madness was that of dignified disregard, but
none the less the iron entered into her soul. Insults
may not provoke a war of w^ords, but they are none the
less felt. Nor were these insults without an accom-
paniment of positive wrong which might well stir the
indignation of a proud nation. The refusal of a Scottish
Militia on account of the alleged danger from lingering
SCOTTISH WEOXGS. 47
Jacobite pretensions, not only involved an imputation
upon the undoubted loyalty of the vast majority of the
nation, but it was a distinct financial wrong, inasmuch
as the imperial subsidy was paid to the English Militia
partly out of Scottish taxation. Scant attention was
paid to the claims of Scottish commerce, and schemes
of fiscal improvement were neglected and delayed.
More than once the Lord Advocate, as chief repre-
sentative of the Government in Scotland, had to express
his sympathy with legislative proposals, but to confess
that he might press them without success upon an
apathetic Ministry. The result of all this was that
Scotland was driven back upon herself, and that out of
the various elements in her midst she had to construct
a national character widely separated from that of
England. It is no exaggeration to say that the years
from 1770 to 1780 created a wider line of demarcation
than had existed five-and-twenty years before. From
that decade date many of the most characteristic
features of the national type, which for fifty years more
was to stand in what often seems unnecessary isolation
from English methods and English habits of thought,
and which was to bequeath, even to our own day, a
tendency to divergence which any tactlessness or
negligence on the part of Parliament or of the Govern-
ment might even now widen or aggravate into active
discontent. It was not the Scotland of Knox or of the
Covenanters that was thus revived. Just as little was
it the Scotland of the Jacobites. From all these it
drew some characteristic traits, but in the main it was
a Scotland dominated by bold speculation, full of a
desire for intellectual and material advance, proud of
its own history and its own national peculiarities,
ardent in the pursuit of its own literary ideals ; jealous
48 FROM 1770 TO 1780.
at the same time of its independence, provoked by
virulent attacks and thoughtless gibes, and firm in the
determination that its association with the predomi-
nant partner should be one of which it need not be
ashamed.
We have not, then, to study the history of Scotland
in the pages of imperial history, on which she had
little influence except in sharing the burden of
national defence. Isolated Scotsmen achieved for
themselves great place and power, and Mansfield,
Loughborough, Erskine, and Eldon show the in-
fluence which Scotsmen could exert on English law.
But that influence they achieved not as Scotsmen,
but as immigrants. English prejudice had driven
Scotsmen of all parties into one nation, with certain
points of disagreement, but occupied, nevertheless,
with a history of their own, which they worked out
in their own way.
During the earlier part of the century Scotland
had been divided into two camps. The Jacobite
cause had kept a large and influential class distant
from all political influence, and proscribed at once
in liberty of action and in property. It comprised
the great majority of the territorial class, and in-
cluded many men of culture and high feeling,
who were tabooed as disafi"ected and as rebels. But
this feeling had now died away. Jacobitism was
now little but a romantic embroidery on Scottish
life, a peg to hang poetic sentiment upon. Its
traditions and its monuments w^ere all around,
and permeated Scottish feeling — but as a memory
only. The Episcopalian Church had been the refuge
of many who were alienated by the uncouth usages
and unattractive creed that were associated with one
THEIR EFFECT IN UNITING THE NATION. 49
party in the Presbyterian Church. But as that party
diminished in power and influence, a more liberal
spirit pervaded the Church. The Episcopalians were
no longer nonjurors, and were no longer looked upon
with suspicion and dislike. They were recognised
as Scotsmen, and gained more and more the respect
which was due to their moderation and dignity of
spirit. So also with the Highlands. Within living
memory, the Highlands had been the centre of
threatening lawlessness, of which the outbursts of
rebellion had been but symptoms. They had been
an unknown region, not amenable to the ordinary
laws, and owning allegiance only to an almost bar-
baric system of clan government. Now they were
no longer an undiscovered land. Their fastnesses
were penetrated ; Englishmen and Scotsmen alike
found their scenery and their customs a mine of
interest, and Scotsmen became proud of their poetry
and romance. A few years before the Scottish verna-
cular literature was neglected and despised ; it now
became a field for antiquarians and a source from
which Scottish genius drew fresh inspiration.
It would be absurd, of course, to say that all these
elements coalesced, and that there was not abundance
of controversial material within the Scottish nation.
The Episcopalian was still looked upon with suspicion
by the remnant who represented the rigid Covenanter
of an older day. Within the Church itself there were
divided parties, and the High-flyers still accused the
Moderates of laxity and latitudinarianism. The bold-
ness of philosophical speculation was dreaded by
many, and its dangerous tendencies were freely de-
nounced. Those who had been born and bred in
the traditions of a proud hereditary caste w.er^ ^
VOL. II. D .*^ ' . I ^*
50 FROM 1770 TO 1780.
indignant at the intrusion of a new moneyed class,
who threatened to push them aside. But on the
whole the controversies were fought with comparative
mildness. The High-flyer did not shun social inter-
course with the Moderate, and the clergy did not
think their orthodoxy endangered by association with
the speculative philosophers. The Jacobite was left
free to indulge in speculative tenets of divine right,
and to toast the king over the water, if he did not
flaunt his forlorn treason in the face of authority.
Of political discussion there was almost none, and
even what there was bore no resemblance to the party
divisions that divided England. The patriotism of
such as Wilkes had never awakened one chord of
sympathy in Scotland, and Scotland had practically
no interest at all in the reiterated attacks that fell
upon the imperturbable calm of Lord North's Ad-
ministration. The American War, of course, had a
bearing too direct upon the prosperity of Scotland
not to arouse, to a certain extent, her interest ; but,
with few exceptions, her inhabitants, or those who
represented them, were content to support without
question the measures of Lord North. The tirades
of the Patriots had their efi'ect in disgusting the
great body of Scotsmen, and Scotland was eff"ectually
cut oJEf from an Opposition which owed much of its
influence to the foul-mouthed libellers of a nation.
In her eyes, the King's Administration, under what-
ever Minister it might be named, deserved their loyal
support, if only because it was attacked by those whose
patriotism consisted chiefly in selfish factiousness and
reckless abuse. The forty-five Scottish members of
the House of Commons were, almost to a man, sup-
porters of the Government, and in the few instances
ABSENCE OF PARTY FEELING. 51
where they are reckoned in the Opposition interest,
this was due, in almost every case, to some local
circumstances, which made the leading man in the
electorate entertain some personal ground of pique
against the Lord Advocate of the day. Before the
decade was passed, the whole influence of the Govern-
ment in Scotland was centred in the powerful hand
of Henry Dundas (who became Lord Advocate in
1775), and in few of the parliamentary fights did
he find any of his own countrymen arrayed against
him. The only doubt, indeed, was how far, at a criti-
cal moment, the Government could reckon on the
presence or the active interest of their supporters. In
the famous division on Mr. Dunning's motion with
regard to the power of the Crown in 1780, there were
only seven Scottish members who voted against the
Government. Twenty-three voted for the Govern-
ment, but fifteen, or one-third of the whole repre-
sentatives, did not take the trouble to attend. When
the whole of Britain was divided between those who
sent addresses to the Crown in favour of the American
War, and those who sent petitions begging that means
of conciliation should be pursued, the vast majority
of the towns and counties of Scotland were to be
found amongst the "Addressers." Glasgow, whose
interests were so closely bound up with the American
trade, was amongst the few exceptions the other
way.^
In both these cases it may of course with justice
be said that the Scottish members of Parliament repre-
sented only a handful of men who exercised an exclusive
and most artificial franchise, while the municipal bodies
1 The chief purchases of American tobacco by the farmers-general of
France were made through Glasgow agents.
52 FROM 1770 TO 1780.
were corporations of the closest kind, which in no way
represented the bulk of the inhabitants. But there
was no resentment whatever against their action. The
country was simply indifferent. Even with the most
restricted franchise, an excited state of public opinion
shows itself in the demeanour of the onlookers. In
Scotland, if an election was contested, it was fought
merely upon personal grounds, or on the merits of
some local dispute, or when some burning question
about the disputed settlement of a minister or the
privileges of a trade guild was at stake. In ordinary
society, politics was tabooed, and men preferred to-
discuss the pros and cons of a protracted litigation,
the practical advantages or disadvantages of a certain
rotation of crops, or problems as to the origin of society
and the basis of our ethical notions. The flame of
loyalty to the sovereign burned steadily enough, if it
was not fanned into any special brightness by opposing
blasts. Round the name of George III. had gathered
something of the old attachment to King which had
fed the last days of Jacobitism ; and he was not loved
the less because his choice of a Scottish favourite had
been used as a weapon by his assailants. " Administra-
tion" was regarded as little more than the necessary
mechanism by which the King must govern ; and it
was the duty of every loyal citizen to support it as
something to which a rare, but more or less eflicacious,
appeal might occasionally be made.
It was during this placid period, when political dis-
putation was all but silent, when parties hardly existed,
but when Scotland was thrown back on herself by the
outburst of factious libellers, that the foundations of
the later Tory party were laid. Its political outlook
was not very wide, nor did it cherish any very com-
FOUNDATIONS OF SCOTTISH TORYISM. 53
prehensive political ideas. But it commanded the
support of many men of high intelligence. It rested
upon much that struck deep roots in the national
tradition. Above all, it was in large measure the
champion of a distinct nationality; it cherished
national customs, and it rested on resentment at
national insults.
Before the end of the decade we may trace the
beginning of other movements. But first it will be well
to observe some events of the time by means of which
the development of social and economical as well as
political change may be inferred.
The first of these is the strange outbreak of meal-
mobs, as they were called, which took place in 1773.
The rise in rent and the gradual growth of manu-
factures had increased the price of food. This was
ascribed to the exporting of grain, which was possible
after the home markets had been supplied. The
growth of an artisan class which had no direct interest
in agricultural production had been the cause of this
rise in price ; and it was this class whom the increased
price chiefly aflPected. Not only were they of no
political account in themselves, but they had no such
connection with the landed interest as gave them
any reflected importance. The pressure of hard prices
turned their thoughts against the exportation of grain,
and by a strange infatuation they thought that a remedy
might be found by destroying the stores which were
supposed to be accumulated for purposes of exporta-
tion. There were two ways in which the law prevented
grain from falling to its natural price, neither of which
was so much as questioned yet by the political economist.
One was a bounty on exported corn ; the other a fixed
anarket price, above which the corn had to rise before
54 FROM 1770 TO 1780.
importation was permitted. It was only in this genera-
tion that political economists were beginning to ques-
tion the foundation of such artificial methods of fixing
prices ; but the mobs sought a ready and less philo-
sophical method of stopping the exports, which, as
they fancied, were the cause of high prices, by trying
to destroy them before they were sent abroad.
These meal-mobs of 1773 occurred chiefly along the
banks of the river Tay between Perth and Dundee.
One granary after another was attacked by what were
apparently well-organised mobs, consisting chiefly of
the artisans from the towns. The farmers were natu-
rally defenceless, and there was absolutely no system of
police to which they could turn. The local authorities
were completely paralysed. Where a few rioters had
been arrested, their liberation was successfully de-
manded by a larger crowd, with whom terras had to be
made on condition that the stored grain should not be
exported, but sold in the local market for such price
as it might fetch. The agricultural interest was thus
at bay, and had to seek safety in their own power of
defence. The county gentlemen met together under
the presidency of the Sherifif, and arranged the signals
by which they should assemble with a sufluicient
number of their own dependants to repel any attack.
In the maintenance of order it was thus necessary to
have recourse to the most primitive methods. By these
methods, which linked together landlord, tenant, and
farm labourer for the protection of an industry in
which they had a joint interest, the outbreaks of the
artisans were for the time checked, and the authority
of the fiscal laws was vindicated. Two lessons had been
learned from this brief experience : the first, that, for its
own protection, society must turn its attention to the
SELF-OOVERNMENT AND POLICE. 55
condition of the poor ; the second, that order must be
safeguarded by some system of police. Each of these
lessons produced speedy results. Edinburgh led the
way in the establishment in the same year of a Society
for the Relief of the Honest and Industrious Poor.
Throughout almost all the counties, with Midlothian
and Forfarshire as the leaders, there were voluntary
combinations for the establishment of a police force to
be supported by the subscriptions of the inhabitants.
It was by practical lessons in social economy and in
self-government such as these, and not by the share
that she was allowed to take in imperial politics, that
Scotland learned first to play her part in political
affairs. The lesson was learned far more quickly than
it would have been learned in England under like
conditions. England was too large, her provinces too
much detached, their circumstances and conditions too
varied, to allow one example to permeate the whole.
But in Scotland, the lesson, once learned, quickly took
root and spread. The leading men of each county had
a common meeting-place in the capital. There they
exchanged ideas, discussed plans, and arranged their
schemes. There they had, in Dundas, the advantage
of a master-mind, prompt to advise, skilful to guide,
and equipped with abundant information as to the
circumstances of each county. Scotland was detached
from the general current of imperial affairs ; she lacked
any semblance of representative institutions ; her par-
liamentary, like her municipal franchise, was nothing
but a name. But she was learning the lesson of self-
government, and it may be questioned whether the
internal administration of Scotland under Dundas did
not move under a stronger guidance from the centre,
and with more of the strength that comes from unity.
1)6 FROM 1770 TO 1780.
than did England under the guidance of the central
Government. Edinburgh was the capital of the country
in a sense that London never was of England.
The Tayside rioters were brought to trial, but it is
noticeable that evidence against them was not easily
procured. Their defence was conducted with skill,
and the case against them was not unduly pressed.
Many of those put on their trial were acquitted, and
the highest sentence on those convicted was that of
transportation. The trials present a striking contrast
to those which a few years later throw a stain on
Scottish legal procedure. Clearly society felt strong
enough for self-defence, and saw no need to press too
hardly on the errors of misguided men, acting under
the strain of poverty and starvation.
It turned with all the more assiduity to the more
pleasing task of aiding the poor. The Edinburgh
poorhouse was an institution of some years' standing.
Hitherto it had depended on voluntary contributions
and on church-door collections. These were no longer
sufficient to cope with the increasing need, and the
annual deficit was mounting. The more forward spirits
had, as we have seen, already urged the adoption of a
poor-rate ; but the opposition was so strong that the
scheme had to be abandoned for the time.
But these were not the only signs that labour diffi-
culties were making themselves felt in Scotland. In
Greenock during the same year there were riots by
sailors who demanded higher wages, and whose demands
had to be met by temporising.^ But fears of a more
1 Two or three years later disputes of a similar kind arose in Edin-
burgh, owing to a demand by the journeymen tailors for higher wages.
The dispute was settled in a summary fashion. The Justices at Quarter
Sessions fixed the wages at a shilling a day ; and any journeyman who
EMIGRATION. 57
urgent kind arose from the wide-spreading emigration
from the Highlands. Shipload after shipload of able-
bodied men, with wives and families, were compelled
to quit their country for the American Colonies. The
Highland glens were being fast depopulated, and not
only were feelings of commiseration stirred in the
hearts of those who saw nothing but evil for their
country in the desertion of her sons, and of onlookers
like Johnson, but, besides all that, the draining of a
ready source of supply for the labour market was
seen to threaten the very existence, much more the
advance, of Scottish manufactures. The character
of the population that w^as thus deserting Scottish
soil in ever-increasing numbers is best judged from the
fact that these bands of emigrants in almost every case
carried with them a schoolmaster, to be supported at
the common cost. A nation does not lightly part with
emigrants w^ho lay such store by their parental and
social duties as these. Such emigrations w^ere perhaps
chiefly caused by, and were certainly most commonly
ascribed to, the decay of the clan system and the
break-up of the old social ties. But this was not
always so ; and we find evidence that it was sometimes
due not to the lessened power of the feudal chieftain,
but to the fact that the representatives of the old clan
rulers still exerted such influence as they retained in
the systematic encouragement of rapine, robbery, and
disorder, which rendered it impossible for the peaceful
farmer to secure or to retain a livelihood. It is to be
feared that this was not rarely the true version of what
romance might picture as the unwilling departure of
demanded, or any master who paid, a higher sum was to be liable to fine
and imprisonment. An early lesson in compulsory arbitration, which
finds advocates even in our own day !
58 FROM 1770 TO 1780.
the faithful dependant from the chief whose protecting
care had sheltered him until changed conditions de-
stroyed the power of doing so.^
But whatever the cause, there can be no doubt as
to the miseries which these emigrations entailed. The
shipowners who contracted for their freight were under
no supervision. At times complaints arose, and in-
quiries were made which proved that the ships were
little else than floating prisons, on which the emigrants
embarked only to die from starvation and disease
brought on by the neglect of every sanitary precaution,
or to be done to death by those who made a contract
that would be profitable only if the majority of the
passengers died before the voyage was nearly over.
Some alarm was caused about the same time by the
threatened fall in the linen trade. From the beginning
of the century until 1769 the trade had rapidly ad-
vanced. Its value to Scotland was enormously exag-
gerated, and a moderate amount of commercial fore-
sight would have discovered that it could form no verj^
decisive element in the nation's prosperity. Now it
showed what was a slight, and, as it turned out, a
temporary decrease, which was doubtless in part owing
to the growth of other industries, and particularly to
the rival claims of the woollen manufactures, which
held promise of far higher moment for Scotland. But
the alarm which this decrease excited was used in
order to press a protective duty on imported linens.
The attempt was unsuccessful, but no one sought to
question the expediency, on general grounds, of such a
^ In the Scots Magazine for 1774 (June) we find a letter from a certain
Mr. James Hogg, giving this robbery and its encouragement by the neigh-
bouring lairds, as the real ground for the emigration of himself and a
large body who joined him from Caithness.
HENRY DUNDAS. 59
duty. The protection was refused only because other
rival trades deemed it to give an unjust advantage over
themselves. The interest of the consumer was as yet
disregarded except in the arguments of the speculative
economist, whose theories were only slowly to bear
fruit.
In 1775 a new Parliament had met. Once more
North could face with a secure majority an Opposition
which could not somehow add to all its restlessness
and ability of attack any power of attracting support
from the nation. As before, the majority for the
Administration was swollen by the contingent from
Scotland ; and in May of the same year, Henry
Dundas, the son of one Lord President and the
brother of another, was appointed Lord Advocate,
sitting in Parliament as member for Midlothian.
Henceforth, for nearly thirty years, the Administration,
so far as Scotland is concerned, really meant Dundas.
We shall have to follow his career, so far as it is
directly concerned with Scotland, and we must dis-
cern his hand as the most powerful in her govern-
ment, even when his attention was well-nigh absorbed
in wider spheres. For the . moment he had an
easy task; but before he had been a month in office
he had to take an active part in a controversy which
might, but for the interposition of other events, have
developed into one of the first importance. For long
there had been grumbling at the absurdities of the
Scottish parliamentary franchise. It belonged only to
tenants holding directly of the Crown as superior, and
had no necessary connection with the possession, much
less with the occupation, of the land. But, on the
other hand, the superior who held of the Crown could
split his holding into many votes, and create what
60 FROM 1770 TO 1780.
M^ere merely fictitious qualifications to such an extent
as to flood the real proprietors. This could only be
limited by the threat of the larger proprietors to create
such fictitious votes up to the full extent of their
holding, and so outdo their smaller competitors. Only
rarely did a limitation even of such questionable expe-
diency operate as a deterrent.
In this year an attempt was made to initiate legis-
lation on the subject. The plan was started when
Dundas was only Solicitor-General ; but in the month
of October, some five months after he became Lord
Advocate, he presided at a meeting held in Mid-
lothian for the discussion of the subject. When the
discussion began, Dundas, with characteristic caution,
refused to declare himself; he preferred to listen, for
reasons which he would afterwards explain, to the
opinions of others. These opinions were, by a large
majority, in favour of the project, only Sir John Dal-
rymple and a few more speaking against it. When
the vote had been taken, Dundas declared himself an
enthusiastic supporter of the Bill. He had, he said,
refrained from giving his opinion in case that of the
freeholders had been difi"erent, and he had thus been
compelled, at their behest, to act in Parliament contrary
to his own convictions ; but now that he could count
on their support, he was determined to push the
matter forward. His speech was one which savoured
much more, indeed, of the Whig parliamentary re-
former than of a Tory Lord Advocate in Lord North's
Administration. "He hoped," he said, "to see the
day when the nobleman of £10,000 a year would not
disdain to take off his liat to the gentleman of £500 ;
when he would seek to gain influence, not by a pre-
ponderating number of votes, but by the way in which
PARLIAMENTARl^ REFORM MOOTED. 61
he did his duty to his neighbours, and thus deserved
popularity." Dalrymple did not lessen his opposition,
and prophesied that the Bill would meet with such
opposition from men in power above that it would
never pass into law. Dundas doubted the truth of
Dalrymple's surmise, but at all events he would press
the measure. The declaration is a curious proof of
the slightness of joint responsibility then existing be-
tween different members of a Government,
The time soon slipped by when Dundas was dis-
posed to preach parliamentary reform. The season for
that passed for him, as it did for the greater statesman
whose henchman he became. But the episode thus
falling at the outset of his career is not less interesting
m its personal application than as a symptom of a
growing readiness on the part of the leading men of
Scotland to advance from the lessons of local adminis-
tration to provide something less absurd and anomalous
than the existing parliamentary franchise. It is still
more curious that the advocacy of the project should
have come from Lord North's representative in Scot-
land, and that the opposition should come from one
who counted amongst the opponents — so far as Scot-
land contained opponents — of the Administration.
Dundas came to power with every advantage of birth
and natural endowment. He belonged to a family
which had established a sort of prescriptive right to
the great positions of the Scottish judicial Bench. Four
generations of the family had succeeded one another on
that Bench, and amongst them had been some of its
chief ornaments. Personally he was a man of striking
presence, with an impressive style of oratory, which
his broad vernacular did not render less effective after
the ear became accustomed to the emphatic burr. But
62 FROM 1770 TO 1780.
above all, he was a man born to direct and guide adminis-
tration, and with quick insight to discover and attract
adherents. His character stood justly high, and what-
ever the clouds that gathered about his later career,
not even his enemies would pretend that he himself
was guilty of any dishonourable act, or stooped to an
ignoble device even amidst the chicaneries of politics.
It would be idle to claim for him complete political
consistency ; but such a claim could not be made for
any statesman of the time, and would be little to his
credit unless as proving an almost adamantine strength
of rigid obstinacy. Take him for all in all, the name of
Henry Dundas is one of which Scotland may well be
proud, not as a Scottish administrator only, but as an
actor on a wider scene.
But whatever the personal ability of Dundas, be
derived his influence mainly from the fact that he re-
presented so completely the Scottish society of his day.
He belonged to one of its most powerful families. To
him, as to most of his compatriots, party divisions meant
little, and he was mainly desirous of preserving the
existing basis of society, and of advancing upon a course
of well-planned national improvement, so far as this
was consistent with the maintenance of the landmarks
of constitutional government as it was then understood.
He was thoroughly Scotch — in feeling, in sympathy,
and even in peculiarities of manner and of diction ; and
even when he came to add to his functions as dictator
of Scotland great achievements on a larger scene, he
never lost these peculiarities. He was on terms of
intimate and assured friendship with those who carried
on the traditions of an older day. He had all the love
of conviviality that marked his countrymen. He was
in full sympathy with the Moderate party in the Church,
DDNDASS FRIENDS: LOCKHART OF COVINGTON. 63
which comprised ahnost all that gave to her lustre and
distinction. He was one of the most characteristic
figures of a time in which Scotland was producing a
new national type pieced together out of her past in-
heritance.
Let us take as instances two of those closely con-
nected with him, representing peculiar features of the
society of the day. One was Alexander Lockhart of
Covington, who was at this time raised to the Bench
by the legal title of Lord Covington. He was now an
old man, having been born at the beginning of the
century. His grandfather was the Lord President
Lockhart who had been murdered by a disappointed
litigant. His father was the well-known Jacobite,
Lockhart of Carnwath, whose memoirs are a storehouse
of information regarding the machinations of the Jaco-
bite party, and the intricate network of schemes which
attended its gradual decay. He had himself been in
close sympathy with that party, but, like many others,
on the accession of George the Third he transferred his
loyalty ungrudgingly to the first native-born sovereign
of the Hanoverian dynasty, and found a substitute for
sympathy with a vanished cause in devotion to the
throne. He was a man of aristocratic mien and man-
ners, whose pride and superciliousness had been in-
creased by long neglect at the hands of the dominant
party of the Whigs. As an advocate he had been
distinguished for zeal and versatility rather than for the
balance of his legal judgment ; and while his violent
temper had involved him in frequent disputes, from
which he did not emerge with his personal honour
unimpaired, and although his passion for play had kept
his fortunes low% he was still the object of much personal
regard, and was deemed by many to have sufiered un-
64 FROM 1770 TO 1780.
deserved neglect. On the urgent representation of
Lord Mansfield, and with the support of Dundas, he
was now raised to the Bench ; and the appointment
seemed to mark the readiness of the Government to
obliterate those memories which kept the Jacobites in a
state of proscription.
Another was a man of a very different cast — Robert
Macqueen, afterwards raised to the Bench as Lord
Braxfield. As the son of a local solicitor in Lanark,
he could boast no aristocratic birth ; and to the end
of a long life he preserved unchanged the coarse and
uncouth exterior that marked his origin. He was a
man of boisterous manners, who carried his love of
society into an excess of roistering conviviality from
which all thought of decorum and of personal dignity
was banished. To this he joined a massive force of
application and a strength of intellect by which he
towered above all his contemporaries. The incidents
of a later day, when he was one of the most strenuous
combatants against what were, or what were supposed
to be, the forces of Revolution, have made him live to
posterity as a sort of Scottish counterpart of Judge
Jeffreys ; but whatever the outbursts of a fiery temper
and prejudices which he never sought either to curb
or to conceal, his character appeared very different to
his contemporaries. He was without literature, and
showed an open contempt for the philosophical and
speculative predilections of many of those amongst
whom he lived. But his massive grasp of legal prin-
ciples, his rugged sense, his acuteness, and his per-
spicacity won the respect even of his bitterest foes ;
while his abundant good-humour, his genial if coarse
bonhomie, and his unfailing wit, made him beloved by
his intimates. We must beware of trying such a man
MACQUEEN OF BRAXFIELD. 65
by any standard based npon the staid manners and
settled procedure of modern judicial usage. We must
remember all the jealousies that he united against
himself; the resentment of the literati against one
who scouted their pretensions and had no sympathy
with their pursuits ; the rancour of his weaker con-
temporaries, whose chicaneries he detected and for
the Haws of whose arguments he did not conceal his
contempt ; the condemnation of those who were shocked
by the licentiousness of his language and the absence
of all restraint in his conviviality ; and, finally, the
bitterness of a depressed and angry party, against
whom he deemed it his duty to turn all the engines
of judicial authority. But still we must accord to him
the praise of a great lawyer, of a powerful intellect,
of a man who resorted to no mean and petty tricks,
and who rigidly pursued the ends of justice according
to his lights. He too was one of Dundas's staunchest
adherents.
But the day when a fiercer fight was to present the
character of the leading men in a picture of more
contrasted light and shade had not yet come. For
the present, Scotland was occupied chiefly with care-
ful and piecemeal efforts at her own advancement.
The capital was gradually making herself more worthy
of her name. Already the long-projected bridge over
the Nor' Loch had added to the narrow limits that
had sufficed for ages a large and increasing suburb.
There was now a project^ for adding to the space
southwards by improving the access in that direction
by a bridge over the Cowgate, as the depression on the
1 Eventually carried out under the Provostship of Sir J. Hunter
Blair, tlie partner of Sir William Forbes in the most notable firm of
private bankers in Scotland.
VOL. II. E
60 FROM 1770 TO 1780.
southern side, flanking the saddleback on which the
city was built, was called. The cost would nowadays
seem modest, and is an index of what was counted a
great enterprise in those days : it was estimated at
£8600. But it was not suffered to pass without pro-
tests from those who preferred things as they were.
It was prophesied that this extension southwards must,
sooner or later, ruin the city. The new suburb to the
north had lowered the rents obtained for the high-
pitched tenements which crowded within the city
walls. This further addition would lower these
rents still more, until soon there would be no re-
sources available for the necessities of taxation.
In 1771 an event took place which was not without
significance for Edinburgh, when the foundation-stone
of a new High School was laid with great ceremony,
and when a project was begun which was hailed as
a most hopeful one by all her leading citizens. It
was an important step forwards in a sphere of which
Edinburgh had good reason to be proud as that of
her leading industry.
A change, tentative indeed, and hesitating at first,
but with far more reaching consequences than the
projects of the city ^^diles, was that which was
accomplished by the legislation of 1775, which eman-
cipated the colliers. It is strange, indeed, to read
that only then was the condition of slavery abolished
in Scotland. Scotland had obtained in 1701 her
equivalent to the Haheas Corpus Act. But that Ac
expressly enacted that its provisions were not t
extend to colliers and salters. Up to 1775 the.
labourers were serfs in the fullest sense of the wore
They were cut off by the brand of slavery from thei.
fellow-men. They were bound to the mine in whicl.
EMANCIPATION OF THE COLLIERS. 67
they worked, and were sold as a part of the working-
machinery. Once a child was entered for the work,
his liberty was no longer his own ; and as the neces-
sities.of his parents allowed them no choice, the child
of a collier was almost certainly a slave from his
earliest years. Even when this stain upon Scottish
civilisation was partially removed in 1775, the action
of the Legislature was cautious and timid. For the
existing serfs the period of emancipation was slow,
and the end was only to be obtained by legal process,
which was rarely within his power. It was only in
1799 that the last relic of this barbarism was re-
moved.
During the rest of the decade the local affairs are of
little moment. We read of a struggle between the
Trades Guilds and the Town Council of Edinburgh,
in which the former represented the more popular
side, and which seemed to portend an attack upon
the flagrant abuses of a close municipal government.
The city member, Sir Lawrence Dundas, seems to have
sympathised with the Town Council ; and when the
Trades Guilds complained of his betrayal of their
interests, he could only plead that he felt bound to
maintain a neutral attitude. The dispute lasted long,
and it ran high enough to turn the election in 1780,
when Sir Lawrence Dundas was defeated by Mr.
Miller, an advocate, the son of the Lord Justice-
Clerk. The defeat was a confirmation of the power
if his namesake, Henry Dundas, and of the Duke of
S)uccleuch, of whose party Sir Lawrence had been one
b.? the leading opponents, and whose anger he had
pecially aroused by being one of the seven Scottish
]iiembers who supported Mr. Dunning's famous motion
on the power of the Crown.
QS FROM 1770 TO 1780.
More than one dispute arose in which Edinburgh
was fiercely fought by Glasgow and the Western
shires as to the fixing of the price at which corn
might be imported. No one — amongst practical poli-
ticians— then opposed in principle the prevention of
importation when the prices fell below a certain stan-
dard. The question was only how that standard
should be fixed. Before the Union this had been
fixed from time to time by the Scottish Privy Council.
By an Act of 1741 the power was vested in the Court
of Session. In 1773 it had been transferred to the
Sherifl' of the county. A Bill was now proposed to
restore it to the Court of Session, and thus provide
greater fixity and security for agriculture. The struggle
became one between the landed interests and the .
farmers of Midlothian against the growing manufac-
turing interests of the West. Glasgow urged that
the price at which importation should be permitted
must be low, and that the prices of the Edinburgh
market, where agricultural produce was abundant,
must not rule for all Scotland. The landed interest,
on the other hand, felt their pockets threatened, and
looked upon such pretensions as threatening the very
constitution of the country.
But before the decade closed we find abundant
symptoms that smaller local interests were waning,
and that an era of fiercer party struggle was approach-
ing. Opinions on either side as regards the justice
and the expediency of the American War were be-
coming much more distinctly marked. The foreign
complications of Britain were now brought home to
Scotland in the most vivid way by the appearance of
privateers on her coasts. When it came to the town
of Leith being closely threatened by a flotilla under
DEVELOPMENT OF PARTY SPIEIT. 69
that wild nautical adventurer, John Paul Jones (a
renegade Scot from Kirkcudbrightshire, who sailed
successively under the flags of America, of France,
and of Russia), the excitement grew apace. The in-
cident brought an outburst of patriotic vigour over
the whole country. Town after town voted funds to
fit out ships for the national defence, or provided
bounties for seamen who would enlist for service.
The pressgangs were busy, and perhaps these bounties
were meant only to cloak a compulsory enlistment.
But anyhow, they showed that the people were
roused to the need of defending their coasts and
homes. Once more an attempt was made to wring
from the Imperial Parliament a measure for the estab-
lishment of a Scottish militia, and once more it met
with a rebuff. But this did not stop the national zeal.
The citizens began to enrol themselves as volunteers,
and to stimulate their martial ardour by the platoon
exercise, and by valorous marches through the streets
with the magistrates and town officers at their head.
Volleys were fired to show their indomitable courage,
and the diversion was closed by cheers for the King,
followed by an unlimited carouse. Throughout all
parts of the country the foreign struggle in which
the Empire was engaged began to excite a much
more real and lively interest than when it stirred an
occasional petition or address.
And as the martial feeling of the country grew, so
the utterances of those who opposed the Government
policy became more decided. The Moderate party in
the Church were still able to obtain votes for loyal
addresses to the Crown, in which the speedy crushing
of the American rebellion was made the subject of
confident aspiration. The close municipal corporations
70 FROM 1770 TO 178(1.
for the most part followed the same strain of loyal
invective against the rebels. But other notes made
themselves heard. The Glasgow traders found the
pressure on their nascent prosperity caused by the
war as evere strain on their loyalty. Dr. John Erskine,
the leader of the High-flying party in the Church, and
one of her most respected clergymen, preached against
the war, and found many sympathisers in a congre-
gation which was the largest and most influential in
the capital. When the chief question which divided
English political parties began to form in Scotland
opposing camps, which were divided also on the
fundamental question of ecclesiastical politics, it was
certain that these English parties would soon have
their counterparts there.
In the year 1778 there arose the first tentative
discussion of a question which was to have a much
deeper influence on Scottish politics, albeit an influ-
ence totally out of proportion to its intrinsic import-
ance. This was the question of the removal of
Catholic disabilities. The question was one on which
an agitation was proceeding at the same time in
England. But instead of the division of parties on
the subject corresponding in England and Scotland,
it was in many respects fundamentally different.
Many of the fiercest opponents of the Administration
were in England in favour of the repeal of these
disabilities. In Scotland, on the other hand, the
mere suggestion of their repeal gave the opponents
of the Government precisely what they sought for
— the opportunity of an effective and popular attack
on the Administration. In both countries the struggle
damaged the Government, but in only one respect
was the damasje of the same kind. In both countries
CATHOLIC DISABILITIES. 71
they were charged with vacillation and temporising ;
but in England they were accused of insufficient
vigour in suppressing the riotous outburst which the
legislative repeal of the disabilities had caused ; in
Scotland the whole weight of the charge was that they
had tampered with a design which would have delivered
the country, in the opinion of the opponents of the mea-
sure, into the hands of the Roman Catholics, and would
have wiped out a chapter of Scottish history which
popular sentiment deemed the most glorious. The
question of Catholic Emancipation wounded the Gov-
ernment through the Moderate party in the Church.
That party had no reason to be ashamed of the part
it played in the discussion ; but it mistook the
temper of the nation, and suffered a reverse in con-
sequence, from the effects of which it never completely
recovered.
It was in 1778 that the first talk was heard in
Scotland of a Bill being contemplated which should
bring such relief to the disabilities of the Catholics
as had been given in England just before. No Roman
Catholic could sit in Parliament or in any municipal
body, nor exercise the franchise for either ; and these
disabilities it was now proposed to remove. But
further than that, no Roman Catholic could hold
property ; no Roman Catholic could take part in the
education of the young. These were restrictions
which amounted to persecution, and it was suggested
that they should be removed. Further, it was in
the eye of the law a crime to open a Roman Catholic
place of worship or to celebrate the Roman Catholic
ritual. Usage had, in fact, relaxed this restriction,
and Roman Catholic chapels had been built in some
of the larger towns which had caused no offence
72 FROM 1770 TO 1780.
to a population who scarcely noticed their existence.
It could hardly have been anticipated that the proposal
to give them a modified sanction by the law should
awaken all the slumbering rancour of religious bitter-
ness. But more than this, the very presence of
Roman Catholics in Scotland was forbidden by the
law. No one could give them shelter for three nights
without making himself liable to severe penalties.
Any one lying open to suspicion of holding the tenets
of that religion could be summoned and examined
by the Presbytery of the bounds. These provisions
of the law, indeed, it would have been absurd to
enforce. It may well have seemed a mere act of
constitutional decency to efface the remnants of such
barbarous intolerance.
But on the first note of the intended change being
sounded some alarm was felt. The memory of old
religious fights, and all the fierce animosity which they
had called forth, was slumbering, but was not dead.
At first, however, the full extent of the feeling was not
gauged. Those most prone to alarm put questions to
the Lord Advocate, who did not scruple to avow that
some such intention was entertained. For a time
those who saw its justice and were anxious that a bad
page should be torn out of the statute-book, were
firm to their purpose. A motion was proposed in the
General Assembly to protest against any such scheme,
but by the influence of Principal Robertson and the
Moderate party it was defeated. This did not, how-
ever, stay the fury of popular feeling, nor were the
Iligh-flyers dismayed at the defeat of their first attempt.
They quickly saw that here, at least, they had the
whole force of popular sentiment on their side, and
that this was a lever which they might use with telling
ANTI-CATHOLIC RIOTS. 73
effect against the dominant party. Dr. James Erskine
found here a more telling theme than he had found in
decrying the justice of the American war. In England
the resistance had been slower, and when it did break
out, it was chiefly confined to the more ignorant classes.
In Scotland the outburst of Anti-Catholic feeling was
at once clear and decisive, and it united on its side the
vast majority even of the educated class. Under such
stimulus, it is not surprising that the violence of the
mob soon broke out. In February 1779, the Roman
Catholics were the victims of lawless attacks both in
Edinburgh and Glasgow ; not indeed of such appalling
magnitude as soon after, under the insane leadership
of Lord George Gordon, reduced London to a state of
anarchy, but sufficient to show the fury of the people
and to shake authority. In Edinburgh, a building in
the Trunk Close, where a Roman Catholic Bishop
resided, and where, as was reported, there was a
Popish chapel, was burnt to the ground before the
eyes of the city -guard ; and next day the house of a
Popish clergyman in Blackfriars Wynd was attacked
and plundered. The house of Principal Robertson,
who had countenanced the motion for repeal, was
threatened. He himself received letters announcing
his coming murder ; and the pillage of shops whose
owners were reported to be Roman Catholics was a
daily occurrence. The same scenes were enacted in
Glasgow, and the magistrates could only temporise
and endeavour to appease the mob by assuring them
that the project of repeal was definitely abandoned.
The Government discovered too late the mistake
they had committed, and that the forces of order were
too weak to permit them to advance farther in the path
they had chosen. Whatever might have been the
74 FROM 1770 TO 1780.
difficulty of pushing forward a scheme which at the
worst was only premature, such vacillation was fatal.
The assurances now given that the proposal was
abandoned did not suffice to calm the feelings that had
been aroused. A Society for the Defence of Protes-
tant Interests was established. No alarm was too
absurd to find credit with an angry mob whose
fanaticism had been aroused, and whose ignorance
suffered them to accept as true any fable which their
leaders chose to invent. The matter was debated in
Parliament, and the course of the debate showed how
little connection there was between the opposition
which the Government had to meet at St. Stephens
and that which thwarted their plans in Scotland. At
Westminster, Fox and Burke declaimed against the
weakness of the Government that had allowed a
fanatical mob to defy the law, and urged the duty of
toleration and the urgent necessity of purging the
statute-books of laws which were barbarous and out
of date. ^Meanwhile the Scottish Opposition accused
the Government of being in league with the Pope to
betray the Protestant liberties of the country ; and one
of the Scottish representatives, Lord Frederick Camp-
bell, did not scruple to say that he would take every
child of a Roman Catholic father from his parent's
hands and compel his education in a Protestant school.
Burke carried on a heated correspondence with one of
the Opposition party in Scotland, who might have sided
with him in denouncing Lord North, but who held
the maintenance of the disabilities to be above all
secular policy. This strange complication amongst
their opponents did not, however, make the position of
the Government any easier. They had abandoned their
scheme, but in abandoning it they had inflicted a
PROJECT OF REPEAL ABANDONED. / 0
deadly blow on their friends in Scotland. The
Moderates had supported repeal on much the same
grounds that the Tories seventy years before had
granted toleration to the Episcopalians, because they
hoped thereby to crush fanaticism. But they had
miscalculated in their estimate of the forces which
they had to encounter. They had mistaken a super-
ficial latitudinarianism for a real abandonment of
principles which the religious struggle of no ancient
date had burned into the hearts of the people. They
had not, indeed, to contend with the keen dialectical
skill and enthusiastic conviction of the Covenanters ;
but the memories of these were reflected — albeit
faintly and in a grotesque travesty — in the lawless
fanaticism of an ignorant mob. The Moderates found
themselves now deiiounced as Tories in politics and
as Revolutionists in religion ; and neither of these
was a character which Scottish tradition tended to
render popular.
Nothing remained but to bury the project with
decency. Neither party had much to gain by prolong-
ing it. The opponents of the Government counted
amongst their party many who had no wish to appear
as foes of toleration. An alliance with a lawless mob
was inconvenient. A few were found, indeed, to defend
the outbreaks of violence by saying that the Roman
Catholics were there in defiance of the law, and that
their places of worship, being forbidden by express
statute, had no more right to protection than the known
haunts of thieves and highwaymen. The more respect-
able of the High-flying party could scarcely countenance
such incentives to robbery and murder ; and even had
they dared to do so, the outbreaks of the Gordon riots
in London gave an object-lesson which could not be
76 FROM 1770 TO 1780.
overlooked. A last debate took place in the General
Assembly, The project of repeal was admittedly aban-
doned, and the fight had to take place upon a sham
issue. No one attempted to deny that the feeling of
Scotland was, for the time at least, absolutely opposed
to the scheme. To that feeling the Moderates pro-
fessed to yield. So far as reasoning and eloquence
went, they had an easy superiority over their opponents.
They denied the danger of repeal ; they vindicated
their own attachment to Protestant tenets ; they
mocked the absurd fears which had been aroused in
an ignorant mob. But all they could achieve was that
the motion passed by the Assembly should be one of
satisfaction at the abandonment of the scheme, instead
of one denouncing its authors and exciting still further
the alarm of the nation about imaginary dangers.
So ended a dispute in which the Government had
rashly, and without an adequate estimate of the feeling
of the country, adopted a scheme which had the sym-
pathy of the very men who were the chief opponents of
the Government in England, and had afterwards found
themselves unequal to carry it through. The initial
rashness and the subsequent vacillation of the Govern-
ment had been turned to good account by those who
were jealous of the Moderate party in the Church.
The struggle left behind it a rancour of party feeling of
which the next few years saw an amazing growth.
CHAPTER XV.
FROM 1780 TO 178 4.
After the project for the repeal of the Catholic dis-
abilities was effectually disposed of, the agitation died
down, but it did not prevent suspicion from rankling in
the minds of a large number of the people. The out-
rages of the mob in London, under the reckless leader-
ship of Lord George Gordon, had indeed sufficed to
turn all thinking men against excesses whose only
possible excuse was the fanaticism of bigotry ; but
outrages did not f 'Iter the sympathies of the uneducated
crowd, and still less did they modify the tactics of those
who found in these sympathies convenient instruments
for their own party purposes. When Lord George
Gordon was brought to trial, the crowd was still in his
favour, and the eloquence of Erskine, then in the full
flush of his oratorical fame, and careless how he abused
the forms of the court in his zeal for his client, was
sufficient to extort from the jury a verdict of Not
Guilty. To the mob, sunk in the usual ignorance, and
misled by a more than usual passion of reckless faction,
the verdict was no doubt congenial, and it must be
recorded with shame that it was hailed with acclama-
tion in Edinburgh, where the reception of the news
was celebrated bv bonfires and illuminations. It was a
78 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
new, and not a very healthy symptom, that the triumph
of mob rule in England should arouse the sympathy of
Scotsmen, who had been wont to look upon its excesses
with the indifference of spectators. The Assembly
of the Church still continued to pass loyal resolutions,
in which the excesses of fanaticism Avere condemned.
But amongst the mass of the people the Protestant
Association was still predominant, and its effect on
party feeling was not modified, as it was in England,
by the fact that toleration was supported by such
members of the Opposition as Fox and Burke. In
Scotland, the Opposition, such as it was, found its
best policy to be unmitigated persecution of their
Catholic fellow-subjects, and supplied its necessary
heat from the flames of popular fanaticism.
For ten years the Opposition had been noisy and
energetic rather than powerful, so far, at least, as num-
bers went ; but now the Ministry of Lord North was
verging towards its fall. The war was dragging its
weary length, uncheered by any notable successes and
accompanied by increasing dangers and augmented
taxation. Ministers spoke with uncertain and varying
voices as to their policy and their intentions, and the
resourcefulness and quiet humour of Lord North were
no longer a match for the unwearied attacks of an
Opposition that compensated its paucity in numbers by
copious eloquence and amazing versatility in parlia-
mentary fence. Scotland, indeed, was not greatly con-
cerned in the party fight raging at Westminster ; and
her indifference to it was due partly to the political
influence of Dundas, and partly also to the instinctive
sense which Scotland still retained that the fury of
faction was unsound, affected, and unreal. The mass
of the Scottish people had no direct means of making
STRENGTH OF THE MINISTERIAL PARTY IN SCOTLAND. 79
their influence felt. All the parliamentary electors in
Scotland numbered little over two thousand, and many
members of this select body held their franchise on an
unreal and fictitious tenure. The men of real politi-
cal influence could be counted almost by scores, and
they were thoroughly under the guidance of those who
held the reins of Administration. If the county elec-
tions were entirely in the hands of the territorial
aristocracy, who formed almost a family of their own,
the burgh elections were even worse. These were de-
cided by the delegates from the various groups of
burghs that formed each constituency, and there was
not one of these delegates that had not his price, and
that was not open to a deal with the highest bidder.
And the highest bidder was almost certainly on the
side of Administration. Popular feeling might, indeed,
express itself by riotous assemblies and by attacks on
property, but from, any approach to free representa-
tion, in any form, 'i was rigorously excluded.
Yet it would be wrong to say that the predominant
loyalty to Crown and Administration was forced upon
Scotland against its own free-will, or that its only basis
was the fact that political power was absorbed by a privi-
leged class. Power was in the hands of a narrow and
often selfish oligarchy, but on the whole that oligarchy
represented the best feeling and soundest sense of the
nation. Political influence w^as, indeed, in the hands
of a small number, but in many respects that small
number was singularly typical of the whole. The
same characteristics and the same sympathies pervaded
all society. The outburst of feeling antagonistic to
Scotland at the beginning of the reign had left in-
evitable results. Scotland was driven in upon her-
self; her very isolation nursed all the strength of her
80 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
national feeling, and evolved a national individuality
built upon traditions, homely characteristics, and the
close sense of kinship that was ever intensely strong in
her soil, and that now began to embrace the Celtic
fringe which for ages had been divided by a marked
contrast from the Lowlands. The very smallness of
the country made the sense of nationality — or " kind-
liness " in its stricter sense — more strong. There was
no wealth sufficient to create wide distinctions between
class and class. Powerful as was the influence of
birth and hereditary rank, it was an influence which
pervaded all classes, and in which none was too poor
to have a share. A distant cousinship made the
bonnet-laird partake the feelings of his feudal superior,
and he in his turn formed a link between the highest
in the land and his own humble dependants, who
shared the name and claimed the kinship of the great
territorial magnates. Simplicity of habits combined
with the love of hospitality was the habit of all alike,
and every class was impregnated with that honhomie
which often degenerated into coarse and brutal excess.
The meal-mobs and the occasional strikes of the
labourers show that on the outer fringe of the social
fabric there was growing up a discontented and hither-
to downtrodden class who found the new conditions of
life unsupportable ; but it was as yet a small section,
to which even a free system of representation on the
widest scale then dreamt of by the most visionary refor-
mers would have given absolutely no weight. On the
whole, such wealth as the country possessed was fairly
distributed. There was no extravagance of luxury and
but little of grinding penury. The better class was
alive to its duties, and was ready to give money and
labour to works of philanthropy, if such philanthropy
CONCENTRATIOX OF NATIONAL LIFE IN EDINBURGH. 81
involved no dangerous political principle. Scotland
was without any representative system, but there is no
reason to think that at this time, if any such system
had existed, its political colour would have been in any
way different from what it was.
Another effect of the smallness of the country was
the concentration of social and political influence in the
capital. The population of Edinburgh was not much
less than eighty thousand souls — a number in excess
probably of any four other towns in Scotland ; but
this preponderance in numbers only faintly expresses
the preponderance in importance of the capital. Com-
merce had not yet grown to such an extent as to balance
that influence by changing Glasgow into the second
city of the Empire for financial weight. In Edinburgh
was gathered all, or almost all, that was important for
social weight, for administrative capacity, and for
marked supremacy ;n literature and in thought. In
population, if not in wealth, she could hold her own
with any city of the Empire except London ; and as a
literary centre she was not only a second when there
was no other in the race, but she could even prove an
attraction for many to whom the literary coteries of
London were open.
The society that gathered there was a singularly
picturesque one. For generations it had dwelt in
the rookeries of the High Street, pent so close
that all the leading families might seem to be the
inhabitants of a single wide-stretching tenement,
where they were thrown into constant contact, and
knew each other as the members of one great family
from childhood to the grave. Slowly, and with a
certain reluctance, some of the more innovating spirits
had found homes in the New Town ; but the Old
VOL. II. F
82 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
Town was still the central hive towards which their
affection gravitated, or to which their patriotism
cluni^. And it must be remembered that nowhere
in the British Isles had any municipality roused such
a sense of local patriotism as that which Edinburgh
inspired in her citizens. The noble and the judge,
the advocate and the clergyman, the well-to-do shop-
man and the porter or caddie, the sleek bailie and
the captain of the town-guard — each and all dwelt
in a city which was a veritable home to them. All
were known to one another as familiar faces in
the streets. Their physiognomy, their foibles, their
dress, and the measure of their conviviality — all were
a bit of the daily life of the city : the fame of some
was the pride, the eccentricities of others the habitual
amusement, of their fellow-citizens. Divided they
might be in sympathies and in opinion, but they were
members of one family, held together none the less
closely because family affection was varied by domestic
bickerings.
The very variety, indeed, was one cause of the
closeness of this society, because it made it self-
sufficing. Within the narrow circle was comprised
every type. The Jacobite tradition still survived,
and, no longer an object of suspicion or of fear, it
became an element of picturesque romance. De-
feated, hopeless, discredited, fast fading into the
dim background of history, Jacobitism, nevertheless,
held its place in Scottish hearts. None would have
readily spared from Edinburgh circles the aristocratic
dames who held the tenets of their ancestors, and
who could defend them with nerve and grit. Even
those who made no parade of public sympathy for
such notions were proud of their friendship, and
THE JACOBITE REMNANT. 83
acquired social importance if they could claim their
kinship. With all their aristocratic pride, these
ladies were tied down to no trammels of conventional
habit. They presented every variety of demeanour,
from the grave dignity of the grande dame to the
free manners of the hoyden, who knew that no sim-
plicity of dress or life could deprive her of the
respect due to her birth. One and all preserved,
with rigid tenacity, the marked peculiarities of
Scottish diction, and would have scorned to debase
her pedigree by affecting a language which was not
that understood and used by the humblest of her
neighbours. None deemed that poverty was an in-
dignity, but all looked upon a certain measure of
hospitality, however humble, to be the first and most
essential object of such scanty means as she possessed.
It was much the sarAe with the male portion of the
community. Ingrained habits of conviviality did not
interfere with the dignity that enshrined the highest
class ; but the scenes to which it led effectually
prevented that dignity from assuming an austere or
stern pride. The dignitary issued forth in the morn-
ing to meet the ungrudging tribute of respect from
his humbler fellow-citizen ; but the carouse made
him seek his home at night under equally deep ob-
ligations to the friendly guidance of the caddie, who
respected him none the less because he had a fellow-
feeling for his weakness.
Within this society there was a wide and healthy
divergence of opinion. Amidst all the picturesque
surroundings of tradition, the impulses which were to
stir the new generation were as strong in Edinburgh as
in any corner of the Empire. Religion was there as
tolerant, speculative philosophy as bold, scientific dis-
84 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
covery as keen-sighted as in any country of Europe,
Romance was already awakening a new or slumbering
sense, and poetry was there learning to acquire a direct-
ness and simplicity which was to overturn the formal
traditions that had prevailed throughout the century.
In the poorest country to be found within any of the
leading kingdoms of Europe, the foundations of the
science which was to lay down the principles regulating
the distribution of wealth were being propounded. It
was a society self-centred, and yet keenly alive to all
the larger movements going on beyond it. Its mem-
bers travelled widely, but kept their hearts always upon
home. It went abroad and studied others closely ; and
in its turn received with hospitality, and yet with self-
respect and pride, those who came to it to learn what
it had to teach.
It was little wonder that for such a society the course
of English politics had small interest or charm. The
scorn and sarcasm of its southern neighbours gave to
it, with all its diversities, one point in common, that of
proud concentration, and the violence of English fac-
tion as displayed at Westminster only disgusted it.
The name of Chatham had roused and attracted it. To
the educated and those who were frequent visitors to
London the names of Burke, and even of Fox, were
familiar. But the Rockinghams and Shelburnes, the
Sandwiches and the Cavendishes, emerging in all the
tortuous political intrigues of the day, were names and
names only to them. Loyalty to the Crown, and to
the Administration as representatives of the Crown -^
the firm desire to maintain the supremacy of the Em-
pire, and to suffer no trafficking with revolution ; a fixed
determination that even if political changes of detail
were necessary, these changes should be carried out
CLOSE OF THE AMERICAN WAR. 85
on no revolutionary principle, and should involve no
fundamental alteration of the constitution ; a common
persuasion that, however bold might be their philoso-
phical speculations, there should be no disturbance of
the State religion as an accepted article of belief and
as a system of social police — all these were principles
which animated the whole of this complex and vigo-
rous society, whatever their differences of opinion in
detail.
In the autumn of 1781 the whole nation was stirred
by the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, which
virtually closed the war. Naturally it led to the fall of
Lord North's Ministiy ; but it is no part of our business
here to discuss the question of his paramount respon-
sibility for an issue of^the war, as to the principle of
which English political leaders had shown an almost
bewildering variety of opinion, and in the conduct of
which the Government had been assailed by every
weapon which an unpatriotic faction could contrive.
In Scotland, as elsewhere, the natural impulse was to
lay the blame on the Ministers of the Crown.^ The
dominant note of Scottish politics was what was known
as the Revolution Whig ; and although that phrase was
little more than a sort of high-sounding title to poli-
tical orthodoxy, and was professed by many whose
opinion diverged amazingly, yet the name and memory
1 It would be hard to give any connected or consistent account of
Burns's politics, according to the party shibboleths of the day ; but he
knew his countrymen's sympathies, and doubtless he exj)ressed a preva^
lent feeling when he wrote in 1786 in the " Dream" : —
" But faith ! I muckle doubt, my sire,
Ye've trusted Ministration
To chaps who in a barn or byre
Wad better fill'd their station
Than court yon day."
8Q FROM 1780 TO 1784.
of Chatham were powerful enough in Scotland to make
the contrast between his triumphs and the failures of
North a poignant one. But there was no such virulence
of feeling as was stirred by the invective of party
rancour in England, and still less was there any
inclination to abandon loyalty to the Crown, or to
despair of the possibilities of national defence. The
martial ardour of the Volunteers was as strong as ever ;
and however easily such a movement lent itself to the
sneers of those to whose political views it formed an
impediment, yet it gave proof enough that the patriotic
zeal of the nation was not abated.
It is true that amongst the Scottish members some
who had before supported Lord North were now stirred
to opposition, and joined in that natural condemnation
which dogs the feet of failure. Sinclair, the member
for Caithness, whose name emerges in so many spheres
of activity during the next generation, and to whose
officious versatility Scotland was only one of the many
domains for the administration of which he deemed
that Providence had made him responsible, had gone
to Westminster in 1780 as one of Lord North's sup-
porters. But for such a man the wire-pulling of party
had irresistible attractions. He was not without merit,
and certainly not without a kind of ability, unillumi-
nated by the faintest ray of humour. But his fussiuess
knew no bounds. He had scarcely taken his seat in
the House before he was making profuse offers of
support to the Prime Minister. Within a few months
he was busy over a reconstruction of parties, and was
in correspondence with half the members of Parliament.
Pamphlets poured from his new-fledged pen with be-
wildering rapidity. He was ready to gauge, and if
% need be to reorganise, the naval power of the country,
THE FALL OF LORD NORTH. 87
and doubtless, on an emergency, assume its command.
Political economy had no secrets for him ; he pursued
statistics with the ardour of an infatuated lover, and
he laid down the law with absolute conviction on every
knotty question of financial policy. There was no
possible sphere of activity upon which he was not at
all times ready to thrust himself, and none in which,
when once he had appeared on the stage, he did not
deem it part of Nature's arrangement that he should
take the lead. In 1782 it was only natural that such
a man should take the Government most summarily to
task. He had no doubt but that the ruin of the nation
was impending, and as little hesitation in assigning the
responsibility. But a/1 Scotsmen were not quite so
cocksure. Adam Smith — a consistent Whig, if ever
there was one — replied to Sinclair's confident predic-
tions of national ruin by words of wisdom — " Be
assured, my young friend, there is a deal of ruin in a
nation." Other Scotsmen besides Adam Smith waited
the issue with some confidence, and were not disposed
to strain the case unduly against the Ministry. Even
Sinclair's new-born opposition zeal could not exactly
guide him to certainty as to the composition of any
Ministry that was to take their place.
In those who succeeded North, there was certainly
little that could rouse the interest or stir the en-
thusiasm of Scotland. Rockingham's Ministry repre-
sented a strange union of the old Whig aristocracy,
whose political creed was bounded by implicit faith in
the divine right of the great Whig families, with the
fresher strain of Whiggism now led by Shelburnc, and
claiming to represent the creed and inspiration of
Chatham. Accident had brought these two parties
together, but they hated one another almost more^.^'*"^'^.?^.
» A*
S^
88 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
than either hated North. In a few months Kocking-
ham died, and the feeble tie which had held together a
partnership so ill-assorted was broken. Shelburne be-
came First Minister in July, and as a consequence Fox
and Burke resigned. Fox's place was taken by Pitt,
who became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and under
this reconstructed Ministry the Peace of Paris was
signed in January 1783.
Meanwhile a coalition had been formed between
Fox and North in opposition, which amazed the nation,
and played havoc with any claim which Fox could ever
maintain to political principle. In February 1783 that
coalition managed to snatch a victory from the Govern-
ment. But the King refused at first to succumb to the
fate which saddled him with such an ill-omened alli-
ance. For weeks he sought expedients to escape from
the necessity, and it was only when all expedients
failed him that he consented to accept the Duke of
Portland as First Minister, with Fox and North as
Secretaries of State.
Amidst these kaleidoscopic changes Scotland had
remained a puzzled, an indifierent, and latterly a dis-
gusted spectator. She rightly deemed them to be
symptomatic of the lowest degradation of party poli-
tics, out of which the country was to be lifted only by
the rise of some transcendent leader. The intricate
causes influencing such changes were secrets into
which Scotland had neither the wish nor the means to
penetrate. It was enough for her that, so far as the
supreme interests of the nation were concerned, such
changes were absolutely without significance. The
logic of facts, too grim to be questioned, directed the
course of Imperial politics, and dictated the terms of
the Peace of 1783. In that Peace no Minister or set
THE PEACE OF 1783. 89
of Ministers had any more real influence than the
winds have upon the bare mountain tops across which
they sweep. This or that concession of form was
demanded by one Minister to save any flimsy pretence
of consistency to which he might lay claim with regard
to the American colonies. One had once thought that
conciliation was expedient, but that the sovereign
rights of the British Parliament must in the abstract
be maintained. Another had thought the claims of
Parliament overweening, and had advocated concession
not only in practice but in theory. So they squabbled
amongst themselves as to points of form — whether an
acknowledgment of infiependence should or should
not precede negotiations — and so on. Such quibbles
were absolutely worthless in face of the fact that
coercion had failed, that our armies were destroyed,
and that the stern reality of defeat must be acknow-
ledged. We may well be thankful that negotiations
begun on a basis so compromising, and conducted
amidst such factious bickerings in the English Parlia-
ment, did not result in even more humiliating con-
cessions. What deemed itself enlightened opinion
strongly condemned any attempt to retain Gibraltar ;
but, fortunately for the Empire, such self-appraised
enlightenment failed then, as it may be hoped it will
often fail hereafter, to move the instinct of the British
race. Ministers might have surrendered the gateway
of the Mediterranean at the promptings of party
politics, but, fortunately, behind Ministers there stood
the stronger barrier of popular judgment, unenlightened,
but none the less decisive.
The fate of war had snatched from the scene the
bone of contention which had served for party warfare
for a dozen years. Factions were forced to turn to
90 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
other things. Ministers made spasmodic and feeble
attempts to carry out piecemeal legislation. But they
were divided and half-hearted, and without any guid-
ing principle ; and so far as Scotland was concerned,
they refrained even from the attempt.
So long as the Rockingham Administration held
together, and even during that of Shelburne, which
lasted till May 1783, Scotland seems, on the whole,
to have accepted the successors of Lord North with
acquiescence, if not with any great cordiality. But
the fact was that the changes down to the latter
date left Scottish administration practically unaltered.
It remained in the strong hands which had guided
it since 1775. Dundas was Lord Advocate under
Rockingham and Shelburne, as he had been under
North. To pretend that by so remaining he was
guilty of inconsistency is to bring against him a
charge from which no politician of the day could
be pronounced free. If Dundas had been consistent
amidst all the various evolutions of party, he
would have stood alone. For months the Treasury
and the front Opposition benches were the scene of
transformations to be equalled only on the boards
of a theatre in the pantomime season, or by the
shifting reflections cast by the quick-moving slides
of a magic-lantern. Now Fox and Dundas faced
North and Pitt ; a few weeks later Fox and North
were side by side, and joined in denouncing Pitt and
Dundas ; now Fox and Pitt were found supporting
a project of reform opposed by Dundas ; and before
we have time to classify them anew we find Pitt and
Dundas in one lobby, Fox in the other. ^Miat pos-
sible consistency could any single figure maintain
amidst the maze of such a bewildering dance ? Which
THE PLACE OF DUNDAS IN GOVERN.MENT. 91
is in a position to accuse another of lack of allegiance
to a principle ?
But to advance such a charge against Dundas is
indeed to misunderstand the whole position. During
these strange years, a Minister really fulfilled a double
r6le. He took his place in the rough-and-tumble
contest of debate. In these debates it was doubtless
recognised that each member of the Government
should have a regard to the interest of the Govern-
ment, and should do his best to maintain its majority.
But how he was to do so was left to himself to
judge, and the varyinrj judgments of the different
members of the Goy^rnment often led them into
opposite lobbies, and made them attack one another
in debate. The bonds of administrative discipline
were so loose as hardly to be felt, and their tex-
ture was so flimsy as to be almost invisible. In
these parliamentary fights Dundas had no difficulty
in reconciling his own independence with the very
moderate concessions that had to be made to the de-
mands of the Government Whips ; but in the other
role which he had to fill — that of administration
— Dundas had a freedom of action far greater than
that open to any other member of the Government.
Under successive changes Dundas remained virtually
king of Scotland, and within his own domain no one
dreamed of attempting any interference. Under Shel-
burne and under Rockingham, as under North, Dundas
was practically uncontrolled. ^Yhen the Coalition of
Fox and North held power for a few months, then in-
deed the position of Dundas became irksome, both for
himself and for the English Ministers. It became
evident that his place must be supplied ; but so strong
A^ as his hold on Scottish administration that the Minis-
92 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
try hesitated and seemed to shrink from the change.
Months passed, and Dundas still held the administra-
tion in his hands, and it was only on the eve of their
fall that the Coalition Ministry replaced Dundas by
Henry Erskine, who had a few weeks' tenure of the
office of Lord Advocate before the advent of another
and more enduring Administration. Before the close
of 1783 the Coalition Government had fallen, and the
shifting phases of degrading faction fight were ended
in the accession to ofiice of the man under whose rule
England was to remain during the momentous years
that closed the century. It was in December 1783
that the King took the decisive step that freed him
and the nation from the debasing scenes through which
it had passed — scenes in which one reputation after
another was bartered away for a few months of decep-
tive power. For the time it looked as if the King had
risked his authority by an unlucky venture, and as if
the new Government would last only for weeks, if not
for days. Pitt's acceptance of ofiQce as First Lord of
the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer was
laughed at as " a boyish prank." The schoolboy who
had ventured to assume office in the teeth of an adverse
majority was scarcely to be dealt with except by derisive
sneers at the freak by which he presumed to wear for
a few days the emblems of power. For the moment
his arrogance was intolerable, but it would soon give
place to amusement at his fall.
One man alone saw the probable issue of the game,
and ventured all upon his loyalty to Pitt. Others
might deride : Dundas alone never wavered in his firm
belief that the future lay with the one man in Parlia-
ment who was born to rule. For five months Pitt had
to maintain an unequal fight against a bitter and de-
THE ALLIANCE BETWEEN PITT AND DUNDAS. 93
risive majority. He could only maintain his position
by a lofty and invincible pride. Derision changed to
furious and almost inarticulate invective. The out-
raged faction, whose fury he treated with calm disdain,
felt not the semblance only, but the reality of power
slipping from their hands. They stood condemned
before the tribunal of the nation, stripped of character
and credit, and knowing that dissolution would carry
them to ruin. Pitt was not to be hurried. He would
vouchsafe no answer to the angry questions as to his
intentions, save an absolute refusal to share his con-
fidence with the House. For these five months this
youth of twenty-five maintained the combat against an
Opposition frantic with baffled rage. Night by night
he found himself in a minority. All the eloquence,
all the debating power, all the official experience was
in the balance against him. His only aids were his
own undaunted courage and the unswerving loyalty of
Dundas. Dundas did not again assume the office of
Lord Advocate, but, with the Treasurership of the
Navy, which was to lead to still higher and more
responsible office, he combined the supreme direction
of Scotch aff'airs.
At length, in the spring of 1784, the dissolution
came, and the new election gave Pitt a substantial
majority and left his opponents a shattered and de-
feated remnant. The first campaign in the long
fight that lay before him was now past. But the
memory of these days of intrepid combat, when they
two stood alone in the breach, was not to pass away.
Henceforth the friendship between Pitt and Dundas
was that of the comrades who had fought side by
side in a forlorn hope. For more than twenty years
it was to endure unshaken and ungrudging, and even
94 FROM 1780 TO 178-L
amidst the clouds that gathered round the close, foul
suspicions and false charges might tear the heart-
strings of Pitt and hasten his end, but they left the
friendship unbroken even amidst the tragic surround-
ings of his death.
Under the influence of Dundas Scotland gave to
Pitt in 1784 a majority even more decisive than that
in England. It is true that Fox, prevented by the
scrutiny from taking his seat for Westminster at
once, found a temporary refuge in the constituency
of the Orkneys, of which he was so eminently fitting
a representative. The defeated representative of an
English party assumed the character of the "carpet-
bagger," which in later days has been so often
found convenient. But this did not materially alter
the political complexion of the Scottish representation,
which remained a solid phalanx under the sway of
Dundas, and upon which Pitt found that he could
rely with an assurance not always to be placed upon
his English supporters.
What, then, let us ask, was the secret by which
Dundas was able to gather into his hands, and to
place at the disposal of Pitt, what was, to all intents
and purposes, the almost unbroken weight of Scottish
opinion ?
We have seen how strongly marked, how self-cen-
tred, and yet how full of diversities Scottish society was.
Her national feeling, always strong, had been sharpened
by the insults of English faction-mongers. She had no
representative system, but such a force of national feel-
ing as then prevailed in Scotland could not but tell
even on the narrowest of political castes. Powerful
as he was, Dundas could not have commanded Scot-
land, and determined her place in the struggle which
SECRET OF DUNDASS INFLUENCE. 95
occupied the closing years of the century, had he not
thoroughly understood her and been in the closest
sympathy with her most characteristic traits. Of the
society which we have described, it would be hard
to point to a more striking representative than Henry
Dundas.
The family of Dundas was one of the most ancient
in Scotland, and was descended from a younger son of
an Earl of Dunbar in the twelfth century. The im-
mediate stock from which Henry Dundas was sprung
had long been settled at Arniston, and had acquired a
sort of hereditary rank in the judicial hierarchy. His
own father, grandfather/ and great-grandfather had all
been judges of high repute. Early in the century an
episode occurred in the family which showed that the
hereditary Toryism of the race could, on one occa-
sion at least, burst into Jacobitism. Henry Dundas's
grandfather was a judge in the year 1711, and Edin-
burgh society, or a part of it, was much scandalised
when his eldest son, James, who seems to have been
a man of marked talent, but of somewhat turbulent
moods, made himself the medium by whom the
Duchess of Gordon presented to the Faculty of
Advocates a medal of the elder Chevalier. The
movement was too evidently a manifesto of faith on
the part of the Jacobites, and as such it was treated,
and made the subject of a remonstrance by the
Hanoverian envoy. So inconvenient Avas the dis-
play, that the old Judge, to mark his disapproval of
the action, made a will disinheriting his eldest in
favour of his second son, Robert, who, to his own
honour, destroyed the will, and declared his thankful-
ness that it had not lain concealed in his father's
cabinet till his death, and then appeared to disgrace
9G FROM 1780 TO 1784.
his name/ The second son, Robert, became succes-
sively Lord Advocate, Judge, and eventually Lord
President. As head of the Court of Session, he was
probably the most powerful and respected represen-
tative of Scottish law in the century, and left the
memory of a character in which the rugged national
traits are most fully illustrated. In his court he ruled
with the absolute sway of a tyrant, who made no
attempt to. conceal the contempt with which his con-
summate intellect treated those whom he deemed the
drones of the Bench. He was a Avarm friend but an
implacable enemy — moved by gusts of passion and
yet a genial boon companion, and one who could act
with warm generosity towards those who sought his
aid. He was one of those Scotsmen of last century —
and they were not a few — who combined an ingrained
fibre of religious fervour with a life which, in some
respects, seemed to defy public opinion in its freedom
and license. To the outward observer, the dogmas of
Christianity seemed to have but scanty weight with
him; but he was a rigid Presbyterian, hated the
Episcopalians with portentous vigour, and despised the
philosophical discussions which occupied so much of
the attention of the lettered Scotsmen of his day.
The conviviality of the day he carried to an excess
which was considered rather as a proof of a vigorous
brain than treated as an outrage on decorum. On one
occasion we are told that his orgies at a country tavern
1 The elder son retired to France, but soon embroiled himself in a
quarrel which cost him his life. Fancying himself neglected at some
fashionable ordinary, he hired three places for the next day, and then
appeared with two dogs which he seated on each side of him, and addressed
as " Monsieur le Comte " and " Monsieur le Chevalier." The insult was
resented by one of the company, who challenged him, and killed him in
a duel.
HIS FAMILY. 97
were prolonged so late that his coachman burst into
the room and declared that he would keep his horses
waiting no longer, and the Judge was with difficulty
dissuaded from avenging such a breach of the laws
of good-fellowship by committing the man to the
Tolbooth on the spot. Under his vigorous sway the
business of the court was reduced to an order which
it had never known before, and he carried to the
bench the same impetuous logic, the same virile force,
and the same contempt of any of the ornaments of
diction, which had made him the most powerful and
impressive of advocates. Not a few of his traits were
repeated in his youngg ■ son, who was to become the
most powerful Scotsman of the last years of the
century.
The first Lord President died in 1754. His eldest
surviving son was already high in office, and six years
later succeeded to the place his father had occupied as
Lord President. He possessed less than his father's
force of character, but repeated his contempt of orna-
ment in diction, his earnestness in promoting the
efficiency of his court, and his plain and blunt common-
sense. For twenty-seven years, from 1760 to 1787, he
upheld the dignity of that court, and won high respect
as an upright judge, although he seems to have had an
unhappy faculty of running counter at once to popu-
lar feeling and to the preponderating weight of legal
opinion. In the great Douglas cause his casting vote
was responsible for a decision which roused the un-
thinking animosity of the Edinburgh mob, and which
was upset on appeal by the consenting voices of
Mansfield and of Camden. Once again, in 1778, he
was found amongst the minority who withstood the
arguments of his own brother in favour of the eman-
VOL. II. G
98 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
cipatiou of a slave who landed on Scottish soil, and
again found his opinion set aside by the House of
Lords, as it was inevitably bound to be in view of the
decision recently given in a similar case in England.
Although nothing was more alien to his whole nature
than the principles of the Whigs, it is equally clear
that he won but scanty love from the Tories, and
earned from them only a somewhat grudging tribute
of respect for his uprightness. He had no tincture of
literature, and seemed to feel the jealousy of a rugged
and narrow nature for those who were the chief lights
of the brilhant society round him.
His younger brother, Henry,i was a man of another
type, faithfully as he represented some of the family
traits. When his father, the Lord President, died,
Henry was only in his thirteenth year, having been
born in 1742. He thus belonged to another generation
from his elder brother, and the difference of age was
not wider than that of position. He was educated
entirely in Edinburgh, but he was distinguished even
as a boy, and Edinburgh was no ungenial nurse to one
whose intellect was quick and strong, although its
destined field was to be one of action and not of
thought. He was called to the Bar at the early age
of twenty-one, and not his distinguished descent and
powerful family connections alone, but also his own
commanding ability won for him an almost immediate
supremacy. At thie age of twenty-three he became
Solicitor-General. From that time his rise was rapid
and unchecked. He was abundantly equipped for the
fight. He was of commanding stature, with a coun-
tenance at once engaging and manly, with a voice
* By the Lord President's second wife, a daughter of Sir William
Gordon.
HIS CHARACTER. 99
that commanded attention ; a debater of rare dexterity
and consummate boldness, and with industry and
pliability that knew no bounds. But his was not the
pliability of servility or obsequiousness. Throughout
a long fight, amidst all the cross-currents of politics,
in prosperity and in defeat, as the unquestioned ruler
of his country and when hunted down by the full pack
of those who had courted him in his triumphs, he
never for one moment showed one sign of fear, never
bated one jot of his independence. He never schemed
for promotion, but commanded it and accepted it as his
unquestioned due. Hi/ reputation became the spoil
about which contending forces raged, but not for one
moment did he either supplicate the support of the
Tories or attempt to mitigate the rage of the Whigs.
If his aims were not exalted, they were at least worthy
of respect ; if his ambition was grasping, it was always
manly. Early in his career he braved the frown of the
King, who paid him the sincerest compliment — that
of fear ; ^ and in his last days he awaited with proud
defiance the angry shrieks of popular obloquy.
It would be idle to claim for Dundas any very far-see-
ing scheme of policy or any deep-lying principle accord-
ing to which he shaped his political conduct. He was
steeped to the lips in the traditions and moods of the
society amidst which he had been brought up, and the
peculiarities of which, even in his strong and pro-
* " The more I think of the conduct of the Advocate of Scotland," wrote
George III. to Lord North, " the more I am incensed against him. . . .
Men of talents, when not accompanied with integrity " (to the King this
spelt " submission "), " are pests instead of blessings to society, and true
wisdom ought to crush them rather than nourish them." But George III.
soon learned that the crushing process would not do with Dundas. " Let
him be gained," he writes later to Lord North, "to attend the whole
session and brave the Parliament."
100 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
noimced provincialism of diction, he rather flaunted
than concealed. The Toryism which he represented
was one shaped by the exigencies of party fight rather
than by any comprehensive theories; and the contending
speculations which were the sport and the excitement
of the quick and lively Edinburgh society of his day
were perhaps scarcely of a sort to exercise any profound
national influence, or to impress the masculine vigour
of a man like Dundas. But we find that before the
clouds of the closing years of the century had gathered,
and before faction had acquired the bitterness that be-
longed to it in that murky atmosphere, Dundas was not
without sympathy for schemes of far-reaching reform,
and that he had early aspirations not altogether unlike
those that animated the earlier days of Pitt. In their
earlier impulses they were perhaps not less akin than
they became when, year after year, Dundas stood by
Pitt's side and did him yeoman service in the thickest
fights of a fierce and unrelenting warfare. Dundas
never became a political leader. He founded no party ;
he represented no permanent constitutional principle ;
he transmitted to a later generation no inheritance but
the memory of his own strong personality and indomi-
table courage. But in one respect his position was
almost unique. Many of his countrymen remained in
the narrow circle of their own capital, absorbed in its
interests and enthralled by the intense personal ani-
mosity which political faction in a narrow arena in-
evitably engenders. Others forgot their nationality,
and were engulfed in the struggles of the sister coun-
try, where their intrusion was not always guided by
tact, and where it was almost always resented. Alone
amongst them Henry Dundas remained a Scotsman to
the backbone, and built his influence upon the unques-
HIS LOVE FOR SCOTLAND. 101
tioned sway that for thirty years he exercised in Scot-
land ; and yet he carved out a place for himself in the
wider arena of ^^'estminster ; he made his hand felt in
the guidance of the most vast of Britain's dependencies :
he had so full and vigorous an influence in Imperial
policy that even vrhen Pitt, and Fox, and Burke were
on the stage, the history of that policy cannot be fol-
lowed without giving a large place to his name and to
the part he played in it.
By his friends he was not only admired, but warmly
loved. A genial companion, as that was understood
in his own country, he did not find that the concomi-
tants of such ay character was interpreted in a sense
very widely difi'erent in England, and the orgies of
Edinburgh taverns were not an altogether unfitting
preparation for the social festivities of London. To
children he was a delightful playmate, and in later
years the family of Scott used to beg successfully to
be allowed the treat of sitting up to supper " when
Lord Melville was to be the guest." When he re-
visited Edinburgh in the days of his greatness —
when, as Scott writes, " the streets of Edinburgh
were thought too vulgar for Lord Melville to walk
upon " — he used to spend much of his time in climb-
ing the lofty staircases of the Old Town tenements,
to pay his respects to the old ladies who represented
the monuments of an older and more picturesque
generation, now passing from the eyes of a newer
world. ^ In his friendships and in his enmities,
^ Cockbuni, who was liis nephew by marriage, although the keeu
opponent of that political party which Duudas typified, speaks warmly
of his kindness and playfulness with children. And he gives us a
striking picture of Dundas's mother. " In the same chair, on the same
gpot ; her thick black hair combed all tightly up into a cone on the
102 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
in his ambitions and in his fights ; in his rough,
unpolished, and even coarse, but always vigorous
eloquence ; in his prejudices and in his rough-and-
ready, but not always keen or discriminating judg-
ment ; ^ in his imperviousness and in his truculence,
there was always about him something massive and
manly. His opponents might fear, but they never
could dislike, much less despise him. His power
was absolute. "Who steered upon him was safe;
who disregarded his light was wrecked. It was
to him that every man owed what he had got, and
looked for what he wished." These are the words
of a political opponent, who is, nevertheless, bound
to add : " This despotism was greatly strengthened
by the personal character and manners of the man.
. . . He was a favourite with most men, and with
all women. . . . He was not merely worshipped
by his friends . . . but respected by the reason-
able of his opponents ; though doomed to suffer by
his power, they liked the individual." " To literary
top of her head ; the remains of cousideral)le beauty ; great and just
pride in her son ; a good representative, in her general air and bearing,
of what the noble English ladies must liave been who were queens in
their family castles and stood sieges in defence of them."
' As an instance of this -we may take his attitude towards Warren
Hastings. He had himself started the attacks on Hastings, when their
ultimate effect was not foreseen. Of the weightier charges he acquitted
Hastings, but perhaps the earlier bias led him to form too quick a
judgment on the others, or made him too impatient to seek for the
proper explanation. There is little doubt that Dundas was the main
cause of Pitt's compromising attitude in a matter in which firmness would
have been not only more just, but also more politic. But it is impossible
to read Dundas's private letters Avithout feeling convinced that Dundas,
in his prejudice against Hastings, was perhaps yielding to an indis-
criminating judgment, but was honestly taking the view which he
would have preferred not to take had he thought any escape from it
possible.
^ Cochrane's " Life of Lord Jeffrey," vol. i. p. 78.
HIS UNQUESTIONED SUPREMACY. 103
discernment he made no pretence. His life was
one of action, and it was divided over too many-
spheres, and immersed in too much of turmoil, to
permit him to become one of the literary brother-
hood of Edinburgh. But a discerning contemporary
tells us, that ^ " although his brother and guardian,
the Lord President, had been much alienated from
the most distinguished literati, (Henry Dundas) no
sooner approached to man's estate than he overcame
all his family prejudices, and even conquered his
brother's aversion, and, courting their society, soon
became the iwourite and friend of all the men
who were em\nent for learning or fine talents."
And to have been the early patron, the warm
friend, and the trusted leader of Sir Walter Scott
gives him a connection with literature which is cer-
tainly not the least of the claims which Henry
Dundas has upon the admiration of his countrymen.
That admiration the ungenerous and spiteful revival
of those charges of malversation which were so
amply disproved is not likely to lessen. To recall
them, not by explicit statement, but by half-veiled
hints, is one of the meaner tricks which party ani-
mosity is loath to abandon.
Such was the man who now came to dominate
Scotland in her domestic affairs, and to represent her
in the scene of Imperial politics. Let us see some
of the features of those domestic affairs during the
earlier years of the long comradeship between Dundas
and Pitt.
We have already noticed that Scotland had little
sympathy with the " Patriots," who had attacked Lord
^ MS. of Dr. Alexander Carlyle.
104 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
North and his Administration with all the ingenuity
of party rancour. Here and there might be heard
a note of opposition to the American policy of the
Government, and anxiety had been expressed for
conciliation ; but such notes were rare, and such
anxiety did not weigh very heavily. But as the
pressure became more severe, the suspicion grew that
" Administration " was not always wisely guided, and
might conceivably cease to deserve support. Scotland
was not ripe for any violent attacks upon the power
of the Crown, and listened with indifference to the
tirades against a profligate and corrupt Minister, whose
crimes could only be expiated on the scaffold. All
such invective it rightly considered as little more than
stage-play. But, on the other hand, it was quite
ready to accept the fall of North's Ministry as a well-
deserved reverse, and to welcome the accession to
power of the Whig Ministry of Rockingham, which
included Fox and Burke. That Ministry commanded
considerable support from the Moderates as well as
the more extreme Whigs.^ The Moderates had re-
spected Burke and Fox for their support of the repeal
of the Catholic Penal Acts. They were not sorry to
see the near prospect of the end of an unfortunate
war. Even when the death of Rockingham trans-
formed the Ministry into one representing the other
M'ing of the Whigs, and deprived it of the aid of
Burke and Fox, it did not lose the general acquies-
cence of Scotland. It commanded at least that modi-
cum of respect which is rarely denied to a Govern-
ment that seems to have fair prospects of continuance.
' In 1784 Edmund Burke was elected Lord Eector of Glasgow Uni-
versity— an election which would have been hopeless if the Moderates had
been opposed to it.
SCOTTISH SYMPATHY WITH THE WHIGS. 105
The Moderate leaders found it expedient to court the
new powers.^ In the General Assembly of 1782 the
more extreme party mustered courage to defy their
Moderate opponents and propose an amendment to
the Address to the Crown, which reflected strongly
upon the Government of Lord North and praised the
new powers at their expense. - The debate ran high,
and was conducted with some vigour ; and the pro-
posal was defeated, not so much on the ground of
absolute dissent from its opinion, as on the safer
maxim that politics was no proper occupation for a
Church courts
No political \mrty in Scotland as yet questioned the
sound orthodoxy of the Whiggism of the Revolution as a
political creed, and the Ministry either of Rockingham
or of Shelburne would no doubt have found in Scot-
land no considerable opposition, especially so long as
the Scottish Minister was Dundas. But the coalition
between Fox and North, under the nominal leadership
of the Duke of Portland, was a strange portent, which
could hardly be expected to be acceptable to Scotland
any more than England. Its fate was scarcely doubt-
ful. Dundas ceased to hold office, and for a few
weeks Henry Erskine took his place. Fox's India
Bill roused an opposition in which Scotland played
her full share, threatening as that Bill did to destroy
the privileges of a Company which had helped to
enrich not a feAv of Scotland's sons. The Coalition
1 Amongst the MSS. of Dr. Alexander Carlyle I find drafts of several
letters addressed by liim to Burke when in office.
- The proposed clause ran thus : " While your Majesty has taken into
your immediate service men of the highest abilities and possessing the
confidence of the people, we cannot despair of the public welfare ; but
hope that, by the blessing of Divine Providence, the dark cloud that hangs
over tbe kingdom will be dispelled, the dignity of the Crown maintained,
and peace speedily restored."
106 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
Ministry was indeed no more than a passing episode.
The accession of Pitt first to office, and, after the
election of 1784, to unquestioned power, opens to Scot-
land a period which certainly offered pre-eminence, and
which seemed at first to ofier the prospect of peace,
prosperity, and reform, during which her resources
might be extended, abuses amended, and the faulty
parts of her economy set in order.
No part of that economy required more careful
handling than the Church. The Moderate party had
gradually acquired sway, and had devoted itself to
maintaining the Erastian principle, believing that in
the supremacy of law lay the best hope of real
liberty in the Church. It had vindicated the rights of
the patrons, and claimed, with some justice, to have
raised the whole character of the Church for learning,
dignity, and orderly procedure. The Church had un-
der their regime proved itself the free and independent
ally of authority, and could demand as its due an equal
measure of consideration from Ministers. But it had
never truckled to political intrigue, and, with wise fore-
sight, had never forgotten to make itself, while the ally
of Government, at the same time the fearless assertor of
Scottish equality.^ What was the position now, and
what course did it behove Government to pursue 1
Let us recall the main features of the Church's history
during the century. The restoration of Presbytery
with the Revolution had found her people exasperated
by persecution into fanaticism, and led by a clergy
Avhose past history had been adverse to learning and
moderation, and whose present circumstances compelled
them to reflect in their own lives and in their teaching
^ No class of men spoke and wrote more strongly in support of Scot-
land's claim to a militia of her own than the Moderate clergy.
INFLUENCE OF THE MODERATES. 107
the fanaticism of their hearers. Popular election had
made them the humble servants of their hearers, and
they were neither fitted by education nor character, nor
free by their position to adopt any other attitude. In
1712 had come the Act restoring patronage, but for
nearly thirty years patronage had been little but a
name. It had been exercised with timidity, and it
failed to restore the clergy or to enable them to rise
to a position of freedom and independence of the pre-
judices of the mob. In 1739 came the Secession, to
the leaders of which we may ungrudgingly concede the
praise of higA; aims, of sturdy independence, of un-
selfish adherence to what they believed to be a duty of
conscience. But it is none the less true that by the
Secession of 1739 the Church was freed from a party
that had been a clog upon her advance and a hindrance
to her usefulness, to her dignity, to her self-respect.
The rancorous fanaticism which had eaten so deeply
into the vitals of Scotland was still rampant, and still
checked the spread of intelligence and the freedom
that might break through the clouds that darkened the
life of the nation. But now a period of greater free-
dom and liberality began. The lay patrons selected
their nominees with care. Men of position and educa-
tion found a career open to them in the Church. Her
ranks w^ere filled with the most promising of the
younger men. Education and culture were no longer
a bar, and the clergy began to take their place as one
of the leading sections of Scottish society. In history
and in philosophy, in science and in poetry, she could
point amongst her clergy to men who had won con-
spicuous fame, whose names were known far beyond
the borders of Scotland. She was proud to attract to
her courts and to count amongst the laity interested in
108 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
her goverument the leading men amongst the land-
owners and the great lawyers, and even amongst the
higher nobility. Whatever there was of light and
leading in Scotland was counted in the ranks of the
Scottish Church. Hers was not a position of bated
breath and whispering humbleness, and she had no
need to stoop to the conciliation of the mob. Fanati-
cism and superstition were no longer her characteristics.
The meeting of her General Assembly, which took place
every May in Edinburgh, was one of the most impor-
tant functions of the Scottish year. It was attended by
all the pomp and ceremony which surrounded the Lord
High Commissioner who represented the Crown, and
whose office and function were the only relics that re-
mained to the Scottish capital to remind her of the
days when she had possessed a court of her own.
Within one of the aisles of the ancient metropolitan
church of St. Giles there gathered all the intellect and
ability which Scotland could produce, and on that
smaller stage there took place debates which might
even rival that of St. Stephens, and which were the
best nursery for eloquence and skill in oratorical fence
which Scotland had to show or which could be found in
any corner of Great Britain. From every burgh and
from every Highland glen there came representatives, to
mingle uncouth provincialisms, and to show that the
Doric of the capital was not the only variety to sur-
prise an English ear. They carried away from these
discussions a sense of the weight and dignity of their
Church and sound lessons as to her authority and her
intimate union with the Law. The debates were
under the guidance of her leading clergy, with whom
the nobility and judges did not disdain to mingle,
and to stand as the victors or the defeated in
THEIR STRUGGLE WITH THE HIGHFLYERS. 109
honourable contest. From that centre there stirred a
pulse that was felt throughout the remotest corners of
the land.
But prosperity and ease had produced their natural
dangers. Patronage ceased to be exercised with the
same discriminating care. The laity became careless
and indifferent, and often chose for the nominees
men who were their humble tools. The patronage
of the Crown was often made a tool of political
jobbery. The better amongst the Moderate party
were as aversa to such servility as they were to the
domination of \he mob. They desired that the law
should be supreme and that order should prevail ; but
it was to be for the good of the Church, not in order
that the Church might be the slave of political in-
triguers. They desired that their Church should be
the proud ally, not the humble dependant, of a political
party.
Naturally the opposite party — the High-flyers, or the
Wild Party, as it was called — found here their oppor-
tunity. Once more they hoped to regain some of their
lost influence. They sought for an augmentation of
their stipends, not by process of law, and not by the
judgment of the courts that could increase clerical
incomes as circumstances permitted, but by a bargain
which would have sold the legal privileges of the
Church in turn for a meagre but universal increase of
stipends. The Moderates opposed this, and sought
rather to create within the Church a few dignified, and,
as things then counted, almost lucrative positions, which
w^ould have attracted sufficient men of eminence to
give a character to all the clergy. Once more the
High-flyers sought to petition Parliament against
patronage, and were only prevented from doing so
110 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
by the firm resistance of the Moderates. The oppor-
tunity was taken by the Moderates to expunge from
their records an annual reflection on the evils of
patronage, which from custom rather than conviction
had been allowed to remain as a yearly ceremony of
absolute insignificance. Its removal once and for all
was a triumph not only for the Moderates but for
common-sense. But that party had not always the
upper hand. Only a year or two before, the ex-
treme party had proved their power by truckling to
the fanaticism of the mob, and refusing to consent
even to a very moderate toleration to the Roman
Catholics.
The wiser spirits in the Church saw the danger, and
warned the new Ministry in no doubtful tones. ^ There
must be no- abuse of patronage, either on the part of
the Crown or of the lay patrons. iS^omination must
not be given as a means of securing a parliamentary
vote. The leading laity must be urged to take part
once more in the deliberations of the Assembly, the
triumph of the High-flyers in the matter of the Roman
Catholic disabilities having been largely due to the
abstention of the most prominent laymen. In the
exercise of their patronage the Ministers of the Crown
must carefully consult the leading men of the Church.
For the principals and professors of the Universities
they must choose men well affected to the present
Establishment. They must not forget the duty of
attracting men of ability to the ranks of the clergy,
not by a general scheme of augmentation, which would
1 Amongst the MSS. of Dr. Alexander Carlyle I find a careful memo-
randum on tlie ChurcL. drawn up for the information of Pitt in 1784, in
which the dangers are described and remedies proposed. They are such
as are noticed in the text.
THEIR WAENIKG TO THE GOVERNMENT. Ill
only excite the jealousy aud fears of the landowners,
but by a well-considered scheme of improving the pay
of some of the leading positions within her pale. By
this means, and by this means alone, could they find
the Church an independent, and therefore a safe and
trustworthy, ally against that fanaticism which, alike in
religion and in politics, was a tendency towards which
the Scottish character was only too prone. Such a
policy may be applauded or condemned, according to
the sympathies of the reader ; but the aims of the
Moderate party are at least stated by themselves with
no ambiguity, ayid with no attempt at concealment.
On such a fair statement they based their claim to the
support of what appeared to be a strong, a permanent,
and an enlightened Administration.
In regard to other matters, we can trace a desire to
heal old feuds and to draw together parties before
divided by the memory of old wrongs, so that the
country might the better enjoy the prospect of advanc-
ing prosperity. The Jacobite party was now but a
shadow of its former self, out of which all real danger
had departed. It lived only in the fast fading memories
of a few of the older generation, and the romantic
dreams of some who clung to an inherited belief; but
it had not vitality enough to threaten any active
measures. The old racial differences were buried and
forgotten, and a generation had laboured with no
small success to bring the Celtic and the Lowland
inhabitants more closely together. With the aboli-
tion of the hereditary jurisdictions, the clan system
had become little more than a name ; and the chief
economical difficulty of the Highlands was, indeed,
that the proprietors learned with too great quickness
to divest themselves of the character of chieftains, and
112 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
to assume that of rack-renting landlords. The Church,
and other agencies besides the Church, had been busy
in labouring to improve the lot of their Celtic country-
men. They had spread amongst them new industries ;
they had promoted agriculture ; they had stimulated
mental interest and intercourse. Thousands of High-
landers had joined the army: the number of recruits
was reckoned at 10,000 a year; and on a hundred
battle-fields in India and in America the blood of
Highlanders had been shed to cement the bond be-
tween them and their southern brethren. It was
rightly judged that the time had come when old pro-
scriptions should be ended, and when forfeitures which
had been redeemed upon many a stricken field should
be restored. Accordingly one of the first Acts of Pitt's
Government was that by which Dundas restored to
the representatives of their old owners the forfeited
estates which were vested in the Crown. The amount
of revenue was not large ; but the spirit of the
Act was one of conciliation, and it was not thrown
away. In 1784 the last of these estates was restored
to those who could establish a hereditary claim,
and a truce was called in a civil war which had
spread its fitful efforts over well-nigh a century.
The Act was not passed without some grudging
voices, including that of Thurlow, being raised against
it ; but it was placed upon the Statute-book with-
out real difficulty. It appears that some effort was
made about the same time to remove some of the
attainders and to restore the titles to the descend-
ants of those who had forfeited them. The sullen
opposition of Thurlow was this time successful, and
the effort was abandoned ; nor did it meet with
more success when it was renewed a generation
MEASURES OF CONCILIATION. 113
later.' But something at least was done to wipe
out memories of a fight the bitterness of which had
passed away.
Another and more sentimental grievance was re-
moved in 1783 when a Bill was passed repealing
the Act of the 19th year of George II., by which the
Highland dress was proscribed. The original Act had
been prompted by a singularly childish animosity,
and its maintenance became little more than an
absurdity when the dress had become the symbol to
the world of all that was most courageous and most
loyal in Britain' s«' far-flung battle-line."
It may be well to anticipate by a lew years, in order
to deal with another instance of a similar desire to
obliterate old penal disabilities. The Episcopal Church
of Scotland had, as a whole, been staunch in its Jacobi-
tism, and had maintained a ghostly adherence to a
political creed which it had been powerless to advance.
Gradually its political keenness had melted away. It
had earned real respect by the elevated morality and
lofty tone of its clergy, and had gathered about it an
increasing number of the more highly educated class.
The closer that the connection with England became,
the more natural did it seem that many of those who
had ties with England should find it congenial to use a
liturgy which, in the main, was framed on the model of
the English establishment. By the dominant party of
the Scottish Establishment it was neither feared nor dis-
liked, and they avowedly sought to extend to it a fuller
measure of toleration. The older nonjuring Bishops
were one by one gathered to their fathers, and Episco-
pal chapels, whose congregations had no thought of
Jacobitical conspirings, were established in great num-
1 See Lockhart's "Life of Scott," vol. vii. p. 28.
VOL. II. H
114 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
bers. All things pointed to a settlement, and when, in
January 1788, the death of the young Chevalier removed
the last real claimant who might have revived expiring
loyalty, all difficulty seemed to be removed. The
Bishops of the Episcopal Church, in a solemn synod,
pledged themselves to use the prayers for King George.
In the spring of the following year they petitioned
Parliament for relief from penal disabilities. Again
the grudging temper of Thurlow stopped the way. A
Toleration Bill was stopped by him in the ensuing
session, but at last, in June 1792, it became law,
and the ill-fated but romantic association between
Jacobitism and the Church which had longest main-
tained the forlorn cause of divine right was broken
for ever. When Scottish Episcopal ordination was by
statute made a valid qualification for the holder of a
living in the English Church, the vScottish Establish-
ment placed no bar to the enactment.
Another sore still rankled in Scottish breasts, this
time not confined to any one party. Again and again,
since the establishment of the militia for England,
Scottish patriots had claimed the same rights for their
country. Again and again it had been denied. The
burden of the taxation ; the danger of placing arms in
the hands of disaffected persons ; the hindrance that it
might prove to advancing commerce, and the restriction
it would place on the labour market — all these had
been urged as pleas against it, and for many years they
had found strong support even among Scotsmen. But
gradually the opposing party in Scotland had become
less numerous. The danger could no longer be alleged
to exist. All Scotsmen of light and leading — including
Henry Dundas, whose elder brother had formerly op-
posed it — were now advocates of the militia ; and its
SCOTTISH MILITIA. 115
opponents in the English Parliament were chiefly those
who dreaded its interfering with the fruitfulness of
Scotland as a recruiting field for the regular army.
Year by year the feeling became more strong ; nor was
the desire for a measure which might not only secure
Scotland against invasion, but which might teach
her sons to give a good account of themselves, in
any way assuaged by the raising of some regiments of
Volunteer Fencibles. On the contrary, this was looked
upon with some jealousy as placing undue power in
the hands of a fey wealthy landlords. The constitutional
right of Scotlana to a force which would give every
Scotsman in rotation some experience in the use of
arms was keenly urged. In 1782 a Bill with this
object was again promoted. But by English influence
there was tagged to it the condition that the Scottish
militia should not be merely a reserve citizen force, but
that drafts should be made upon it for the regular
army. To such a condition its supporters refused to
submit, and once again the Bill was lost. Not until
the year 1797 did it become part of the constitutional
forces of the Crown on the same footing as the English
militia. Amongst those who had fought for it most
strenuously by his pen may be counted Dr. Alexander
Carlyle, the doughty minister of Inveresk. To him it
was not only a constitutional right, not only a defence
and a security, but a school of manliness from which he
would not have his country shut out. The landowners
complained of it because of its expense ; the merchants
because it interfered with trade ; the politicians because
of its danger ; the political economists because it seemed
to err against the fundamental law of division of labour,
which bade a soldier be a soldier and nothing more.
All their fears and fancies Carlyle roughly pushes aside.
116 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
As a minister of the Church Militant he would have his
country strong ; and he was convinced that the strength
was to come not by a few companies of Volunteer Fen-
cibles that allowed the wealthier class to play at being
soldiers, but by a systematic and extended military
training that would permeate every class of the
nation.
With steady courage, and under enlightened guid-
ance, Scotland was thus healing her old sores and
asserting her national rights. Her Church was well
ordered; her literature stood high ; she no longer held
herself aloof in sullen isolation. Her material pros-
perity Avas increasing apace. Towns that a few years
before were of a size that nowadays would scarcely
entitle them to be called more than hamlets, were
advancing in population, in wealth, and in luxury of
living. Edinburgh was on a par in population with
any other city except London ; and in all else she held
a position which she shared with London alone, as a
centre of thought, of literature, and of social interest.
A contemporary writer^ has left a comparison, based
on personal observation and a study of facts, between
Edinburgh at the beginning of the reign and Edinburgh
on the eve of Pitt's long Ministry. At the beginning
of the reign it was almost confined within the city
walls. It was now spreading on every side, and had
added a large and luxurious city to the pent-up closes
of its ancient Castle rock. Two millions sterling, it
was estimated, had been spent in building within
twenty years — more than three times the whole cur-
rency of Scotland at the time of the Union. The
houses which had sufficed in 1760 for the nobility and
judges were now despised by all but the humblest
^ 111 the Edinburgh Evening Courani.
ADVANCE IN TWENTY YEARS. 117
classes. In 1760 a stage-coach set out once a month
for London, and consumed fifteen days upon the road.
Now there were fifteen coaches to London weekly,
which made the journey in four days. In 1760 literary
property was hardly known ; since then Hume had
earned £5000 for the concluding portion of his History,
and Principal K-obertson had made £4500 by one only
of his many works. In place of the wretched change-
houses which had received the traveller in 1760, he
now found hotels where every luxury was obtained.
In 1760 a scantv' market had been supplied chiefly by
travelling vendoVs, and any sudden strain produced a
dearth. In 1782 a fleet of 600 merchantmen and
several sail of the line had lain in Leith Roads for two
months without affecting the Edinburgh market prices
by a single farthing.
It is true that all this marvellous advance was
accompanied by increasing luxury, and by some relaxa-
tion of a severe and primitive morality. Such changes
are always apt to be exaggerated by those whose tem-
perament leads them to look with nervous apprehen-
sion upon a code of morals which differs in any way
from that to which they have been used. A dark
picture is easily drawn, and it is scarcely the interest
of any contemporary to raise a doubt as to its truth.
The stricter and more formal ethics, which were identi-
fied with a narrow scale of living and were fortified by
a restricted religious creed, had certainly passed away.
The dominant party in the Church had perhaps been
somewhat inclined to identify strictness with hypo-
crisy, and deliberately encouraged a freedom in reli-
gious thought and an emancipation in the more precise
social usages which might give rise to scandal. But it
would be absurd to pretend that any real laxity in
118 FROM 1780 TO 1784.
morals prevailed to any extent in Edinburgh during
the closing years of the century, however gloomy was
the picture which officious moral censors might draw,
and however rigid were the maxims which the revival
of religious enthusiasm and fervour prescribed. Com-
pared with any modern capital, the conventions of
Edinburgh society in 1784 would probably seem unduly
severe.
Such a state of society as we have described natu-
rally gave rise to projects of what seemed safe and
necessary political reform. One subject above all
occupied the public attention, and met with much
encouragement from the political leaders — that of a
reform of the political representation. The scandals
of the existing system were patent to all. The burgh
members were elected by narrow municipal bodies
which were self-chosen, and which were corrupt to the
last degree. For the thirty county representatives
there were less than 2000 constituents, and many
of these held the franchise upon the most absurd
and iniquitous custom, by which the freeholder could
split his superiority and create a number of purely
fictitious claims. Meetings were constantly held
during these years to denounce these iniquities.
They met with almost no defenders, and the fore-
most men in the Administration were in full sympathy
with these denunciations, and were pledged by their
own past action to take vigorous steps to remove the
wrong. Dundas himself shared with Pitt the honour
of being an early advocate of parliamentary reform,
which would almost inevitably have brought muni-
cipal reform in its wake. Even those whose privi-
leges were attacked could oppose nothing to the rising
wave, and busied themselves only in making the best
PROJECTS OF REFORM. 119
of opportuuities that their own consciences told them
must be shortlived.
Such was the position and such the prospect of
Scotland at the opening of the long Ministry of Pitt
and Dundas. We shall soon see how the sky became
overcast, and what storms were brewing.
120
CHAPTER XVI.
THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
The early years of Pitt's Administration were, for Scot-
land, years of ease and prosperity. The cessation of
the war had lowered prices and opened new markets,
and in every sphere of industry prosperity was advanc-
ing rapidly. Edinburgh was spreading fast, far beyond
the old limits of her narrow lanes and lofty tenements.
The manufactures were thriving, and the American and
West Indian trade had resumed its old prosperity.
Glasgow was no longer " a neat little town " on the
banks of an insignificant stream ; it was already show-
ing signs of its coming commercial importance, and the
new canal, as well as the deepening of the Clyde, was
opening to it new markets. Already on a little loch in
Dumfriesshire experiments were being made, in a very
small and humble way, at steam-navigation, which was
destined before two generations had passed to make
Glasgow the centre of rich-stored argosies, trading with
every corner of the habitable world. The woollen
trade was thriving in the Lowlands ; the wealth hidden
in the coal and iron of the soil was being rapidly dis-
covered ; and even for the Highlands new advantages
were dawning in the quiet extension of sheep-farming
and in the English market for black cattle. The distil-
ADVANCING WEALTH. 121
leries, which also found their chief market in London,
were increasing rapidly. Agriculture, under the guid-
ance of enlightened pioneers, was making satisfactory
progress. The old "run-rig" system of cultivation
was rapidly disappearing, and the proper rotation of
crops and the use of chemical manures was accepted
by the great majority of farmers. In these years the
capital of the Bank of Scotland, which but two genera-
tions back had been only £100,000, rose to £600,000,
and its shares were sold on the London Stock Exchange
at more than 100 per cent, above par. The little town
of Paisley, whicy had now obtained a canal of its own,
and thus secured a waterway to distant markets, was
now a great manufacturing centre, to which English
capitalists were attracted in almost as large number as
the Scotch. Under the stimulus of advancing commer-
cial prosperity some recklessness of speculation was
inevitable, and the heavy taxes rendered necessary by
a long and unfortunate war caused some uneasiness.
But on the whole, the nation might well congratulate
itself on a flowing tide of wealth and of commercial
activity.
New luxury in the style of living, as a matter of
course, followed upon the heels of this prosperity.
Mansion-houses of greater pretensions, and with all the
appurtenances of art and modern contrivance, were
springing up. Increased rents rendered the landlords
a more wealthy class, and this consoled them for the
loss of so much of their old importance, of which recent
legislation had stripped them. The old convivial habits
still prevailed in all their unconstrained coarseness ;
but they were compensated by the zest and energy
with which social intercourse was indulged. The old
lines of demarcation in manners and in lanmia^e were
122 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
still preserved, and the colloquial dialect, even of the
highest classes, was such as would not be understood
south of the Tweed. But this did not prevent Scotsmen
from sharing to the full in the thought and literature
of England, while they cherished with reasonable pride
that which was distinctively their own. The most in-
tellectual among Scotsmen were cosmopolitan in spirit,
but they bated no jot of pride in their own nationality,
and pursued with new vigour their researches into
Scottish antiquities and their interest in the vernacu-
lar literature.
In religion the old characteristics seemed to be well-
nigh effaced. The old parties of the Moderates and
High-flyers were still maintained, but the Moderates
dominated the Church and imposed their authority
upon her councils. The Dissenting bodies still held
their own, but their efforts were comparatively lax,
and they made no way in the present mood of the
nation. The old rigidity of doctrine had disappeared,
and the ordinary discourses of the pulpit resembled
moral prelections rather than doctrinal expositions of
religious faith. Some years before, the keen and brac-
ing mood of English dissent, as preached by Wesley
and by Whitfield, had stimulated and invigorated the
nerves of the Scottish dissenting sects. But the
country was not prone to import its religion, and the
stimulus had passed away. A strange and wild out-
burst of unthinking popular fanaticism had for a short
time burst out under the ignoble influence of a female
religious leader of the name of Buchau, and had found
in the south-west of Scotland — long the chosen home
of the Covenanters — a congenial soil. Its votaries had
believed themselves exempt from death, and implicitly
accepted the assurances of their mad leader that with
LITERARY OUTBURST. 123
her they would be sharers in EHjah's lot, and would
be rapt to heaven by supernatural agency. But they
made no permanent impression, and the brief and spas-
modic ravings of fanaticism rather served to accentuate
the prevailing tone of easy and tolerant latitudina-
rianism.
In Edinburgh, above all, intellectual activity was
strong. The political economy of which Adam Smith
was the chief apostle was exerting a powerful influence
over the minds of the younger generation. The Scottish
Philosophical School was devoting itself with increased
assiduity to speculation as to the principles which
underlay politics and society. The Church was too
strongly Erastian in spirit to claim any domain as
exclusively her own. Patronage was readily extended
to dawning genius, and, under the smiles and favour
of those who found literary patronage a pleasant and
congenial adjunct to social life, influences were grow-
ing up which were destined to touch new chords of
national sentiment.
It was into such a society that there burst, suddenly
and unannounced, the meteor-like genius of Burns,
His opinions followed the lead of no party, and were
independent of the mood of any age. Jacobite and
democratic, Calvinist and Socinian, strongly national
by traditiou, and yet cosmopolitan in mood — his views
defied all classification, and were moulded into definite
form only by the fire of his own temperament and by
the indomitable might of his genius. Even while he
felt its limitations, he revelled in the easy and pleasure-
loving mood that prevailed in the social circles of
Edinburgh, and accepted, half in contempt and half in
gratitude, the flattery of their welcome. Combining
the moral earnestness that must lie in the recesses
124 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
of genius with the moral waywardness that is often
entwined with its fibre, he found in that flattery at
once a stimulus and a snare. He felt its emptiness
and its superficiality, but he could not resist indulging
his senses in its incense ; and even while he was
inspiring into the veins of the nation a new impulse,
and rousing its nerves to the tension necessary for a
great upheaval of social change, he was himself in part
a victim to the applause of those whose delusions his
genius was to dissipate.
It is hard to conceive an atmosphere more inspiring
for the generation then growing up. The fashions of a
bygone age had not passed away, but they were held
with the genial ease of those who thought them indis-
putable, and knew them unassailed. There was but
little of angry contention where all were practically of
one mind. The range of society was large enough to
embrace many varieties, and yet small enough to per-
mit of the unrestrained freedom of social intercourse,
where each man was known with all his idiosyncrasies
and foibles, and not merely as the particle in a social
mass that rubbed its edges smooth in the monotony
of social convention. Religion was regarded only as a
safe and decent appurtenance of life, and was stripped
of its sternness and its rigid terrors. There was a wide
and fairly prosperous middle-class, which recognised its
leaders and submitted to their authority, but where no
man towered so high in wealth, or rank, or intellect as
to be nnapproachable by his fellows. Scotsmen could
win great place and power in England, could share in
all that England had to give, and could exercise a
dominant part in the government of her newly con-
solidated Empire in the East ; but they had still the
proud possession of their own exclusive past ; and now
AJiUSKS OF JiUJiGH AI>M INIS'I'KATION. 125
tho gcuiiis of liiiriis was bioathiu*^- into the Scotti.sii
Muse a fire and a vigour that were to be the harbingers
of new feelings and new impulses far beyond her
borders. Such was the Scotland which Henry Dundas
was to sway, partly by the vigour of his own indomit-
able common -sense and the athletic thews of his
manhood, partly by the completeness with whicli he
represented her dominant mood.
It was only natural that, in such a state of society —
were it only as a sign of its energy and as a reflection
of its advancing vrosperity — there should be projects
of reform. These^'vere directed chiefly to the cor-
rection of- the undoubted abuses that existed in the
burgh administration — partly the effect of long-stand-
ing institutions which belonged to a system that was
obsolete and unsuited to the time, partly of corruption
which had crept in by vicious habit. The " sets " of
the burghs, as they were called, or the charters under
which they were governed, were in most cases more
than three liundred years old, and were based upon
a somewhat doubtful traditional authority. They re-
flected a state of politics and society which had long
been covered over by the dust of ages. In these earlier
times the burghs were little more than appendages to
the estate of a powerful neighbouring proprietor, and
it was not surprising that the scheme of government
devised for them should have had in view solely the
maintenance of his authority. A little knot of his
dependants had administered the affairs of each town
virtually as his agents, and had kept up the conti-
nuity of that. administration by being self-elected. But
changes had crept in ; the influence of the burghs
increased, that of the landed proprietors had decayed.
Charters had been lost, and the burgh government was
126 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
carried on according to a system that had often little
basis beyond usage and tradition. As the eighteenth
century advanced, these abuses had become more and
more marked. A knot of petty tradesmen, without
intelligence or public spirit, administered the ajQfairs
of the town chiefly or solely for their own interest.
The rating was casual and of doubtful legality ; the
accounts were unaudited. The town property, which,
scanty at first, had, in course of time, grown in many
cases into a valuable asset, was squandered and dissi-
pated by a system of scarcely disguised plunder, upon
which the sole check was the mutual suspicion and
jealousy of the little band of pilferers. Leases of town
property were granted on nominal considerations. Im-
provements were utterly neglected. The prisons, the
poorhouses, the useless townguard, the cleansing of
the streets — all were regarded as but instruments for
petty peculation. And the evil did not end with the
town itself. Groups of these burghs sent fifteen
members to Parliament, and the election was entirely
in the hands of the delegates. That votes were to be
secured by barefaced bribery was a thing of common
notoriety. At times a scandal of corruption became
too flagrant to be tolerated in absolute silence, and
occasionally there was an investigation before a court
of law. But it was hard to bring home the guilt, and
harder still to aifix to it any penalty ; and the rare
cases when such investigations took place left the
offenders scot free.
But now the townsmen were advancing in indepen-
dence and in intelligence. The burghs felt their own
importance, and were determined to secure regularity
in their administration. The little knots of corruption
that absorbed all municipal power must be broken up.
ACnrATlON FOR THKIK IIKKOKM. 127
and rising taxation compelled attention to securing
what remained of the town ])roperty. There Avere
murmurings on every side. Forty-nine burghs joined
in petitioning Parliament for redress. The Convention
of Delegates from the burghs met annually in conclave
at Edinburgh, and swore not to desist from the task of
cleansing this Augean stable until it was accomplished.
Many indeed, knowing how hard that task would be,
were hopeless of success. " Reform the burghs ! " said
one who \^s asked to help the cause of reform ; " you
might as well try to reform hell." But at first the
great majority of better opinion in Scotland was ready
to join in stamping out the abuse and letting light in
upon these obscure nests of corruption. The burgesses
of Dumbarton in 1787 brought an action against their
magistrates to enforce an audit of the burgh accounts.
Public sympathy was entirely on their side. That
maladministration existed was too evident for doubt.
But every legal quibble was brought to bear to prevent
investigation. When the case was tried before the
Court of Exchequer, tlie judges were compelled to de-
cide for the magistrates, but they did so in a manner
rarely heard in a court of justice, openly avowing that
they gave the decision against their feelings and their
sympathies, and urging the defeated side not to cease
their agitation until they had compelled the Legislature
to listen to their demand for a just reform.
It seemed as though a few years only would pass
before this long-standing abuse should cease to exist.
Dundas was not unwilling to listen to reform : Pitt
was only too ready to help it forward But in an evil
day for Scotland this sound measure of reform became
a tool in the hands of faction. A scent of what was
approaching seemed already in the air; the one side
128 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
was attracted by anything that seemed to savour of
revohition, the other seemed equally to dread the re-
dress of abuses lest it might proceed too far. The
delegates from the burghs sought support in London,
and they found it willingly accorded to them by an
Opposition that sought for any topic which might bring
them credit and might associate the Government writh
the defence of wrong-doing. Here they found good
material ready to their hands, and Sheridan and Fox
quickly developed an amazing interest in the wrongs
of petty burghs wdiich were to them no more than
names. The subject was too useful to be parted with
expeditiously, and so session after session a motion
was brought up or leave asked to bring in a Bill for
Scottish burgh reform when only a few weeks remained
before prorogation. The tactics of the Opposition were
plain enough, and, with some lack of foresight, Dundas
played into their hands by trying a hopeless defence of
abuses which could not be denied. " If Scotland was
bad, England was no better. There were means by
w^hich an audit might be forced by legal process upon
sufficient evidence of its necessity ; rights could not be
rashly abridged without compensation and without evi-
dence that they had been abused." Parliamentary
reform was already receding into the dim distance
under the impending shadow of the French Revolution,
and burgh reform could not be accomplished without
touching on that problem, which every day was making
more difficult. At length the topic became one of
which the Opposition stood forth as the sole champion,
and in regard to w hich Government assumed a position
of determined resistance, and the hopes of reform for
that generation were absolutely dispelled. It must be
admitted that some of the means bv which it was
CHECKED BY FEAR OF REVOLUTION. 129
pressed added little to its weight. One of the judges
of the Court of Session, Lord Gardenstone, a man of
sprightly wit and erratic activity, who showed energy
in all subjects but that of his profession, and affected
a someAvhat ostentatious neglect of his judicial duties —
a man, further, whose character won him scant respect,
and whose avowed contempt for religion shocked even
a tolerant age — made himself the marked champion of
reform^. He subscribed to the expense of the agitation,
and was 6'^ of the most zealous speakers at the Con-
vention. His ardent advocacy seemed to gather new
strength from a visit to France, where he cultivated
the society of those whose ideas gave the note to the
first movements of the Revolution. One of his chosen
intimates at home was a man who, at a later day, was
transported for sedition. A century ago there pre-
vailed no such strict ideas of judicial decorum as those
to which we are accustomed ; but even in that age
such conduct on the part of a judge could hardly
advance the cause of which he made himself so marked
a partisan. It -was the misfortune of Scotland that
burgh reform became tainted in the thoughts of men
with the suspicion of revolutionary aims, and the
opportunity which at one time seemed to offer was
lost in the gloomy struggle into which the nation was
soon to plunge. A few years before the abuses might
have been swept away with the consent of all that was
best in the nation, and this might have brought in its
wake a sound measure of Parliamentary reform. As it
was, it struck the first note in the bitter contest which
was to divide Scotland into two bitterly hostile camps.
Side by side with this it is almost amusing to watch
another episode which provoked the susceptibilities of
Scotland, and which encountered an unthinking and
VOL. IL I
130 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
unreasoning opposition. The rude breath of economic
reform actually threatened the Court of Session, and
proposed to cut down the judges below the mystic
number of fifteen. With all its cumbrousness of
method, and all its quaint attachment to the relics of
antiquarianism, the Court of Session was, as a whole,
an institution of which Scotland might be jnstly proud.
It was secured by the Act of Union ; and although a
reform of method and a reduction of numbers were not
matters which could be deemed outside the range of
reasonable speculation, the suggestion was enough to
provoke a good deal of national feeling. Fortunately
for Scotland, she had a doughty, albeit a self-constituted
champion. In a letter burning with all the heroic
ardour of patriotism, James Boswell generously threw
himself into the breach. "My friends and country-
men," he wrote from London in 1785, "be not afraid.
I am upon the spot. I am on the watch." But lest
this puissant championship might fail, he exhorts his
fellow-citizens to resist to the death such a trampling
on their national privileges as would be implied in
any diminution of the solemn tradition that found the
chief ward of unspotted justice in the fifteen judges
who could occasionally meet in solemn conclave, and
whose somewhat homely discussions alternately awed
and amused the listening crowd. The threatened
danger passed, and another institution was safe for a
few more years from the desecrating hand of reform.
It was not likely, when the ranks were closing for
a long struggle, and when any hints at change were
received with more and more of suspicion and mis-
giving, that any attempt at reviving the old theme of
restoring free election in place of patronage in the
Church should receive much consideration.
OPPOSITION TO CHUPtCH PATRONAGE. 131
Once more, in 1785, we find the matter mooted
in the Assembly ; and strangely enough an overture
"to consult the landed interest" on the subject was
strongly supported by Henry Erskine, and others of the
nascent party who were to match themselves with the
adherents of the Government. Perhaps it was hoped
that the selfish jealousy with which the landed interest
regarded the claims of the Church to an increase of
stipends, had made a breach between them and the
Moderate p^rty which might cause the landed interest,
if consulted, to pronounce against patronage. If so,
the hope was disappointed. The landed proprietors
might be jealous of the Church, but they were too
sensible of their own interest to break with her. The
motion was lost by 100 votes to (54.
The opposing parties were coming more and more
clearly to recognise the line of demarcation between
them which every day was marking with more vivid
clearness. The storms abroad were casting their
shadows upon Scotland ; and the violence of the
faction fights at Westminster were reflected in the
increased virulence of political disputes at home.
It is curious to notice the different effects that
these disputes had in Scotland. There was one
which for a time agitated London to a high pitch
of excitement. The charges against Warren Hastings
were precisely of the sort to stir an easy and indis-
criminating benevolence — hardly to be distinguished
from selfish folly — to a fury of pious indignation
against supposed oppression. All the resources of
eloquence, restrained by no sense of responsibility,
nursed that indignation till it fancied itself the purest
of virtues, and forgot that it was serving the purposes
of faction and of captious criticism of a great career.
132 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IX SCOTLAND.
All that indignation was presently to fade away into
a pale and ineffective oblivion until it was once more
revived in a later day by the rhetorical outbursts of
Macaulay, to be finally laid to rest by the judicial and
unimpassioned criticism of Sir James Stephen. But
for the moment the turn of fashion, and the impulse
of the crowd, Avas to applaud the attacks upon a dis-
tinguished public servant, and to apply to the obscure
and intricate involution of Eastern affairs the ready
judgment which served well enough — corrected by
the sound common-sense of the average man — for
the discussion of home affairs. From the very first
there was something of unreal and simulated display
in the whole process. The trial was conducted with
all the pomp and dignity that made of it a fashionable
excitement. Its danger to national interests were
forgotten, and the very picturesqueness of the scenes
about which its incidents were grouped gave it ad-
ditional eclat. For once the bitterness of faction
found on its side many whose motives were above
question. Whether Pitt w^as wise in yielding to the
storm, whether he might not have maintained a
more dignified course in resisting a prosecution which
was perilously near to persecution, may perhaps be
doubted ; but there can be no doubt that both he
and Dundas were honest in their belief that some
of the charges against Warren Hastings were true.
Their private correspondence proves so much, but
it does not prove more. It does not prove that the
admission of guilt on the part of those to whom
Hastings was justified in looking as his champions
was not prompted — it may be unwittingly — by political
exigency. A stern refusal of all compromise with rash
and exaggerated denunciations would, to our mind,
PROSECUTION OF HASTINGS. 133
have reflected greater honour upon Pitt in the eyes
of posterity. A readily admitted conviction as to
the guilt of a great public servant, on the part of
the minister to whose chivalry he trusted, is apt to
be suspicious when it coincides with the exigencies
of party warfare. Undoubtedly Pitt might have been
overborne by the swelling tide of popular indignation
had he stubbornly refused to admit that amidst ex-
aggeratioi;, there was a residuum of truth ; and the
caution thai made him concede something to the foe
was only too natural. Pitt's own conscience did not
tell him that he was unfairly deserting one whom he
was bound to defend ; when he admitted part of the
case against Hastings, it was unquestionably on the
ground that he had persuaded himself that the part
admitted was true. None the less, the injury which
he inflicted on the great governor was more deadly
than the most eloquent denunciations of his sworn
foes.
In England this blunted the edge of the Opposition's
attack ; but it was not so in Scotland. India had
become the coveted resort of numbers of Scotsmen,
to whose energy and talents much of the laborious
construction of our Eastern Empire was due. Rough
and ready methods, the expedients that must occur
to the mind of the beleaguered general, were not
judged there under the exciting stimulus of rhetori-
cians, or according to the complacent theories of
armchair politicians. On the whole, Scottish opinion
was in favour of Hastings ; and Pitt's desertion of
his cause, though it did not lose him Scotland's
support, was none the less a strain upon her fidelity.
His attitude of half-hearted defence and of trafiicking
with a virulent prosecution was too subtle to be under-
134 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
stood, and too indefinite to be admired by a generous
people.
But if Pitt failed to carry with him the entire
sympathies of Scotland in his conduct in regard to
Hastings' impeachment, there was another struggle
which he had to maintain in which he had her cor-
dial support. In 1788 the first cloud of insanity fell
upon the king. There was much probability that the
cloud would soon lift, and that the king would once
more assume the government. But the moment was
seized by the Opposition, who had gained the Prince
of Wales for their faction, to assert his rights to an
unlimited Regency, which would virtually have ab-
rogated for ever the rule of George III., would have
overturned the existing Ministry, and would have de-
livered the nation and the Crown into the hands of
those who had already proved themselves to be an
unprincipled faction. The crisis was one of vast
importance, and on Pitt's part it called for a courage
that could brave almost certain disaster, in the hope
that some happy chance might give an issue fi'om a
hopeless impasse. To almost all his adherents, it
seemed as if Pitt's Government was doomed, and as
if he had made an implacable enemy of the Prince,
into whose hands power was soon to pass, and who
had acquired an unsound and superficial, but pre-
vailing, popularity. The crisis was averted only by
the sudden restoration of the king in the spring of
1789, while the Constitutional question of the Regency
was under hot discussion. What our destinies in the
immediate future would have been, had the fates de-
creed otherwise, it is hard to say. The nation must
then have met overwhelming danger, with only a
motley and discredited crew to guide her course.
SCOTTISH LOYALTY TO GEORGE III. 135
Here, at least, Pitt had no half-hearted support
from Scotland. By a strange revulsion of feeling,
that nation which had longest maintained the struggle
against the family of George III. was now the
staunchest in its loyal attachment to his person. Con-
viviality was always in excess in the Scotland of that
day ; but it never launched into such boisterous and
uproarious excess as when it celebrated the birthday
of the king. Scotland knew little and cared less for
all the tittle-tattle about the king's friends ; for all
the high-sounding theories that professed to mingle
respect for the Crown with reiterated denunciations of
its action. It associated the attacks upon George III.
with the virulent abuse of Scotsmen that had been
rampant in the days of Lord Bute. It knew the
antics of Wilkes and the Patriots only by distant
hearsay. It had never understood the political faith
of those who had extolled the American rebels in
order to injure the ministers of the Crown, and had
rejoiced in the successes of these rebels, which their
own factious bitterness had done so much to assist.
But scarcely had this episode passed before the first
threatenings of a greater storm were heard, and Pitt
had to face the heaviest task of his life. The signs of
anarchy and revolution became rife in France in 1789 ;
and to the vast majority of the British people the
Crown appeared, above all the contentions of faction,
as the chief security against the contagion of such an
example. If anything had been wanting to confirm
the hold of Pitt and Duudas upon the Scottish nation,
it was supplied by their steadfast defence of the
afflicted king when all the odds in the fight seemed
against them, and when they were defending a dis-
mally forlorn hope.
136 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
During the next generation we have to follow an
entirely new phase of Scottish history. We have to
see how Scotland became divided into two hostile
camps, whose antagonism became the more intensely
bitter as the arena of their strife was small. On such
a stage, faction is certain to follow personal lines, and
to become the source of keen personal animosity. The
strife of party was bitter enough in England. There
it was an inherited tradition ; it had its source in wide
divergences of opinion ; it had been inflamed by at
least half a century of Parliamentary struggle, which
during the reign of George III. had assumed a viru-
lence which was almost without example. But within
a few years the intensity of party feeling in Scotland,
of a type hitherto scarcely known, became even keener
than anything which England could show. And the
remarkable peculiarity of this development was, that
it took its rise in divergences which were superficial
and unreal, and in which no considerable amount of
national feeling was involved ; that it left the larger
part of the nation absolutely untouched ; that it was
fostered and fomented with assiduous care altogether
out of proportion to its importance ; and that those
who came under its influence looked back upon it
with feelings absurdly exaggerated, and mistook for
the work of a party struggle changes which were
really the effect of a far-reaching social transformation,
with which Whig and Tory had equally little to do.
During the eighteenth century Scotland had indeed
found ample occasion for strong outbursts of national
feeling, and had been divided into opposite parties,
resting upon fundamental differences. The question
of Union with England ; the Jacobite rebellions ; the
divergences upon ecclesiastical government — each of
GROWTH OF PARTY ANIMOSITY. ]37
these had stuTed the whole nation, and might at any
moment have given rise to civil war. Some minor
questions had given rise to considerable feeling — such
as the hereditary jurisdiction, the refusal of a Scottish
militia, and the incidence of taxation. But all these
had followed lines quite distinct from those of English
parties. For a hundred years, the dominant tone of all
Scottish politicians who were not avowed Jacobites —
and the letter had dwindled by this time into little
more than the memory and the shadow of a party —
had been that of Revolution Whigs. The distinctions
of the House of Commons had found no counterpart
in Scotland. The name of Patriot, as a synonym for
the most virulent of factious partisans, was unknown
within her borders. Amongst Scottish representatives
at Westminster there were some who were adherents
of the Administration, others who were in the Opposi-
tion interest ; but their attitude was determined by
personal considerations, and had little to do with
fundamental political differences.
At the beginning of Pitt's Administration, Scottish
society was undergoing a great change. A few of the
old type remained, imbued with the notions of an older
generation, repeating its manners, and remaining as
picturesque monuments of an older society. So far as
outward forms and usages went, there was no anxiety
to discard them. But, in reality, a new state of things
already prevailed. The great landlords had lost their
vast personal following, and in place of it were fain
to be content with the increasing rent-roll which the
advancing prosperity of the country brought them. The
towns were growing rapidly in importance, and the
development of manufactures was bringing a new ele-
ment into play. Scotsmen were less and less confined
138 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
within their own borders, and were losing something
of the exclusiveness of national feeling. All were
conscious of anomalies which existed in her Parlia-
mentary representation, in her system of burgh adminis-
tration, and in her total want of all local government.
The evils of the absurdly strained system of entails
were fully recognised, and it had already undergone
some modification. In 1784, it might have been ex-
pected that wide and far-reaching changes would soon
be brought about in Scotland, without exciting any
violent storm of party warfare. Meetings in favour of
Parliamentary reform were attended by men of in-
fluence, who belonged exclusively to no one party :
the cause of burgh reform had, as we have seen, re-
ceived decided support from the judges on the bench.
Any violent division between ^^'hig and Tory was
unknown.
And even when the various movements which pre-
ceded the French Revolution began to stir men's
thoughts and excite their passions in England, they
aroused no strong feeling in Scotland. It would be
vain to look there for any such dreams of new political
and social ideals as caught hold of the minds and
fancies of some of the strongest intellects in England.
Even in England, the influence proved evanescent, and
before many years were past, the orgies of the French
llevolution had dispelled the illusions of those who
had imagined that a new dawn of hope for humanity
was near. But in Scotland no man of wide influence
or commanding intellect was carried away by the new
enthusiasm. Those who were supposed to represent
the revolutionary tendency were men of little power,
leaders only amongst weaklings, borrowing their ideas
and their words from English writers, and more fit to
THE REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT. 13!)
serve as objects of pity than of anger. Those who,
sheltered behind constitutional forms, endeavoured to
use popular discontent as an instrument of party, were
men without any serious following, and were unfit,
either by mental endowment or by character, to be the
leaders of any important movement. At a later day,
and on a distant view, they might be elevated into
heroes, and a political party of a very different com-
plexion iright indulge in the fancy that a great national
movement, of which that party was the heir, was then
inaugurated. But as a fact, the so-called revolutionary
party in Scotland was based upon no impulse of in-
tellectual force, was encouraged by no Scotsman of
weight or character, and had absolutely no influence
but a negative one — that of checking a tendency
towards moderate reform, and postponing it for more
than a generation.
The first steps taken by that party were timid and
tentative. There existed a society to commemorate the
revolution of 1688 ; and its name was found convenient
as a cover for the new designs. It show^ed some new
energy in celebrating the memory of William III. and
the glories of our own Revolution ; but its members
hardly concealed the fact that the ideas which they
professed bore a closer resemblance to those which
were in active operation in France than to those which
animated the Convention Parliament of 1688. Stories
were repeated of gatherings where the achievements of
the French National Assembly were toasted, and where
the name of Tom Paine was received with applause ;
where Liberty and Equality and the Rights of Man were
vaunted as the weapons by which the existing state of
society was to be overthrown. Meanwhile the picture
of the ghastly freaks of epidemic madness in Paris,
140 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
with all its crudities and its barbarities, was stirring
men's feelings to their depths, and it was little wonder
that the vapourings of the association of the Friends
of the People, which now began to hold its meetings in
various Scottish towns, should arouse at once alarm
and indignation. All that was strongest in the nation
was driven into a mood which, not unnaturally, became
one of intolerant reaction. Jacobitism had died out,
but the sympathies it embodied infused themselves
into the party that now stood forward as the bulwark
against an aggressive proletariat. Ideas of reform,
which a few years before found support from both
parties, were now banished from the political creed of
men Avho saw nothing but danger and disaster in
any tampering with revolution. The abuses of burgh
administration could not now, it was thought, be
touched without setting the match to an explosive
mine. It may be well to record briefly the con-
temporary history of that question. In 1783 it had
begun to occupy the close attention of the delegates of
the burghs. In 1787 a definite scheme was formed.
It did not seem impossible then to obtain the support
of the Tory administration for this scheme ; but it was
found that Pitt and Dundas refused to move. Recourse
was then had to Fox and Sheridan, and under their
auspices the question was mooted in Parliament, but
met with determined opposition. Year after year the
motion was renewed, but the Lord Advocate palliated
the abuses, and resisted change. At length in 1792
he brought forward a weak and temporising measure
which would have done so little that the Opposition
rejected it, and it was quietly dropped. Next year
found the alarm of innovation too strong to permit any
hope of success for a scheme of reform, and almost
IMPULSE OF REACTION. 141
with the acquiescence of the Whigs it was left un-
touched for a few years more. Still more was this the
case with the larger and more important question of
Parliamentary reform. The anomalies of the franchise
had a few years before been admitted by all. Now
even the moderate Whigs avoided the subject, which
was left in the hands of the societies which avowed
more or less sympathy w^ith the aspirations of the
French ^^^evolution. To the quiet nerves of retrospec-
tion this di^y seem unreasonable ; but who can wonder
that men, who were living under the appalling reports
of the orgies of the French Convention, shrank with
some horror from societies which avowed their com-
plicity with the leaders of that Convention, which
borro'wed their catchwords from its reports, and which
took for their political manual the ribaldries of Tom
Paine, whose name figured amongst the foreign mem-
bers of that assembly which now terrorised France,
and was a menace to all Europe ? The landed gentry,
the clergy, the magistrates, the well-to-do tradesmen —
all were at one in their detestation of political change
when it was associated with revolution, when its aim
seemed to be plunder, and when its plans seemed
likely to be realised only by sweeping away all the
landmarks of the constitution. To proclaim oneself an
adherent of reform was now to assume a character of
reckless political profligacy, and to mark oneself out as
an enemy of society.
To a large extent, no doubt, this was the exag-
gerated alarm of a propertied and privileged class.
Strong arguments could be adduced for the necessity
of reforming many abuses in Scottish administration ;
but abstract arguments are apt not to be listened
to when indignation has been kindled and patience
142 THE TORY AND AVHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
exhausted by the crimes of those who were held up
as models for imitation, and whose chief passion,
openly avowed, was virulent hatred of our country
and her Government. Common sense was outraged,
and patience was exhausted by the flimsy theories
of men who preached a millennium, and found the
evidence of its advent in the foul deeds now being
enacted in the name of Liberty on the soil of
France. It is true that the advocates of reform
attempted to dissociate their schemes from revolu-
tionary methods ; but their sincerity was more than
suspected when their methods were examined. The
nation had been prepared for reform ; but its attention
was now arrested by what it saw abroad, and it stayed
its hand and stood at gaze. The brotherhood of
man had no charms for a shrewd and practical race,
proud of its traditions, jealous of its nationality and
keenly alive to the grades which distinguished class
from class. The wiser heads in Scotland knew the
charms which fanaticism had for a Scottish populace,
and judged that such fanaticism might find sustenance
in politics now, as it had in religion in the past.
The dominant latitudinarianism, far from making
Scottish society pervious to vague aspirations, made it
all the more callous to popular enthusiasms. Domi-
nant Toryism might, no doubt, become obstinate,
bigoted, selfish, and domineering. But in its incep-
tion it was rather cynical, critical, and impatient of
excess and folly. Its first movement was one of con-
tempt ; it was only as time went on that it became
angry and virulent.
The agitation for reform was now identified chiefly
with the association of the Friends of the People.
Three topics had before been chiefly urged ; the
INCREASING ALARM. 143
reform of the Parliamentary franchise, the reform
of burgh administration, and the institution of trial
by jury in civil cases. The last of these was popular
in appearance ; but it was quite permissible to doubt
whether it had any necessary connection with con-
stitutional liberty, or whether it would introduce
any substantial improvement in the administration
of the law. The arguments in favour of the first
two were certainly strong, and the reform of the
burghs seemed to threaten no constitutional danger.
But the strength of the demand might fairly be
doubted when it was found to be annually urged,
not so much by Scottish members as by Fox and
Sheridan, whose chief object was too evidently to
find a telling subject for debate, and to embarrass the
Government. In 1790 the AVhig Club of Dundee
passed an address to the National Assembly of
France. It is true that the address contains ab-
solutely nothing against our own constitution, and
makes no attack either on the Crown or on the
aristocracy. But the example was a catching one,
and other addresses were more suspicious in their
origin, and less guarded in their language. In
Scotland as well as in Fngland the alarm in-
creased ; and in Scotland especially the advocates of
reform sank in credit, while their complicity with
more subversive schemes was more than suspected.
The most prominent Parliamentary opponent of the
Government from Scotland was the Earl of Lauder-
dale ; and neither by talents nor by character was
he a man likely to impress his countrymen. Acrid,
passionate, and crafty — with all the lower arts of
a political intriguer, but none of the resource and
persuasiveness that make an intriguer successful —
144 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
Lord Lauderdale is one of the least attractive figures
in Scottish history during the forty years which
follow. It was consistent with his character, that
reform ceased to have charms for him when it
ceased to be an engine of faction, and that he^osed
a long career of political restlessness by opposing,
with all the scanty influence which he possessed,
the accomplishment of that Parliamentary reform in
times of peace which he had used as an instrument
of faction in times of storm and danger.
It was not surprising that such a man, at a time
like this, should be suspected of knowing more than
he avowed of the less scrupulous tactics of those who
urged reform. Before long these last brought them-
selves within the arm of the law. In May 1792 the
meetings of the Friends of the People had become so
frequent, and their tone had become so menacing,
that a Royal Proclamation was issued against seditious
writings and meetings. It was the subject of fierce
Parliamentary debate, in which Pitt and Dundas had
now the aid of Burke against the tirades of Sheridan
and Fox. The Government carried the day, time
after time, by overwhelming majorities in the Com-
mons ; and by an even greater preponderance of voices
in the Lords, where the chief opponents were Lord
Lansdowne — as little trusted now as when, under the
name of Lord Shelburne, he had gained the reputation
for shiftiness and trickery which marred his eminent
talent — and Lauderdale, who outdid Lansdowne in the
art of arousing suspicion, but was incomparably his
inferior in statesmanship. The opponents of the
Government outside Parliament became more des-
perate and more bold. On the king's birthday in
June there were serious riots in Edinburgh, where an
THE FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE. 145
angry crowd assembled to burn Henry Dundas in
effigy, in revenge for his opposition to burgfi reform,
and when his house was attacked and the rioters
dispersed only by the military. Another meeting
of the Friends of the People was held at Edinburgh
in the following month ; but although this came
within the lerms of the Royal Proclamation, and
although the Government were aware that methods
more dangerous than those avowed were being pur-
sued, no prosecutions were as yet instituted. Early
in 1793 several persons were prosecuted for illegal
meetings and for drinking seditious toasts ; and two
booksellers, named Stewart and Elder, were indicted
for publishing the "Rights of Man." Much elo-
quence may no doubt be spent, and specious argu-
ments may be adduced, in denunciation of such an
invasion of the liberty of the press and of free
debate. But with the tocsin sounding in Paris ;
in a society alarmed and indignant ; and under the
pressure of a war which avowedly proclaimed for
its ulterior object the destruction of the English con-
stitution, the Government would have either risen
to a surprising height of abstract philosophical
argument, or sunk to a surprising depth of political
weakness, had it failed to act firmly towards those
who made themselves instruments in disseminat-
ing the vulgar and seditious garbage of Tom Paine.
In none of these cases, however, was any punish-
ment more severe than a few months' imprisonment
inflicted.
By this time, however, the opposing ranks had
closed, and in the heat of the conflict calm and con-
stitutional methods were scarcely to be expected. It
can hardly be said that at this juncture the action of
VOL. II. K
146 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
the judicial body in Scotland was guided by wise
counsels, or by strict impartiality.
It may be well to consider how that judicial body
was now formed, and what were its chief characteristics
at this time. In many of its usages, and in its
methods of applying the law, the Court of Justiciary
was a relic of the past. That it had been little
altered hitherto, and that in spite of faulty and narrow
principles it had nevertheless earned the high respect
and confidence of the country, was due mainly to a
series of judges of remarkable ability, who had been
trained in a school that inured them to state-craft
and to public life. The nominal head of the Court
was the Lord Justice-General, who was usually a
nobleman of commanding position and influence. But
under him the administration of the Criminal Law,
and in a great measure the maintenance of public
order, and the direction of the executive, had long
been in the hands of the Lord President and the Lord
Justice-Clerk. The holders of these oflfices were gene-
rally men who had previously had a long training in
public life, and came to power with an experience
wider than that of the mere lawyers. Throughout the
century — in Duncan Forbes of Culloden ; in more than
one generation of the Dundas family ; in men like
Fletcher ; and in one like Lord Auchinleck, the
rugged but forcible parent of James Boswell — these
oflices had occupants fully equal to their responsibili-
ties. In the abstract, it may seem expedient that the
judicial element should be entirely separate from the
executive, and in times of settlement this is doubtless
the case. But under an administration such as that
of Scotland during the greater part of last century,
the wider experience and larger outlook which the
SCOTTISH JUDICIAL BENCH. 147
judicial Bench thus acquired, was of distinct and in-
disputable value.
But this political enlargement of the judicial func-
tions had now almost disappeared. For at least a
generation there had been no rebellion calling for
prompt and yet skilful action in sudden emergencies.
The executive government in Scotland had become
largely a matter of routine ; and such as it was, it had
been gradually assumed into the hands of the Secre-
tary of State for the Home Department. Of the
judges now on the Bench few had even sat in Parlia-
ment ; none had gained experience in practical ad-
ministration ; and they lacked the knowledge of affairs
which is above all things important for a judge at
times of political excitement, and which more than
compensates for the danger that former attachment
to a political party may give undue bias.
At this time the office of Lord President had re-
cently been assumed by Sir Hay Campbell of Succoth
— a man highly respected, an astute and careful
lawyer, but with no experience of political life, and
no claim to commanding ability or vigour of personal
character. The Lord Justice-Clerk was Robert Mac-
queen (Lord Braxfield), a man who, unlike the majo-
rity of the Scottish judges, was of comparatively
humble birth, and had not, in climbing the ladder
of professional success, divested himself of the coarse
homeliness of his original station. He was a man
whose experience was bounded by the Parhament
House ; but his powerful intellect and masterful
character made his personality all the stronger and
more forcible because a contracted sphere and narrrow
experience had concentrated its powers and left him
without the useful, if sometimes debilitating, lessons of
148 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
compromise which are learned from contact with a
variety of men. In all the political trials which now
ensue, Lord Braxfield undcaotedly is the leading
figure on the Bench : coarse, domineering, sarcastic,
but yet with an intellect ever on the alert, instinct
with a rough and ready common-sense and humour,
and keen to detect any weak point in the argument
for the defence ; withal regardless, even to consum-
mate contempt, of popular opinion. His habitual
carelessness of demeanour and freedom of language
made him give utterance to gibes and sarcasms some-
times on the Bench, and sometimes in the privacy of
social intercourse, which were repeated and perhaps
exaggerated, and which were far from adding to the
dignity of the judicial office, or to its reputation for
impartiality.
Nor were there amongst his colleagues any who
could counteract or temper his vigorous personality.
Amongst them was Lord Gardenstone — already noted
• — whose character was too flimsy, and whose atten-
tion to his professional duties was too slight to give
him any real weight. Another was David Rae, Lord
Eskgrove, a man of much acuteness, and an able
lawyer of an antique and narrow type, but whose
oddities both of intellect and of demeanour moderated
the respect which he might otherwise have obtained.
Lord Hailes was a cultivated and learned man, whose
thoughts were perhaps more occupied with antiquarian
investigations than with the maintenance of a judicial
sway ; while Lord Monboddo was known rather for
his quaint eccentricities and social humour than for
any consummate mastery of the law.
Early in 1793 a somewhat odd illustration of the
lack of prudence on the part of the Bench was given.
SEDITION TRIALS. 149
A scene, doubtless carefully rehearsed, and more edi-
fying than strictly constitutional, was enacted between
the Lord Provost of Edinburgh and the Judges.
The worthy Provost appeared, attended by the ap-
purtenances of civic dignity, and delivered an address
to the Judges on the excellence of the constitution,
and the wickedness of those who found any fault or
blemish in it ; and this address was answered by a
long homily from the Lord President, in which the
wickedness of innovation and the dans^ers of sedition
were duly urged for the benefit of the lieges. This
homily was entered on the records of the Court. It
was probably not the means best calculated to im-
press a suspicious public with the strict partiality of
the judicial Bench.
In August 1793 took place the first of the trials
for sedition which attained much notoriety, and
which afterwards became favourite, and, it must be
admitted, favourable, topics of declamation amongst
those who were in search for instances of Tory tyranny
and of the persecutions endured by the pioneers of
the later Whig party. It was that of Thomas Muir
for sedition. He was a young man under thirty
years of age, the son of a well-to-do commercial man
in Glasgow, who had purchased a landed estate known
as Huntershill. Young Muir was a man of more than
average ability, of ardent temperament, and over-
strained ambition, who, after a good education, had
passed as an advocate, and employed the abundant
leisure which the early years of that career offered,
in political discussion, and in ventilating, at the
meetings of the Friends of the People, views which
were not perhaps very advanced, but which in the
existing state of public opinion were inopportune.
150 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
There is no evidence to prov^ chat his aims were other
than sincere and his motives honest ; and in the
abstract it was difficult to condemn an agitation for
Parliamentary Reform, of which Pitt and other mem-
bers of the Cabinet had, only a short time previously,
been ardent advocates. The French Revolution had
inspired new hope in those who still pursued these
aims ; but the very fact that they received new impulse
from the events in France was the very reason why,
by another and a more numerous section, they should
now appear dangerous and revolutionary. Muir had
attended such meetings and taken a leading part in
their discussions. The Scottish branch of the asso-
ciation had first met at Glasgow in October 17.92,
and Muir was elected its vice-president. He had
been in constant communication with the most stre-
nuous advocates of drastic political change, and —
a circumstance which told heavily against him — he
had been associated with Irish political societies from
which real danger was to be expected. At a meeting
of delegates at Edinburgh, in December 1792, he
brought forward a strongly worded address from the
Society of United Irishmen, and endeavoured- to per-
suade the delegates to reply in the same tone. In
common, probably, with all those who watched with
interest the struggle between Burke, who was now
denouncing revolution, and Tom Paine, who was its
English protagonist, he had discussed the pamphlets
of the latter, had even been the means of disseminat-
ing them, and had recommended some of the writings
of the French revolutionary authors. In his own
words, as repeated at his trial, there was nothing very
extreme or dangerous, and although he had freely
discussed the most advanced political theories, there
PROSECUTION OF MUIR. 151
was ample evidence that he had expressed doubt as
to their appHcability to British politics, and had
counselled moderation. But, on the other hand, he
had made himself obnoxious to those whose nerves
were not unreasonably shaken by the events now
going on in Paris, he had encouraged meetings of
societies which were discountenanced by Government,
and he was received with cordial friendship in Paris
by some of those who were the chief actors on the
French scene. It was suspected — as it afterwards
appeared, not without reason — that some of those who
discussed the necessity of political reform, were pre-
pared to take practical and violent steps to enforce it
upon an unwilling Government. Doubt, suspicion,
and irritation were almost necessary elements in a
society which viewed with bitter hatred and serious
alarm the contagion of the French example which had
already aroused the indignant protest of Burke, and
were giving rise to increasing dread on the part of
Pitt. Indignation and fear found new ground when
the French republic declared war against England in
the opening days of 1793. It was no wonder that the
tide of feeling ran fiercely against a small and insigni-
iicant section, which at such a time were pleading not
merely for some measure of Parliamentary reform, and
for the amendment of its more glaring anomalies, but
who found the moment well chosen for urging uni-
versal sujfrage and annual Parliaments. But it is none
the less to be regretted that the Courts of Law allowed
themselves to be swayed by panic and by prejudice.
The prosecution of Muir and others was resolved
upon by the Government, and it can scarcely be said
that they could have satisfied public opinion in Scot-
land had they refrained from it. Nor can much be
152 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
said against the conduct of the prosecution by the
Lord Advocate, Robert Dundas of Arniston, son of
the Lord President and nephew of Henry Dundas,
the Home Secretary. The prosecutor could scarcely
do otherwise than urge as strongly as he could the
points that told against the accused. It was for the
Bench to hold the balance ; and this is just what,
unfortunately, the Bench did not do. The Lord
Justice-Clerk Braxfield made himself more than prose-
cutor : he strained every point against the prisoner
with a vindictive spite which not justice alone, but
statesmanship, would have forbidden. Muir had com-
mitted a grave error in breaking the bail which had
been granted after his first arrest in January 1793,
and not appearing to take his trial in February. As
a consequence he was outlawed, and eventually ap-
peared to take his trial in August very seriously
compromised. But he had in no way concealed his
movements, nor attempted to evade his final arrest.
His presence in Ireland, in London, and in Paris was
perfectly well known. His motive in visiting Paris
was one which perhaps involved undue intimacy with
the revolutionary leaders and their designs, and cer-
tainly assumed to himself too much of a representa-
tive character ; but he no doubt honestly desired to
prevent, so far as he could, the execution of Louis
XVI., which he and others who sympathised with
the Revolution deemed likely to injure the cause.
He might have kept himself out of the clutches of
British law-courts ; but he voluntarily returned to
Scotland, and surrendered himself to justice there.
He doubtless thought that political discussion could
scarcely be held to be treasonable ; but he mistook
the temper of the nation, and certainly did not fore-
BRAXFIELD AS JUDGE. 153
see that such temper would be reflected and exag-
gerated on the judicial Bench. Braxfield answered his
appeals to the examples of notable members of the
Government who had advocated reform by reminding
him, with all the insolence of sarcastic humour, that
these personages were not within the jurisdiction of
the Scottish Courts. So far from admitting that dis-
cussion was lawful, he declaimed against any proposal
that would have given representation to other interests
than those of the landed gentry. He strained against
the defendant the delay which had unavoidably oc-
curred in meeting his trial. He imputed it as an addi-
tional wrong that the populace had shown sympathy
by applauding the prisoner in court. He declined to
admit any flaw in the existing administration, and
assumed that any criticism of it was in itself a wrong.
With all the force of a strong but narrow intellect,
and of a character that scorned any trafficking with
opinions 'vvhich he honestly believed to be wrong and
dangerous, he refrained even from giving that appear-
ance of decency which, with equal danger to the
prisoner, he might have adopted, by concealing his
own violent prejudice, and his complete sympathy with
the indignation and alarm of those who deemed that
the excesses of the French Revolution might ere long
be enacted at home. It is impossible to bring against
Braxfield any taint of corruption, or any desire to
conciliate the Government, whose position indeed his
outspoken prejudice gravely compromised. He was
no time-server, and had no personal aim to attain.
But his virulence was none the less indecent that it
was thoroughly honest.
But otherwise the trial was little but a travesty of
justice. The jurors were all selected from a cousti-
154 THE TORY AND WF^J PAETIES IN SCOTLAND.
tutionai society which met at Goldsmith's Hall, out
of whose lists Muir's name had been struck, and
which might therefore be held to have prejudiced his
case ; and his challenges were summarily repelled, on
the ground that, if allowed, they would infer the re-
jection as a juror of every loyal citizen. None of the
usual indulgences granted to a prisoner conducting his
own case were allowed him ; but he and his witnesses
were bullied and browbeat. In the result Muir was con-
victed not merely of " leasing " — an ancient and well-
known Scottish legal term borrowed from the French
lese-majeste — but of the more serious charge, unknown
either to custom or to statute law, but held to be
valid at common law, of "sedition." For "leasing"
the ordinary punishment would have been banishment.
But sedition, it was held, left to the judges an " arbi-
trary" punishment. To have inflicted a sentence of
banishment only upon Muir and his associates would
merely have sent him to propagate his opinions in
England, or somewhere beyond the Scottish border.
More than this seemed necessary, and he was there-
fore sentenced to fourteen years' transportation. Like
others similarly sentenced, he was sent to Botany Bay.
There he purchased some land and remained for two
or three years ; but he was rescued by a foreign ship,
and after some adventures by sea, in which he was
severely wounded, he landed in France, and was con-
ducted in triumph to the capital. But the wound was
found to be incurable, and after a few months' resi-
dence on French soil, where his presence was welcomed
as a sign of defiance to the English, he died in 1798.^
' His health had probably been seriously injured before the wound,
by the horrors which, it was well known, attended a sentence of trans-
portation. Gerald and Skirving (see ^wst), on whom similar sentences
were passed, survived their landing at Botany Bay only by three months.
PROSECUTION OF PALMER AND OTHERS. 155
Miiir's trial took place in August 1793. In the
next month it was followed by that of Thomas Fyshe
Palmer, an Englishman of good family, educated at
Eton and Cambridge, who had formerly been in orders
in the Church of England, but was now a Unitarian
minister at Dundee. The charges against Palmer were
even more flimsy than those against Muir, and the
proof of his having used any inflammatory language
was if anything less conclusive. He was accused of
having printed an "Address to their fellow-citizens"
from a " Society of the Friends of Liberty," but
although he was apparently the agent by whom it
passed into the printer's hand, he was certainly not the
author, and seems to have discountenanced its issue.
He also was condemned to transportation for twelve
years.
Meanwhile the alarm grew, and however a minority
might protest against the miscarriage of justice, their
remonstrances tended only to convince many that the
danger was still more real, and that it could be met
only by increased severity. In December of the same
year the magistrates prohibited a meeting of British
delegates at Edinburgh, and the widespread ramifica-
tions of the society, as well as the flagrant insult which
they ofiered to public opinion in adopting the very
phrases used in the French National Convention,
roused the indignation to fever pitch — all the more
that the sympathy for the accused amongst the lower
class became every day more evident. In October
William Skirving, a friend of Palmer, who had been
educated at Edinburgh University for the Noncon-
formist ministry, and subsequently became an agri-
culturist of some repute, had published an account
of Palmer's trial which had represented it as a
156 THE TORY AND WHIG'' PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
martyrdom likely to lead to notable results. He
was himself deeply involved as secretary in the
arrangements for the Convention of Delegates, held
at Edinburgh between October and December 1793,
which was undoubtedly an infringement of the Royal
Proclamation of May 1792, and which was summoned
to protest against the proposed suspension of the
Habeas Corpus xlct. In January 1794 he was brought
to trial, also for " sedition," a word which he professed
not to understand, and to which he refused to plead.
The populace showed their sympathy by taking the
horses out of his carriage and drawing him in triumph
to the court. The same month saw the trial of Maurice
Margarot on the same charge, and it also was attended
by riots in the streets. Those w^ho feared the danger
of advanced political opinions now saw their fears
confirmed. They found the delegates using the
suspicious names of " Citizen," of " Sections," of
" Committees of Secrecy," and believed them to be
backed by a w^ell-arranged scheme for arousing the
terrors of mob-law. In March of the same year
another Englishman, Joseph Gerald of Marylebone,
was found to be carrying on revolutionary machinations
in Scotland ; he too was brought to trial, and, like
Skirving and Margarot, he was sentenced to fourteen
years' transportation. The conduct of the trials might
be indecent, and the sentences passed might be unduly
severe. But the Government could hardly have pre-
vented drastic action on the part of an outraged
society, had they not shown themselves prepared to
guard against designs which seemed to threaten
property and order, or had they yielded in fear of the
anonymous threats of reprisals by the hand of the
political assassin which constantly reached them. In
PROTESTS IN PARLIAMENT. 157
April 1794 the Tory youth of Edinburgh took the law,
indeed, into their own hands. A handful of Irish
students frequented one of the theatres, and irritated
the audience by refusing to uncover when the National
Anthem was sung. The magistrates had insufficient
police control to prevent a serious riot. A band of
the younger bloods of the constitutional party took
possession of the theatre, and enforced the respect due
to loyalty by the summary arguments of oaken clubs.
The riot led to no worse result than a few broken
heads, and it is chiefly memorable from the fact that
a certain young advocate, whose future fame was to
outlast all these disputes, of the name of Walter Scott,
was not ashamed to be a leader in the fray, and not
averse in future years to recount his adventures in
defence of loyalty outraged by the Hibernian visitors.
There were a few more arrests for charges of sedi-
tion of the same kind as those already dealt with.
But the Government seemed to think that enough
had now been done, and were perhaps convinced
that in the Court of Justiciary, they had put in
motion an engine which was a little too drastic in
its methods. The trials and sentences were matter
of keen discussion in Parliament, and many of the
Whig speakers inveighed in no measured terms
against the iniquities of the processes, and the
scandalous bias of the judges. Unfortunately, Parlia-
ment is the worst possible tribunal for pronouncing
on legal administration, and the Opposition spent
themselves in vain efforts against an impregnable
stronghold. Fox and Sheridan were, indeed, eloquent
in their denunciations. They refused to listen to
what they deemed to be legal quibbles, or to pay
" implicit obedience to the doctrines of professional
158 THE TORY AND WHIGX'ARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
men." They quoted with indignation the dicta of
Braxfield as to the proper limitation of representa-
tion to the landed interest, and the hint given by
another judge that torture was the only suitable
punishment for such a crime. They prayed God
to help the people who had such judges. But,
after all, even when aided by the rasping virulence
of Lauderdale, they could scarcely be accepted as
authorities upon Scottish law ; and the feeble
minorities which they were able to command rather
encouraged than prevented further severities. So
far as strict law was concerned, it is safe to assume
that the unanimous opinion of Scottish lawyers at that
day was right in pronouncing that its dictates were
obeyed at once in the indictments and in the sen-
tences. In any case, it was amply established by
the highest authorities, that no appeal lay against
the Justiciary Court of Scotland. There might be
just as little doubt that flagrant bias had been
shown, and that the judges had permitted considera-
tions to operate which they had no right to enter-
tain. But there was no possibility for submitting
legal evidence of this ; and although it might have
been possible to rectify such perversion by the ex-
ercise of the royal prerogative, the Opposition took
the most certain way of rendering this impossible
by the misguided course which they pursued. No
one could have rendered Braxfield's action more safe
against adverse criticism in Scotland than did Fox
and Sheridan and Lauderdale.
In May 1794 there came the Act suspending
the Habeas Corpus Act, and the analogous Scottish
Act of 1701. Only an insignificant minority in
Scotland even whispered a protest : by the great
TRIALS FOR TREASON. 159
majority of those who could make their influence
felt it was welcomed as a defence against impending
danger. In September of the same year came a
new trial — that of Robert Watt and David Downie
— for high treason. There m'es no longer a ques-
tion only of dangerous meetings, of resolutions that
were tainted with revolutionary bias, of the dis-
tribution of questionable writings, and of addresses
that were suspected of meaning more than they
said. This time there was evidence of actual armed
conspiracy. Confederates had been sworn ; signals
for a rising had been arranged ; arms and money
had been collected. It is true that the prepara-
tions were paltry and insignificant. But to allege
this as a ground for leaving them unnoticed and
unpunished, is inept and irrelevant. Their guilt was
not measured by their insignificance ; and it is absurd
to suppose that in the temper of the public mind
in 1794, when the orgies of the Revolution were in
full swing, and when the resources of our country
were strained to the uttermost in maintaining a war
which was avowedly proclaimed by the foe as a means
of revolutionary propagandism — the discovery of con-
cealed arms, and the exposure of murderous plans,
should not have roused the indignant alarm of the
governing class, and made stern action not a matter
of choice, but of compulsion on the Government.
Watt — a despicable and cowardly wretch, who had
for a time enacted the part of a Government spy,
but had at length found conspiracy a more hopeful
game — was sentenced to death, and was hanged
without a word of remonstrance from any one.
Downie also was sentenced to death ; but after re-
peated reprieves he was at length liberated, on con-
160 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
dition that he banished himself from the country.
He transferred his activities to the soil of America.
Even this amount of mercy was not approved by
the Scottish supporters of the Government.
But now the question was not one merely between
theoretical reformers, who more or less justified their
own classification with revolutionists, and the party
who saw in such reformers a danger to society. The
pressure of the war was more and more severely felt.
Taxes were increasing ; harvests were scanty ; prices
were rising fast. Starvation stared many of the
poorer classes of the towns in the face ; and the
advance of manufactures had made these classes
much more numerous and more formidable than
they had been a generation before. In England
bread riots were frequent, and Birmingham was the
scene of bloodshed in June 1795 — not for the last
time in her history. The contagion spread to Scot-
land, and the populace became more and more
difficult to control. Inevitably men's minds turned
again to ideas of reform, and the conviction was
pressed upon them that repression was not a per-
manent panacea. Amongst the younger professional
men there were many, who did not seek a crown of
martyrdom by acts provoking to prosecution, but
who were tired of the old ways, weary of the irk-
some domination of an older generation, disinclined
to take with gratitude the scraps that were thrown
to them, and not altogether disposed to think that
these scraps corresponded with their own very
adequate appreciation of their personal merits and
qualifications. Such feelings are made up partly
of political aspirations, partly, also, of personal
ambitions ; and in the reminiscences of the actors
THE YOUNGER WHIGS. 161
this element of political aspiration is, perhaps not
unnaturally, somewhat unduly exaggerated. None of
these young men made common cause with Muir
or Palmer, with Skirving or with Margarot. When
the French Revolution was at the high tide of its
fury, they certainly did not express any sympathy
with it. They had no desire for overturning pro-
perty, annihilating the professions, or confounding
distinctions of classes. But the existing state of
things was not promising either to their tastes or
their ambitions. The permanent proscription of
public meetings closed the door to the aspirations
of youthful eloquence. The Parliamentary represen-
tation of Scotland was a field from which all but
a few privileged persons were hopelessly excluded.
The ladder of professional advancement was one
which had to be climbed by slow and painful rungs,
and by a process of dismal and repulsive drudgery.
The growing monotony of type and characteristic
amongst the prominent denizens of Parliament Close,
made it less attractive ; and we must not forget that
the generation which had passed since George III.
became king, and which had seen the old types pass
away, and the Jacobite become only a memory and
a tradition, had not by any means made Edinburgh
a more exciting or attractive place of residence than
it was in the third quarter of the century. Small
wonder was it that a band of young men became
restless and discontented, and were unwilling to
repeat the maxims of their forebears, with implicit
credulity. Small blame to them, if in looking back
in later days they were apt to mistake the prompt-
ings of discontent and reasonable ambition for the
unalloyed ardour of political zeal. In a political
VOL. II. L
162 THE TORY AND WHKI PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
retrospect, however, we are not, perhaps, bound to
take them entirely at their own valuation, or to
believe that the fire of pure political zeal, without
any alloy of personal aims, was sufficient to keep
their enthusiasm alive.
It was in December 1795 that a matter was first
mooted which had much to do with the first forma-
tion of a distinct Whig party amongst the professional
class in Edinburgh. That party did undoubtedly
give shape and definiteness to a very marked phase
of Scottish political thought, down to a period after
the middle of the present century.
In 1795 two bills were proposed — one to put a stop
more eflfectually to seditious meetings, the other for
the safety of the king's person against such threaten-
ing attacks as had been made on him in the streets of
London on the 29th of October of that year. These
attacks had called forth a general outburst of loyalty ;
and it was feared that they were now to be made the
occasion for a serious encroachment on the liberty of
the subject. Protests were made by the attenuated
Whig party in Scotland ; and a public meeting was
held in Somer's Tavern on the 28th of November, at
which the Dean of Faculty, Henry Erskine, moved a
series of resolutions wdiich condemned measures "which
strike at the very foundation of the constitution." By
a strange error of judgment there was tagged on to
these resolutions a clause condemning the French war;
and a fatal connection was thus established in the
creed of the Scottish Whigs between the defence of
constitutional liberty and want of sympathy with the
struggle of the country against a powerful and aggres-
sive tyranny abroad. There was now no talk of prose-
cution and of penal measures ; but it became clear to
HENRY ERSKINE AS THEIR LEADER. 163
the Tories that there was an organised body in the
country, with a well-defined but obnoxious political
creed, which must be met by all the resources of
determined and unflinching party organisation.
The question now was, what action should be taken
to mark the general opposition which that political
creed excited ? The leading name amongst those who
attended the meeting, and thus gave their countenance
to the supposed enemies of law and order, and the
avowed sympathisers with our foreign enemies, was
that of Henry Erskine. Personally he was a man of
eminent gifts and of great popularity. His position at
the Scottish Bar was supreme. He belonged to an
ancient family, the lustre of whose name was increased
by his own eloquence and acknowledged wit, and by
the successes of his brother on the larger stage of the
English Bar. For a brief period in 1783, when the
supremacy of the Dundas family had been set aside under
the Coalition Ministry of Fox and North, the only man
who could fill the place of Lord Advocate was Erskine.
No personal feeling would have operated against such
a man. But he held, by election of the Advocates, the
position of Dean of Faculty, which, although entirely
honorary and unofficial, made him the head and repre-
sentative of the Bar. It was quite certain that the
opinions which he had expressed were not those of the
vast majority of the men to whose suffrages he owed
the post, and whose sympathies he thus belied. Apart
from any question of the freedom of political opinion,
it was only natural that the Bar should resent the
position in which they were thus placed, and should
refuse to allow even acknowledged eminence and
supreme personal popularity to be grounds for their
own misrepresentation. For ten years in succession he
164 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
had been elected as Dean. But in December 1795 a
body of eight advocates, of leading position, gave him
warning that his re-election would be opposed. Of
the issue of the contest there could be no doubt, and
Erskine had only himself to blame if the general voice
of his professional brethren resolved to assert itself.
That he should resent what could not but appear to
be an attempt to fetter his freedom of action was
only natural. That he should prefer that freedom of
action to any recantation was not only natural, but
inevitable, and to have done anything else would have
been inconsistent with his position and his character.
But none the less natural was the action of his
opponents, who found themselves compelled to choose
between their public duty and their personal friend-
ship. The election came on in January 1796, and
Robert Dundas, the Lord Advocate, was chosen Dean
of Faculty in Erskine's stead by a majority of 123 to
38. The representative of the Ministry thus became^
at the same time, contrary to the usual and of late
years the uniform practice, the chosen representative
of the Bar. Political difference has never since,
most happily, been the deciding element in such a
contest, but it would be rash to predict that it never
again may. It is inevitable that political feeling may
at times rise so high, and that political differences
may strike so deeply at the roots of social order, or
turn upon so vital a question of national danger, as to
compel all loyal citizens to postpone every minor con-
sideration to the dictates of their political consciences.
Such a crisis undoubtedly existed in 1796. It is true
that pressure was in some instances brought to bear,
and that a few wavering votes (including those of
some who in later years belonged to Erskine's party),
DEPOSED FROM THE DEANSHIP OF FACULTY. 165
which might have heen cast for Erskine, were influ-
enced by powerful patrons ; but the majority was far
too great to permit a doubt that the election repre-
sented the preponderating feelings of the Faculty as
a whole. Those feelings may have been exaggerated
or mistaken. Whether they were so opens a much
more extensive argument ; but to urge that their
assertion at such a time was due only to prejudice or
intolerance, is to create a fictitious martyrdom, and
virtually amounts to denying to the Faculty the free
right of electing their own representative.
But however that may be, the circumstance unques-
tionably became the starting-point of a new political
departure. Henceforward war was openly proclaimed.
Definiteness and precision were given to the tenets
of the Opposition; and from 1796 a Whig party
was regularly organised in Scotland, and gradually
acquired not only a distinct creed, but tactics and
characteristics of its own.
During the next two or three years it made no way
whatever against the solid phalanx of the Tory party.
That party was now animated at once by patriotic
ardour and by the fear of revolutionary change. Either
the example of French revolutionary methods or the
danger of French invasion would, separately, have
been sufficient to give vigour to party feeling ; when
combined, as they now were, they were irresistible.
It is true that the widespread volunteer ardour, which
turned Edinburgh into something like a standing
camp, and converted sober citizens into martial en-
thusiasts, was not confined to one party. To have
stood aloof entirely might have been suspicious, and
would certainly have involved social ostracism ; and
those, therefore, who hated the war, and judged re-
166 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
sistance to Napoleon to be a form of insanity, were
harassed by drills, and had to don the uniform and
practise the manual exercises with as much painful
and irksome regularity as those who found their
pleasure in all the panoply of war, and whose ima-
ginations pictured its glories more vividly than its
remote, but none the less real, possibilities of danger.
There is something comic in the situation which made
the universal fervour a means of inspiring hope and
buoyancy in those who supported the war, and dragged
along as unwilling victims those who thought the war
a popular folly, and did not in their hearts desire for
it any more triumphant ending than it would probably
have had, in case of recourse to the aid of their puis-
sant arms.
Meanwhile the Tory party, however alarming the
prospect abroad, felt themselves triumphant at home,
and the tone of the metropolis of Scotland was pre-
dominantly in their favour. For a few years from
1796 the Palace of Holyrood was occupied by the
Royalist exiles from France, the Comte d'Artois and
his family ; and the presence of such guests was
eminently likely to rivet in Edinburgh society the
conviction of the wrongs they had sufiered, which
might easily have their counterpart at home. The
general election of 1796 gave the Government a new
mandate of authority from the nation. In 1797 the
end of a long struggle was reached in the grant of a
Militia Act for Scotland ; and the fact that in a few
districts there was riotous resistance to its enforce-
ment, only proved the necessity for firmness in the
maintenance of order. Armed bands gathered, and
by threats and violence compelled a timid magistra-
:,ttire to suspend the levies. But the resistance was
RIOTS AND REPRESSION. 167
short - lived, and a few comparatively unimportant
trials effectually crushed it. The riots caused by the
starvation price of grain and the poverty which was
the necessary result of a costly war were of greater
danger ; but these too were local, and they rather
gave adequate ground for severe measures than oc-
casioned any serious alarm. In 1798 the Society of
United Scotsmen, an offshoot of the Friends of the
People, again made itself heard of, and in January of
that year a certain George Mealmaker, who had ap-
peared as a subordinate agent in the previous trials,
was sentenced to transportation for fourteen years.
In 1799 a combination of journeymen shoemakers,
in order to raise wages, led to a conflict with the
authorities ; and the proceedings at the trial which
ensued are curious as showing the very modest
theories on the subject which the most ardent Whigs
of that day ventured to profess. The Lord Advocate
urged the wickedness of such combination, the wrong
which it might inflict on manufacturers, and its seri-
ous danger to society. Henry Erskine defended the
prisoners, but he did not attempt to combat the views
of the prosecution. On the contrary he admitted the
wickedness ; abandoned altogether any assertion of a
right on the part of the workmen ; excused them
only on the ground of their utter ignorance ; and
deprecated severity only on the ground of their entire
repentance and sincere promise of amendment. We
have travelled far since 1799 !
Before we quit this period it is well to advert to a
matter which shows the contrast between the financial
conditions of England and Scotland. In 1797 national
credit was in the sorest straits : the pressure of war ^'-'^'^ ^^
and the consequent heavy taxation ; the disturbance oj \^^i^ "% %
168 THE TORY AND WHIG PARTIES IN SCOTLAND.
trade, and the frequency of bad harvests ; as well as the
alarm of invasion — all these had made the commercial
atmosphere a stormy one. Bankruptcies were frequent,
and it seemed as though public credit might be swept
away by the hurricane then threatened. To avert this
the Bank Restriction Act was passed, which suspended
specie payments by the Bank of England. In England
the authority of the Legislature had to be called in to
preserve the equilibrium, by making the notes of the
bank, which had a legislative monopoly, the only
authorised currency. The crisis was equally acute in
Scotland ; but there no monopoly existed, and no such
restrictive legislation was possible. In these circum-
stances the nation met the crisis by independent
action. The banks — products of no system of legis-
lative dry-nursing, but the spontaneous growth of
national enterprise — boldly threw themselves upon the
forbearance and good sense of the nation, and did so
with signal success. With no legislative sanction —
nay, without any legal authority whatever — they
resolved by common consent to suspend money pay-
ments. So healthy had been the growth and spon-
taneous development of Scottish banking, that it was
able, with the general acquiescence of the nation, to
take a step which had been possible in England only
under the segis of the Legislature. No better proof
could be furnished of the faculty of the nation to
produce a system adapted to its own needs, and
strong in the trust which it had inspired in the
nation.
169
CHAPTER XVII.
THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
At this point it seems well to turn aside from tracing
the growth of party bitterness in Scotland, and the for-
mation of two opposing political camps, in order to
glance at one special phase of Scottish life and thought
during the eighteenth century, which culminated to-
wards its close.
No account of Scotland in that century would be
complete if it omitted an estimate of the work of
the Scottish philosophical school, and the part it
played in moulding the character of the nation.
This is not the place to enter upon any detailed
examination of the special tenets of each member of
the school. For us the main point of interest in
the history of the movement is its bearing upon the
national life and character.
There are certain points which it is well to note as a
preliminary to the examination. First of all, those who
formed the school were all essentially Scottish in charac-
ter and in sympathy. It may be said of one that he
was not born in Scotland ; of another that he spent a
large part of his life in France ; of a third that he had im-
bibed, as an alumnus of Oxford, something of the spirit
of the English universities. Few, indeed, of the men of
170 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
leading in Scotland during the eigliteenth century were
M'ithout some tincture of cosmopolitanism, and hardly
one circumscribed his experience or his literary friend-
ships by her boundaries. But every one of them by
descent, by education, and by warmest sympathy, was
distinctively a Scotsman. In her all his interests were
centred ; within her territory all his strongest sym-
pathies lay; and he looked upon her soil as that on
which he w^ould choose to end his days. Whatever
may be the merits or demerits of the school as a whole,
it was undoubtedly from first to last a product of
Scottish genius and of Scottish character, and as such
it takes its place as the most durable school of philo-
sophical thought, connected by one consistent thread
of opinion, which Great Britain has yet seen.
Next we may admit, without disparagement to the
eminence of its exponents, that they were not, as a
rule, men of striking ability or originality. There is
at least one marked exception to this rule. But for
the most part the leaders of the Scottish school were
rather men of strong character, of unwearied perse-
verance, and of consistent aim, than men whose words
have remained as a living force for all time. Almost
all were men who influenced their own generation —
or those who were young when they were in maturity
— by the force of personal contact and of personal
character. Their power in this direction remained a
vivid tradition, and was not restricted in its results.
But all the same, it is chiefly a tradition, and is not
enforced by any vital effect which their written words
have upon the thoughts, or any currency which they
obtained in the mouths, of men of later generations.
Their function indeed may not unfitly be compared
to that of the great actors of a past age. Their names
ITS FIELD OF OPERATIONS. 171
continue to be familiar to us. They worked with con-
summate skill upon the feelings of the audiences who
felt the spell of personal contact. Their influence was
preserved because they did much to mould the feel-
ings of those audiences, and so affected powerfully the
histoiy of each succeeding generation. But, with one
or two exceptions, this was the limit imposed upon
them by the very nature of the function which they
had to discharge.
Because the philosophy which they inculcated was
mainly shaped by the exigencies of its employment as
an instrument of education. The establishment of
abstract principles was not with them a leading
motive. They cared little for long or subtle argu-
ments, and did not trouble themselves overmuch
about the technical structure of their systems. They
did not search for fine distinctions, nor did they per-
ceive how casual divergencies in statements might
involve serious principles, and might, if pursued to
their logical conclusion, land them at diametrically
opposite poles of thought. They sought rather for
points of contact, and found such points of contact in
their common aim of giving a practically efficacious
training to their scholars without ranging themselves
into hostile camps. The territory which they culti-
vated admitted of various kinds of tillage, each of
which might yield its quota of sustenance to the
common weal ; the debatable land beyond they were
content to consider as beyond their range.
The whole school, from first to last, was centred in
the universities, and those who partook of its labours
beyond the walls of the universities were exceptional,
and scarcely repeated the main characteristics of the
school. It was, indeed, the principal instrument by
172 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
which the Scottish universities recovered and extended
their influence over the nation at large.
From their first establishment the principal part of
the Scottish universities' curriculum had consisted of
logic and the various branches of moral and mental
philosophy. From these the other branches of educa-
tion had developed, and they had all assumed the
aspects of new growths grafted on the parent stem.
Even the classical languages had been only of later
introduction, when the grammar schools had been
found insufficient to furnish the alumni who flocked
to the universities, with the general acquaintance with
these languages which was deemed necessary as a
sound foundation on which a structure of mental
science might be built.
But the political struggles of the seventeenth cen-
tury had been a period of dire adversity for the uni-
versities. Their scholars had decreased ; their revenues
had decayed ; the purposes for which they existed occu-
pied but a secondary place in the attention of the
nation. They had done their best — but not always suc-
cessfully— to resist the encroachments of the Church
Courts, which aspired to a universal domination ; and
although they had more than once protested against
interference, they had been able only imperfectly to
check it.
After the Revolution, the Regenting system, as it
was called, by which the graduates, or those who
corresponded to graduates, carried on the tuition of the
younger members of the university, was still in force.
Under that system all the subjects of the curriculum
were taught by one or another Regent to a certain
number of the alumni ; but the instruction was carried
on by means of prescribed compendiums, in which the
THE SCOTTISH UNIVERSITY SYSTEM. 173
pupils were duly exercised, but from which no dis-
cursion was permitted. Under such a system no pro-
gress in any special science was possible, much less
encouraged ; and the only training which the students
obtained was through the practice of dialectical argu-
ment on the subjects dealt with in these compendiums,
which cultivated subtlety and dexterity in verbal fence,
but provided no field for intellectual expansion, nor
permitted any practical application of principles to the
ever varying scenes of ordinary life.
A Commission in 1695 did its best to perpetuate this
system, with the purpose, it may be, of checking any
boldness of discursive speculation, and curbing any
tendency to bring a practical influence to bear on the
national life. It was assumed that the Regenting
system was to be perpetual ; and upon each university
was imposed the task of preparing a compendium in
the four principal subjects then admitted to the cur-
riculum— Logic, Metaphysics, Ethics, and Physics.
Glasgow and Aberdeen apparently neglected the in-
junction ; but Edinburgh and St. Andrews prepared
compendiums of metaphysics and logic, which were
destined to have but a short tenure of life.
The older system was, indeed, doomed to disappear.
The Regenting system was neither suited to the new
needs of the nation, nor was it fitted to stimulate any
real intellectual life in the universities. In 1708 it
had practically disappeared in Edinburgh ; in 1727
in Glasgow; in 1747 in St. Andrews; and in 1754 in
Aberdeen. In its place came the Professoriate, by
which a special professor was appointed for each of
the various subjects — though the range over which his
teaching was expected to extend was still Avide enough
to be astonishing to modern ideas — and his academical
174 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
discourses were to take the place of the dreary pre-
lections in prescribed compendiums which had formerly
prevailed. Such a system contained in it the germ of
a new life. All depended upon the professors chosen.
Fortunately the public spirit, and the zeal for learning
of the universities, was equal to the task ; and the
professors for the most part proved themselves able to
rise to the level of the function now laid upon them.
The instruction was now given by regular courses of
formal lectures, in which the professor had a free
range, and in which he became the leading and
authorised representative of the branch of mental or
moral science over which he was chosen to preside.
Ft was his interest to attract and stimulate pupils, to
extend the range of his science, and open up new
fields of speculation, bringing his own personal in-
fluence to bear in the enforcement of his views. Such
a change could not but be stimulating ; and it is to the
honour of the Scottish youth that they rose to the new
level of the teaching, and met with ready zeal such
enthusiasm as the professor brought to his subject.
The old practice of academic disputation was aban-
doned, and in its place came the numerous societies
established by the students themselves for inquiry and
discussion, which became one of the distinctive fea-
tures of Scottish universities, and to which we shall
have further occasion to allude. No change could
have worked more rapid effects. In place of the
narrow academic disputation, which fostered only a
subtle logomachy, the students were thrown back upon
a world of their own, where they struck fire from the
contact of their own vivid energies, and were prepared
to respond with the warmth of enthusiasm to the
personal earnestness of a professor whose tongue was
FUNCTIONS OF THE PROFESSORS. 175
no longer tied to the dreary pages of a prescribed
compendium, but who felt that he had a free and
fruitful field before him which he might cultivate after
his own fashion. Only a few years passed until the
lofty eloquence of Berkeley touched a chord amongst
the young Scottish students, which it missed amongst
his own countrymen, and until the bishop found a
pleasure in encouraging their interests in a system
more lofty and inspiring than the materialism of
Locke. The idealism of Berkeley caught hold of their
imagination, altogether independent of its logical
completeness and consistency.
The jfirst Professor (in the modern sense of the
word) of Moral Philosophy in Glasgow was Gerschom
Carmichael, the commentator on Puffendorf, whose
influence was good, but whose tenure of the pro-
fessorship was too short to be productive of great
results ; and his place was filled, on the invitation of
the Senate, by a former alumnus of the University,
Francis Hutcheson. His tenure of the chair was the
opening of a new phase of Scottish university life.
Hutcheson was a Scotsman by descent only, and
not by birth. His grandfather had migrated from
Ayrshire to the north of Ireland, and both he and his
son had been ministers of the Dissenting Presbyterian
body in the neighbourhood of Armagh, where the
philosopher was born in 1694. It is observable that
the epithet of " Dissenter " is applied to him even by
his colleague and biographer Leechman, a clergyman
of the Established Presbyterian Church in Scotland,
although he can hardly have regarded his Presbyterian
brethren across the channel with that bitterness which
they excited in the minds of some members of the
Irish Establishment. Francis Hutcheson seems to
i-ib THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
have been noted, even in his earliest years, for the
same sweetness of disposition, the same unselfishness,
and the same keen intellectual activity that marked
him throughout life. From an academy near his birth-
place he passed to the University of Glasgow, where
he spent the years from 1710 to 1716. On his return
to Ireland he was licensed as a Presbyterian preacher,
and was induced to come to Dublin and open a
private school there, under very notable patronage.
Viscount Molesworth, the Lord-Lieutenant, Lord Car-
teret, and Archbishop King were amongst his friends ;
and it was by the direct intervention of the arch-
bishop that proceedings against him for having vio-
lated the Test Act, by opening his private school as a
Dissenter, were stayed. He subsequently had the
countenance of Walpole's arch-emissary, the Primate
Boulter ; but there was one notable inhabitant of
Dublin who dwelt at St. Patrick's with whom such,
friendship would not ingratiate him, and who could not
have viewed with leniency the virtual suspension of the
Test Act by Walpole's ministers in favour of a school-
master belonging to the sect that of all others Swift
detested with the fiercest bitterness. It is odd, indeed,
to think of the contrast between two products which
Dublin gave to the world within less than two years.
In 1727 the world was startled by the despairing cyni-
cism of "Gulliver's Travels"; and in 1729 the genial
optimism, and the generous, if somewhat superficial,
enthusiasm of Hutcheson laid the foundations of a new
method of education and a new school of thought in
Scotland. In that year he was invited by the Senate
of Glasgow University to accept the Chair of Moral
Philosophy. It was perhaps as well for his future
peace that the rest of his life was to be spent else-
FRANCIS HUTCHESON. 177
where than in the neighbourhood of the " savage
indignation" of the dean. He had received some
offers, it appears, of preferment in the Irish Church ;
but he rejected them with a wisdom and good feeling
greater than that which prompted others to make
such offers.
Hutcheson had akeady published some books of a
kind which the previous generation had produced in
sufficient numbers, and of which the coming century
was to see in Scotland a very copious crop. The titles
sufficiently indicate their character. One was an " In-
quiry concerning Beauty"; another an "Inquiry con-
cerning Moral Good" ; another an " Essay on the Nature
and Conduct of the Passions and Affections." They were
the fabrics turned out from a workshop whose methods
were sound enough, and whose objects were sufficiently
laudable. Its operations ranged over that debatable
ground that lay between criticism in its modern
sense, and proper metaphysical inquiry. In a certain
sense they were philosophical, because they examined
and theorised upon the powers of the mind and the
motives of human action, and professed to probe into
the recesses of human knowledge. But before the
mystic region of metaphysical inquiry they hung an
impenetrable curtain which they painted to look like
philosophy, and into that region they refused to pene-
trate. Those who ventured into it they deemed to be
daring and perhaps impious intruders, or they laughed
at them as deluded mystics, who accepted as verities
the figments of their own imaginations, or who were
imposed upon by vain words that signified nothing.
On the other hand they narrowed the range of their
criticism by too much attention to method, and by
making the end and aim of their system the inculcation
VOL. II. M
178 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
of moral principles with which criticism had not any
essential connection. The exponents of their school
of thought — because, with all their varieties, they be-
longed essentially to one school — were often men of
strong religious principle and devout piety. But their
religion stood apart from their moral system, and they
treated it as something separate and distinct, to which
they were to pay a reverence more or less sincere, but
which was not to be the keynote of their teaching. It
was not to be a means of penetrating behind the veil
that hid the most mysterious problems of human
existence, but was only to serve as a more rigid barrier,
preventing any attempt to lift that veil. Others again,
like Shaftesbury, treated religion as little but a system
of imposture, which might be formally accepted, but of
which the only real purpose was to impose upon the
vulgar.
But with all its limitations the school of thought to
which liutcheson belonged was eminently useful for
educational purposes. To the young, whose minds
were just opening to the consideration of the larger
questions of life, and who sought for something
that would give connection and consistency to all
branches of knowledge, the teaching they had to
supply was admirably stimulative and suggestive.
It touched upon every interest in their life ; it
stirred a wide range of chords in their feelings ;
and the undoubted earnestness of the teachers
made personal contact with these something of
which the impression remained as a vivid force in
their future lives. But it had a restrictive effect as
well. It forced them into one mould of thought, and
prevented that free discursiveness of youthful energy
which combines a certain boldness and originality with
HIS WORK IN GLASGOW. 179
all the recklessness of iiudisciplined inquiry. It is not
without interest to find an observer so acute as Dr.
Carlyle of Inveresk noting that in his day an ineffi-
cient professor was not without his advantages. He
explained to Lord Elibank, many years later, that the
reason why the young clergymen of his generation so
far excelled their predecessors was that their professor
of divinity was " dull and Dutch and prolix," and the
young men were thrown back upon their own resources
and formed opinions far more liberal than those they
could have got from their professor. But this was a
principle upou which it would hardly have done to
construct the scheme of a successful university course.
In 1729, then, Hutcheson came to Glasgow. The
change must have been a welcome one to the young
Dissenter, with his Whiggish principles. Not only
did he quit the dreary drudgery of a private school for
a position in which he was the authorised represen-
tative of an important branch of scientific inquiry,
which he could treat according to his own views, but
the atmosphere of Glasgow must have been a pleasant
change from that of Dublin. He passed from an arena
where he was the humble protege of an unpopular
Whig clique, upon which the most vigorous intellect
of the city looked askance, and where the choicest
society was composed of men who would have crushed
the Dissenters into impotence if they could, for one
where the academic group of which he became a
member held an easy and undisputed supremacy. In
place of a society in which a few wealthy men were
dominant, and their opponents pressed their political
views with the bitterness of exasperation, he found a
genial literary circle, where social intercourse was easy
and pleasant, and where life was so organised that its
180 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
chief attractions were open to men of narrow means.
His mood appears clearly enough in his opening
address on taking possession of his chair, which was
delivered, according to a custom already passing into
desuetude, in the Latin language. "-Non levi Icetitia"
says he, " commovehar cum almam matrem Academiam
me, siium olim alumnum, in libertatem asseruisse
audiveram.'' He was not slow to use that liberty
to which his old university had called him.
The duties of his chair were exacting enough. He
had to lecture on Natural Religion, on Morals, on
Jurisprudence, and on the Greek and Latin moralists.
Not content with this, he gave lectures on Sunday
evenings to crowded audiences, composed of citizens as
well as students, on the Christian evidences. He at
once stepped into the position of a public exponent of
his themes ; and it was a necessity of his success that
he should base his teaching upon some central prin-
ciple. It was the habit of the day to seek for some
primary motive upon which our notions of morality
were formed. Sometimes such a motive had been
sought for as a thing superior to, and independent of,
religious principle, as in the case of Shaftesbury. At
other times, as with Butler, the doctrines of Christian
morality had been shown themselves to yield such a
principle, and they had been expounded in a shape
which entitled them to rank with other philosophical
systems. But in truth this line of inquiry might be
carried on with no thought that it could trench on the
dangerous ground of religious doctrine. The religious
man might base his conduct upon the dictates of re-
vealed religion ; but this did not lessen his right to find
for himself a consistent system of morality which might
claim a logical consistency, and which might buttress
HIS THEORY OF A MORAL SENSE. 181
at least, if it did not supplant, the duties imposed upon
him by his rehgious faith. The aim of all these
systems of secular morality was not to find a basis for
duty and an explanation of man's place in the system
•of the universe by any metaphysical inquiry, but only
to refer all virtuous motives to some common prin-
ciple, which might give to them an apparent con-
sistency. It was not meant that this common motive
operated directly in impelling us to any particular act,
but only that if motives were sufficiently analysed
they would be found to have a uniform basis, and
to be capable of being traced back ultimately to a
single principle. This was no very abstruse inquiry.
It solved no mysteries. It did not seek to rest itself
upon any unassailable logical foundation. It claimed
only to be the result of careful observation of human
action, and as observation grew and analysis became
more systematic, the notion which was formed as to
the central principle might alter or become subject to
modifications, without an absolute abandonment of the
results based upon the inquiries which had preceded.
By Ferguson, as by Shaftesbury, the principle which
was held ultimately to regulate our conduct, and to
give the motive to virtuous action, was what he called
the Moral Sense. It is evident that this, for all
practical purposes, was hardly distinguishable from
what the religious moralists called Conscience. It
accepted, indeed, that part of Christianity which was
most easily grasped, and it either ignored, or regarded
as something of which it might not venture to treat,
the deeper mysteries of the Christian religion. Many
might be disposed to deny to such a system the charac-
ter of philosophy at all ; others again might be inclined
to say that in its practical bearing upon human action
182 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
it sought after pretentious symmetry rather than a real
satisfaction of doubts, and was impressed by an am-
bitious pursuit of formal theories rather than by a vivid
desire to realise the actual intricacies of human action.
With all that we are not concerned when we attempt
to estimate its historical results ; and there can be no
doubt that as an educational instrument it was admir-
ably fitted for the work that it had to do. It stimulated
just that amount of mental interest which young men
can readily form. It gave dignity to human conduct,
and prevented any tendency to that waywardness of
caprice by which young lives can be wrecked through
their own perverse ingenuity. If it conducted them to
no cloud-capped peaks of metaphysical speculation, it
at least prevented them from sinking into the noisome
gulfs of self-abandonment.
And its influence in this direction was admirably
enforced by the personal contact with such a man as
Hutcheson. From the first he commanded the en-
thusiastic devotion of his students. By character he
was eminently fitted to command that devotion. In
countless reminiscences we can realise the manner of
man he was. His outward aspect did not belie his
disposition. Tall and robust of figure, with an open
and bright countenance, with a carriage negligent
but easy, with unimpaired health, and the subtle
charm of absolute simplicity, he made his way to
the hearts of his hearers with consummate ease.
"He was gay and pleasant," his biographer Leechman
tells us, " full of mirth and raillery, familiar and com-
municative to the last degree, and utterly free from all
stateliness and affectation." He became at once a
power in the university and amongst the citizens of
Glasgow. His helpfulness was boundless, and from a
HIS PERSONAL CHARACTER AND INFLUEN'CE. 183
narrow income he contrived to spare enough for charity
to poorer students. Not youths alone, but grown men
thronged year after year to his lectures ; and we are
told that it was no uncommon thing for the same
student to attend his course for five or six consecutive
years. For the function of public lecturer he was
eminently fitted, not by his gift of eloquence alone, but
by the electric power of a quick and ready enthusiasm.
To the last he refused to write his lectures, and de-
livered them without notes, "walking," as we are told
by Dr. Carlyle, " backwards and forwards in the area
of his room."
As his outward aspect and manner so was the dis-
position of the man. His temper was quick, but so
v.ell under control that its vivacity only added to his
charm. It is indeed a suiScient proof of his attractive
230wer that though his own sympathies were with the
High-flying section, he commanded the unbounded
admiration of the Moderates in the Church — and that
their cordiality was not lessened even by the fact that
his old Dissenting predilections made him favour the
Anti-Patronage party in the Church. The part he took
in ecclesiastical disputes was not a large one ; and the
]Moderate party, if they did not find him an ally in
their Erastianism, at least knew that his teaching was
of a sort which struck at the very root of that illiberal
reUgious creed against which they had to fight. The
tide of the battle was running almost too quickly in
their favour ; and already amongst the younger clergy
there was a strain of modish scepticism which was soon
to infuse into their sermons a feeble affectation of
philosophical argument which scorned to deal with the
simpler truths of Christianity. So far as Hiitcheson
was personally concerned he discouraged such a habit;
184 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
but it is doubtful whether, in spite of himself, his
teaching did not tend to foster it. His undisguised
admiration of Shaftesbury was certainly a trait which
might not unnaturally raise suspicion of his orthodoxy
in the minds of those who were not unreasonably
nervous as to the encroachments of scepticism ; and
however strong his personal piety might be, it was
doubtful whether it received much additional weight
from his vindicating for Shaftesbury a sincere attach-
ment to the Christian religion.
Ferguson's tenure of the chair at Glasgow was not
long. He died in 1746. But many others in the
Scottish universities arose to carry on the work which
he had begun. Amongst those whose personal influ-
ence was strong, although we have no evidence of the
basis on which it rested, was John Stevenson, who was
Professor of Logic at Edinburgh from 1730 to 1775.
He was admitted, even by those who placed his influ-
ence most high, to be wanting in originality, and to
have been content to rest his teaching on the accepted
methods of the school of Locke, which had at least the
advantage of being simple and easy of comprehension.
But Stevenson was evidently a man who could appre-
ciate the merits of new theories, even better perhaps
than those who excogitated empirical systems of their
own. In his earlier days, as he was fond of recalling
to his later students, he was a member of the Han-
kenian Club, which had succeeded in drawing Bishop
Berkeley into a correspondence as to certain questions
which raised doubts regarding his system in the minds
of the Scottish students. But Berkeley's system never
throve in Scottish soil, and stirred only the enthusi-
asm of the younger students. Stevenson fell back later
on the less fertile and inspiring products of his own
PROFESSOR JOHN STEVENSON. 185
countiy. Later in life, he welcomed the appearance of
a sounder method in the Scottish school, and one which
approached more nearly to a philosophical system, in
the writings of Keid ; and he was not withheld by any
slavish obedience to his older tenets from remodelling
his lectures so as to embrace the leading features of
Keid's philosophy. But with him, as in a certain sense
with Hutcheson, it w^as his personal influence which
chiefly impressed his students. He taught them to
apply the principles of the ethical system which they
learned, and the disciplined argumentative power with
which it furnished them — which was after all of far
more importance than its logical completeness or
consistency — to the problems of ordinary life, and to
the formation of a correct literary taste ; and it was no
small tribute to his power that the historian, Principal
Robertson, was wont to acknowledge that he owed
more to Stevenson's instruction — and above all to his
lectures on Aristotle's " Poetics " and on Longinus " On
the Sublime " — than to any other influence in the course
of his academic studies. Nor does this testimony of
Robertson stand alone. Dr. Alexander Carlyle tells
the same story. " Whether or not it was owing to the
time of life at which we entered this class, being all
about fifteen years of age or upwards, when the mind
begins to open " — and a Scottish youth of last century
did not consider himself a tyro at that age — " or to the
excellence of the lecturer and the nature of some of the
subjects, we could not then say, but all of us received the
same impression — that our minds were more enlarged
and that we received greater benefit from that class
than from any other." Like Hutcheson his kindness to
his students was marked and constant ; and in the com-
posite picture of eighteenth-century Scotland, with its
186 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
keen activity of intellectual interest, many men of
greater learning and more imposing pretensions played
a smaller part than Professor Stevenson during these
five-and-forty years. His memory is none the less
worth recalling because no neglected volumes with
his name on the title-page load the shelves of our
libraries.
But it was not within the walls of the universities
alone that the prevailing taste for philosophical specu-
lation made itself felt. Within these walls its objects
were mainly educational, and its tendencies were so
far concealed by the practical application to the affairs
of life which it was the duty of its exponents to impress.
Beyond the academic classrooms there were two others
especially — men of very different calibre from one
another — who contributed to the body of philosophic
literature which Scotland was then amassing. These
were David Hume and Henry Home, better known by
the judicial title of Lord Kames, which he assumed on
his accession to the Bench. They could hardly be
classed together, were it not that they were both
philosophical writers without being professors, and
that both fell under the suspicion of heretical leanings
from which the professors were exempt. David Hume
was without question the man of greatest mental grasp
whom Scotland produced in the eighteenth century.
To him the central ambition of his life was literary
fame, the absorbing pleasure of his life literary
interest, and he contemplated the controversies of
his day with a serene and imperturbable ease and
indifference to which all his contemporaries were
strangers. It cost him no trouble to grasp the fact
that the so-called philosophy of his day was a mass
of disordered fragments, and that the nonchalant
DAVID HUME. 187
materialism of Locke was destructive of any creed
based on a sure foundation. He carried that system
only a step further in showing that on its basis all
knowledge was accidental, and that the theories that
were propounded with so much confidence were con-
jectures only. It was not his to reconstruct a system
of metaphysics : that was left for a later age and for
another country. But the work he did he did for
all time ; and it was to show that a system of
knowledge based only on experience could attain no
higher authority than that which experience could
give. In practice and in character he was a philosopher
in a sense that none of the others were : serene in
temper, unmoved by attack, calm in the face of an
almost sublime abnegation of all that gave life its
deepest meaning to most men, and looking down with
an indifference, which only genius could prevent from
degenerating into arrogance, on all the wrangling of
the day. No man could carry a creed of despair with
more imperturbable good-humour, or could maintain a
standard of morality with more perfect consistency
upon the somewhat meagre motives of innate pride
and dignity. The reason was that Hume's literary
genius made him express in his own attitude some-
thing that is more or less a truth of every man's
experience ; and that his literary sympathy enabled
him to understand and appreciate, if he did not share,
the religious motives that stand as sentinels to human
conduct. It has often been the habit to represent
Hume's formal deference to the dictates of revealed
religion as only a species of elaborate sarcasm. It is
hard to say on what proof such a forced interpretation
rests. The symptoms of religious feeling which showed
themselves in his temperament — symptoms supported
188 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
by too many authorities to be easily ignored — have
been studiously minimised : but to do so is only to
misunderstand the nature of the man, and to be blind
to that wide range of literary sympathy which made all
human feelings find some echo in his heart.
It was after a wandering and unsettled youth, to
which the solitary anchor was his literary ambition,
that Hume fixed himself for some years in France,
and there composed the book which was to mark his
philosophical position. It was written when he was
only twenty-five, and probably no book of the kind,
destined to exercise such an extended influence, was
ever written by a man of that age, certainly never with
greater ease or more supreme command of his own
ideas. It was not till 1739-40 that the "Treatise on
Human Nature " was given to the world, and its
reception by a generation which failed to grasp its
real importance in the history of thought might well
have daunted a man of less consummate courage. In
Hume's own words, the book "fell dead born from the
press without reaching such a distinction as even to
excite a murmur amongst the zealots." But he was too
Avell poised to allow such a disappointment to unman
him. "I was resolved not to be an enthusiast in
philosophy while I was blaming other enthusiasts," he
writes to a friend. He was confident of the ultimate
prevalence of his views : he never wavered from the
belief that, on the basis of the theories that had been
accepted by the great mass of those who troubled
themselves about such matters, his inferences were
necessary and inevitable. " My principles," he writes
to the same friend, as a matter of certain convic-
tion, "would produce a revolution in philosophy:
and revolutions of this kind are not easily brought
HIS TREATISE ON HUMAN NATURE. 189
about." But he also recognised that time was
needed for the real bearing of his ideas to be felt,
that when felt they would meet with no favourable
reception, and that he had essayed a thorny path.
'• My fondness for what I imagined new discoveries
made me overlook all common rules of prudence, and
having enjoyed the usual satisfaction of projectors, 'tis
but just I should meet with their disappointments."
Meanwhile he is not overwhelmed in despair. "In a
day or two I shall be as easy as ever." No man ever
possessed in a more supreme degree that faculty of
"seeing the favourable more than the unfavourable
side of things " : a turn of mind which, as he himself
declares, "it is more happy to possess than to be born
to an estate of ten thousand a year."
For a dozen years, with intervals of employment
abroad, which enlarged his experience and widened
his range, Hume continued to produce several
volumes of moral and political essays, and recast
his philosophical speculations. The special features
of these it is the business of the historian of litera-
ture or philosophy to discuss in detail. We are
concerned only with their effect on the age when
they were written. Their destructive side was only
slowly appreciated by the world at large, and even
amongst those who were engaged in such discussions,
the conclusions of Hume's philosophy seemed merely
to be a new phase of the never-ending theories which
they were accustomed to propound, and not what he
knew them to be, " a revolution in thought." They
accepted him as a new member of a philosophical
debating society ; and although they combated his
arguments, opposed his conclusions, and invented
new theories to overturn his special views, yet after.**^"' ^^
s
190 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
all they considered him as one of themselves, as an
associate of their fraternity, and as an ally in the
common fight against the " zealots." It was their
business to encourage discussion, and they must
not look too severely upon any extreme conclusion
to which the pursuit of independent thought might
lead. Here and there replies, animated by a more
determined spirit of hostility, were put forth ; but
it was only as years passed that the full efi'ect of
Hume's position was appreciated, and that a solid
mass of opinion was aroused to bitter opposition.
So far as Scotland was concerned the hostile opposi-
tion arose, not from those who combated Hume's
system by weapons taken from the armoury of Scot-
land, but from those who disliked and suspected
all philosophical discussion. Those who met him
on his own ground disputed his conclusions, but
they did so with the tempered hostility of brethren
in the craft. Their moderation of tone was en-
hanced by the personal friendship which Hume's
character commanded. They preferred to throw in
their lot with him rather than with those whom
they classed with the bigoted fanatics of a former
generation ; and it is not surprising that when Hume
was a candidate, first for a professorship in the
university, and then for the librarianship of the
Advocates' Library, he found all that claimed to be
enlightened amongst the choice spirits of Edinburgh
ranged enthusiastically upon his side.
But Hume's was not a spirit which could find
its satisfaction in maintaining a struggle which he
knew well must increase in bitterness. His only
philosophical principles were simple and easily stated :
having set them forth he found little charm or in-
RECEPTION OF HIS WORK. 191
terest in defending them by any subtlety of argument,
or finely drawn reposts. His ambition lay, above all
things, towards literary fame ; and he found its
satisfaction rather in historical composition, to which
he turned in 1754. It may be that Hume abandoned
the sublimity of speculative effort, and, as some have
thought, was content with triumphs in a lesser field.
But we are concerned only with his place and work
in developing the thought of the century. His task
therein was completed when he turned to the more
congenial employment of historical writing, after he
had achieved independence, and had rounded off a
life in which success had been attained not by feverish
effort, nor by rushing into the arena with angry and
splenetic zeal, but by calm and persistent pursuit of
deliberate aims. He had said his word ; he knew
that its effect was certain and inevitable ; from the
undignified polemics that insistence would have made
inevitable, he resolutely withdrew. He was no per-
fervid missionary of free thought to benighted zealots ;
but only a man of unrivalled clearness of argument
and expression, who recoiled from no conclusions to
which his reason led him, but withal succeeded
in keeping on pleasant terms with those who would
have shrunk from the daring boldness of his attitude
had they only understood it, or had they fancied that
he was doing anything else than propounding a new
theory on matters which formed a convenient subject
of harmless and withal interesting speculations. Per-
sonally, he had every quality that could attract
friendship, and smooth the intercourse of life ; a
comprehensive generosity, an eager interest in the
affairs of others, a gentle and playful humour that
sweetened all around him, even if it was partly due
192 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
to a detachment from the ordiuary impulses of
humanity that was almost cynical. So warm, how-
ever, was the affection which he inspired, that his
friend Adam Smith seemed to be indulging in no
language of hyperbole, when he used with regard to
the chief assailant of commonly received religious
ideas in that age, the following words : " Upon the
whole, I have always considered him, both in his
lifetime and since his death, as approaching as
nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous
man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will
permit."
The other extra-academical philosopher was a man
of a very different type. Henry Home was the repre-
sentative of an old but impoverished family in Berwick-
shire, whose aim in life was to secure a competence by
the practice of the law, and to attain to a place on the
judicial Bench. In this he succeeded, by persevering
industry and a careful attention to the strict routine of
professional duty. But he found that the practice of
the law, then gradually broadening from the cramping
limits of the older text-books into a system in which a
clear grasp of principles and an acute mental habit of
applying them were essential, was greatly aided by
extended studies. These studies, with a restless in-
dustry, he engrafted upon his professional training, with
little assistance from any foundation of liberal study in
his youth. To this work he brought a mind well prac-
tised in the subtleties of the law, but lacking that
critical faculty which is rarely developed except by
sound preliminary training in a wider field. Through-
out all his discursive wanderings in the field of philoso-
phical or political speculation, his curiosity was more
conspicuous than his desire for sound knowledge, Eind
HENRY HOME, LORD KAMES. 193
his eagerness in the pursuit of some specious line of
argument than his sense of proportion. Hume's con-
tributions to philosophy were completed before he had
reached his fortieth year, and were illumined by the
clear light of genius, and regulated by the calm tenor
of a mind which sought only the full development of
its own powers, and treated all inferior objects with a
stoical contempt. Lord Kames began his disquisitions
only when he had attained to professional eminence,
and had hardened the fibre of his mind on the subtle-
ties of the law. Hume had all the directness and
simplicity that arose from a clear ray of thought run-
ning through all his works : Lord Kames involved
himself in a thick tangle of physical and mental ex-
periment, and with painful effort pieced together a
mass of inconsistent theories built upon notions that he
formed as the result of his own unguided and discursive
reading ; and delivered the whole in a cumbrous diction,
relieved by no literary grace. It pleased him to revive
the doctrine of Final Causes, and to trace from the
supposed certainty of their action, a convenient plan
which was not inconsistent with, and might therefore
by a convenient mental effort be supposed to prove, the
existence of a Deity ; and by a similar effort of mental
agility, the existence of a principle of virtue might
easily be conceived as a possible Final Cause in the
region of ethics. The old contradiction between Free-
will and Necessity he solved by a well-adjusted com-
promise, in which Necessity was conceded as a law of
the universe, but Freewill was conceded as an adroit
contrivance by which Divine power deluded humanity
into a mistaken belief in its own liberty. To have
accepted the views of Hume would have been an incon-
venient and dangerous excess of boldness on the part
VOL. II. N
194 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
of a senator of the Court of Justice, and it was therefore
necessary to contrive a good working theory which
might claim exemption from any accusation of heresy.
His attitude towards religion was indeed rather that
of the humorist than the professed sceptic. Reverence
was as little an element in his character, as was the
earnestness of sincere doubt. His speculations were
indeed the result rather of restless curiosity than of a
craving for more light. But meanwhile Hume was
courted by him not only as an enlightened ally, but as
a cordial and sympathetic friend, from whom he was
parted only by some unimportant details of philosophi-
cal nomenclature. The lawyer's love for a definite
statement was satisfied by his own crude and whimsi-
cal theories ; and he could hardly be expected to apply
to himself the words which Dr. Johnson used of such
optimistic moralists as were common in that day,
whose very superficial orthodoxy approached closely to
an absolute renunciation of religious feeling, "Surely a
man who seems not completely master of his own
opinion should have spoken more cautiously of Omni-
potence, nor have presumed to say what it could per-
form, or what it could prevent."
Lord Karnes was a man whose words have been
voiceless to any generation beyond his own. Even
by his own friends his speculations can hardly have
carried real weight, however indulgently they were
treated as the efforts — earnest enough in their way —
of an acute and ingenious, but ill-trained and ill-
balanced intellect. They could only have had any
vitality of interest to a generation singularly vacant
of any engrossing occupation or any profound thought;
and it was only because such vacuity was in a certain
measure characteristic of that generation that they
HIS DISCURSIVEXESS. 195
found a partial audience. But they are none the
less of historical interest as showing how the activity
of a keen, restless, and discursive intellect, with more
superficiality than earnestness, was spent in specula-
tions which were conceived to buttress religion and
to constitute a philosophical system.
His activity was, however, many-sided. He sought,
with perhaps more zeal than discretion, to play the
part of a literary Meecenas. He was energetic in
schemes of agricultural development, and was not
forgetful of the interest of his tenants, nor without
considerable influence upon various national improve-
ments. Sceptical as we may well be of any high
estimate of his mental calibre, he was a character-
istic figure in his day, and accentuates many of its
traits by exaggeration and by travesty. He repre-
sented all the indomitable energy of the race, and its
persevering struggle against odds. When he attained
to the dignity of the Bench, the long tension brought
a reaction, and he turned with zest to the pursuits of
what he deemed elegant literature and lofty specula-
tion, undeterred by any consciousness of the limita-
tions of his early training. He recompensed the
dreary toil of thirty years by taking his judicial duties
lightly, or by indulging his own vein, and perplex-
ing his colleagues in wire-drawn disquisitions, which
savoured more of the sophist's chair than the judicial
Bench. As was often the case with his countrymen,
he relieved the long restraint of toil by indulgence
in antics that frequently fell to the ridiculous, and
cultivated with assiduity the reputation of a wit,
which degenerated not rarely into the indecency of
the buffoon, and sufi'ered the restraints neither of
dignity nor of good taste. The stories we read of
1-96 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
his sallies after he reached the Bench ^ and relaxed
himself in the ease of convivial society, remind us
of those which at a somewhat earlier day relieved
the monotonous rigidity of the uncompromising Cove-
nanters, when human nature at odd intervals asserted
its power of throwing off a too prolonged restraint.
He was not a great lawyer ; he was in no sense a
philosopher ; his literary taste was frequently per-
verse ; his political speculations were whimsical and
often absurd ; his wit had often much of boyish
mischief, asserting itself against the restraints of
authority, and never rose to the serenity of humour.
But in his indomitable energy, in his industry, in
his freedom from timidity or any bashfulness bred
of his own defects, he was characteristic of his age.
That he found relaxation and interest in quasi-philo-
sophical speculation did not make him less so.
But to return again to the academical exponents
of the thought of the day, we come next to one
whose ethical speculations led him into a field which
he has largely made his own. Adam Smith's niche
in the temple of fame is that of the political econo-
mist ; that branch of thought which has been nick-
named the " dismal science," and which it is the
almost avowed boast of some in our own day to have
banished to Saturn.
Adam Smith was born at Kirkcaldy in 1723. From
the Grammar School of his native town he passed to
the University of Glasgow in 1737, and from thence,
as Snell Exhibitioner, to Balliol College, Oxford. It
is a curious fact that the endowment which secured
for him his introduction to an English university was
1 It was his habit on the Bench to address his brother judges as " Ye
bitche.s."
ADAM SMITH. 197
one founded in the seventeenth century with the ex-
press purpose of training clergymen for the Episcopal
Church of Scotland, with which Smith, like most of the
Scottish literary school, was entirely out of sympathy.
But if he did not imbibe at Oxford the tenets of the
High Church party, he drank deeply from the fountain
of her scholarship. He remained there for seven years,
and returned to Kirkcaldy, with no fixed aim as to
his future career, but that of pursuing literature and
speculation — a pursuit upon which the Scottish student
was able, through the widening opportunities of
university life, to enter with fair expectation of a
moderate competence unassisted by the depressing
influence of literary patrons. He had been strongly
impressed by the teaching of Hutcheson, and he
began his career as a professional exponent of literary
themes by lecturing at Edinburgh on rhetoric and
belles-lettres in the years that followed 1748. It was
then that he became a member of the Edinburgh
literary circle, and formed an intimate and afi"ectionate
friendship with Hume; and in 1751 he was appointed
to the Chair of Logic, and in the following year to that
of Philosophy, in Glasgow, which had been vacated by
the death of Hutcheson four years before, and had
since been occupied by one whose tenure of the office
was unimportant. In the Chair of Logic Smith devoted
his time mostly to those prelections on rhetoric and
belles-lettres which had occupied his time at Edin-
burgh. In the Chair of Moral Philosophy he followed
the method usual in his time of developing a theory
of ethics. The school to which Smith belonged dis-
carded, as mystical and fruitless speculation, all search
into a metaphysical basis for the moral instincts of
mankind, which should seek to o-ive to these instincts
198 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
their place in the scheme of the universe, or to fix
them amongst the eternal verities. They rightly
esteemed that the foundation of such a scheme had
been shattered by the preceding encroachments of
materialism, and that until some constructive system
should take the place of the debacle brought about by
Locke, and carried to its logical conclusion by Hume,
no such universal scheme was possible. On the other
hand they shrank, as moral citizens and eminently
estimable men, to expose the poverty of the ethical
speculation of the day by resting all moral sanction
upon historical or conventional foundations. Instead
of this, they sought to explain moral ideas by referring
them back to some apparently simple element in
human nature of which they were but one manifesta-
tion. Hutcheson had found such an element in a
moral sense which had its basis in the affections.
Smith found it in sympathy, and his was an explanation
congenial to one who regarded men chiefly as members
of the body politic, and whose chief interests lay in
propounding theories as to the laws by which that
body was governed, and as to the maxims upon which
its relations should rest. It may be doubted whether
Adam Smith's theory of sympathy as the source of
our moral ideas was anything more than a speciously
convenient classification ; but it was evidently an easy
transition from such a theory to turn to disquisitions
upon the laws that should regulate the action, or guide
the development, of social and political units.
Even in the days of his Glasgow professorship his
speculations had taken this turn, and the foundation
of his political economy had been expounded in his
lectures there. But in 1764 he was tempted, by an
offer to accompany the young Duke of Buccleuch in
HIS POLITICAL ECONOMY. 199
the Grand Tour, to resign his professorship ; and the
circles into which he was thereby thrown, as well as
the experience he thereby gained, contributed power-
fully to intensify his prevailing bias. In the year
that followed his residence on the Continent he devoted
himself to the study of economical questions, and this
study resulted in what was undoubtedly an epoch-making
work — his "Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the
Wealth of Nations." The degree of originality which
that work can claim has long been a disputed point.
Adam Smith had, no doubt, imbibed in France many
of the ideas of the French Encyclopaedists. But it was
with perfect honesty and with perfect right that he
claimed the merit of independent thought. Because,
iu truth, the ideas to which he gave expression were
in the air, and it was only natural that each man who
could give them shape and body for his own country-
men should feel himself entitled to the praise of an
original thinker. It has been claimed for Smith
that his position gave him admirable opportunities of
studying practically the operation of economical laws.
He lived in a commercial community. He was on
terms of intimacy with practical men. He was labo-
rious in collecting statistics in support of his views.
He had seen much of foreign countries, and been
intimate with men of many various types. This theory
of his development of an economical system is not
without its specious side. But it will not stand the
test of strict examination. As a man of business
Smith was singularly inept. In society he was shy
and diffident. He was absent-minded, and the theories
which he propounded in conversation were often eccen-
tric and ill-balanced. No man could have been more
unversed in all the ways of practical life. As a fact
200 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
he only propounded, as a thinker and a recluse, ideas
which were the result of historical evolution, and he is
one more amongst countless instances of the truth so
constantly exemplified, that ideas which are vaguely in
the air often receive their embodiment, and are aided
in their ultimate effect, by the solitary efforts of a
thinker, who to all appearance is absolutely removed
from all vital contact with practical life. The credit
which is thus due to him is really far greater than
that which would be his if it were proved that he
had reached his conclusions by building them upon a
laborious edifice of personal observation and care-
fully gathered statistics.
But there was an essential flaw in his system, how-
ever extensive its results, and however indisputable
were some of its positions. Smith proclaimed the
doctrine of Free Trade, and that doctrine eventually
bore sway amongst his countrymen, and vitally affected
their future history. But in building that doctrine
upon a moral basis he was essentially wrong, since it
led him to promulgate, as necessary and universal
truths, what were indeed but phases of historical
development. The mistake arose from a certain
analogy between his ethical and his economic theories.
Each endeavoured to claim for mere explanations the
authority of moral principles. It was just as true, and
just as false, that human society rested upon a basis of
free commercial relations, as it was that moral obliga-
tions rested upon a basis of sympathy. As a fact, both
were only explanations of a prevailing tendency. And
also as a fact, just as moral obligations have a basis
higher than sympathy, so human society must rest
upon foundations which often disregard the tenets
of political economy.
FLAWS IN HIS SYSTEM. 201
This flaw in his system does not destroy its use-
fulness. Tlie course of history was moving in the
direction which Smith indicated, and it was well that
the trend of that history should be set forth in the
systematic exposition of a solitary thinker. But the
universality which the system claimed, the moral
authority which, in consequence of its origin, it was
forced to assume, were essentially unreal. Smith com-
piled an economical code, and he claimed for it the
absolute truth of a philosophical system, and the
rigorous authority of a moral law. Not a little of the
opposition afterwards encountered by his system, not
a little of the irritation bred by the assumption of
moral superiority on the part of the political party
which became its chief representative, were due to the
error, so natural to his time, and so characteristic of the
school of thought to which he belonged, of mistaking
their own explanation of mental processes for a binding
moral law, and their own account of one phase of
historical development for a necessary and universal
truth.
But with all drawbacks, Adam Smith must be
counted not only one of the greatest influences, but
also one of the most characteristic figures of the age.
He was a man of simple life, wrapt in abstract thought,
a stranger to all the baser ambitions of ordinary life,
yet devoting himself, with singular tenacity of purpose,
and with singular boldness, to work out a theory which
had a profound effect upon the most practical side
of human life. In another age than his, the recluse
student, who struck his contemporaries as one utterly
lacking even ordinary discernment of character, would
have hung back in timidity from propounding views
which were to be effectual only by moulding the action
202 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
of men. His artlessness, his modesty, his occasional
wayward eccentricity of view, which appeared to his
intimates as almost childish, gave additional interest
to the concentrated perseverance with which he worked
out his system. His ordinary conversation consisted
of long philosophical harangues, varied by fits of
silence and reverie, and by the utterance of paradoxi-
cal opinions which he was ready to retract upon a
show of opposition.^ Averse to disputation, and un-
willing to excite alarm or to scandalise religious
opinion — he yet drifted away almost insensibly from
that safe anchorage of dogmatic belief which seemed
to the outsider the destined refuge of every Scotsman.
To him Voltaire was the greatest genius whom France
had ever produced. Hume was his beloved friend —
nearest to the ideal of a perfectly wise and virtuous
man which human frailty would permit. Yet he lived
unassailed by any rancour of religious dogmatism, and
only caused an occasional mild resentment, when during
those religious exercises to which no conscientious
scruples made him refuse to conform, some suggestion
which came to him in a fit of reverie or abstraction
caused a smile to pass over his face. He found a diffi-
culty, we are told, in conforming to the custom which
required that a professor should open his class with
prayer. But when informed that the rule could not
be waived, he complied by uttering a philosophical
disquisition in the form of a prayer.^
Adam Smith died in 1790, before the excesses of the
French Eevolution might have brought to him, as they
did to others like him, some doubt as to the tendency
of opinions with which they had largely sympathised.
1 Carlyle's " Reminiscences," p. 279.
2 Oclitertyre MSS., vol. i. p. 463.
THOMAS REID. 203
His career as professor ended in 1764, in which year
two other men, destined to play conspicuous parts,
entered upon their tenure of philosophical chairs in
Glasgow and in Edinburgh respectively. These were
Thomas Reid and Adam Ferguson. They presented a
strong contrast to one another in many ways ; but
each was strongly characteristic of the age in which
he lived.
Thomas Reid was born in 1710 in a remote village
in Kincardineshire, where his forefathers had for
centuries been planted as ministers of the Scottish
Church in her various vicissitudes. His mother was
one of the twenty-nine children of a Banffshire laird
named Gregory, whose descendants furnished a long
line of distinguished pioneers of science both to the
Scottish and the English universities. Like his fore-
fathers, Thomas Reid became a minister of the Church
of Scotland ; but the keenness of doctrinal disputes had
no attraction for him, and he took no prominent part in
the ecclesiastical contests that raged in her Church
Courts. He had as little about him of the religious re-
former as of the religious bigot; and to those accustomed
to think of the Scottish clergy as the embodiment of
covenanting zeal and doctrinal subtlety, the clerical
career of Reid, typical though it in truth was of many
of his brethren, must come as something of a sur-
prise. For a time after he had completed his course
at Marischal College, Aberdeen, Reid lingered on as
librarian, an office which gave him ample opportunity
for study, and his interest seems chiefly to have lain in
the direction of mathematical research. As a young
man he visited Enoland, and under the protection of
his uncle, David Gregory, Professor of Astronomy at
Oxford, he had abundant opportunity of access to the
204 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
leaders of English thought and scholarship. In 1737
he was presented by the Aberdeen University autho-
rities to the living of New Machar ; and there he
became a victim of the anti-patronage zeal which then
disturbed the Church. He was not allowed to take
possession of the charge without opposition that went
the length of personal insult and violence. But his
quiet earnestness, although aided by none of the
partisanship of the zealot, won its way to the hearts of
the parishioners, and made him beloved amongst them.
" We fought against Dr. Reid when he came," said an
old parishioner long afterwards, " and we would have
fought for him when he went away." And yet he had
gained their devotion by no compliance with the more
rigorous doctrinal notions, and by no sympathy with
the narrowness of the older tenets. His modesty —
perhaps it is not unjust to add, his absorption in other
interests — led him to read the discourses of Tillotson
instead of composing sermons of his own. The practice
is one which laymen of a later day might not resent ;
but it would hardly have proved acceptable to Scottish
zealots of the older type, and it sufficiently proves that
a Scottish clergyman of the day had other interests
than those comprised in doctrinal disputes, and that
his congregation might yield their respect and their
affection to a different type of spiritual teacher than
the moss preacher who had kindled the fiery zeal, and
fed the sectarian pride, of their forefathers.
While still minister of New Machar he published
some results of his philosophical studies in the Trans-
actions of the E-oyal Society of London, and his reputa-
tion as a man of learning advanced. In 1752 he was
recalled to his university as Professor of Philosophy —
a somewhat comprehensive theme, which was taken to
HIS WORKS AND TEACHING. 205
comprise physics and mathematics, as well as logic and
ethics. The principle of the Regenting system, already
alluded to, by which a single teacher conducted his
pupils through a wide range of studies, still prevailed
largely at Aberdeen, although in the southern uni-
versities it had given way to the Professorial system,
by which one man became the authorised exponent of
one subject only. But the wide range of his duties
did not change the bent of Reid's speculations ; and it
was during his professorship at Aberdeen that he pro-
duced in 1764 the "Inquiry into the Human Mind,"
which permanently fixed his philosophical position,
and which procured for him, in the same year, an
invitation from the University of Glasgow, to occupy
the Chair of Moral Philosophy, then vacated by Adam
Smith. He held the chair until 1780, and thereafter
he published, as the fruit of his later studies, the
"Essays on the Intellectual Powers" in 1785, and
the "Essays on the Active Powers" in 1788. In the
three works named we have the full exposition of his
system.
This is not the place to describe in detail, or to
discuss, the foundations of that system. It is sufficient
to point out only its place in the history of Scottish
thought, and to show how it is characteristic of the
time, and yet has features of its own which give to it
a special interest and importance. As we have seen,
Reid was no religious or doctrinal zealot. Polemical
discussion was hateful to him, and he was not likely to
be found in the ranks of those who looked with horror
on philosophical speculations which seemed to shake
traditional creeds, and who attacked with partisan zeal
the exponents of these speculations. But his attitude
is chiefly interesting as it shows how a man of devout
206 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
and earnest character, endowed with a marvellous
faculty of patient and persistent thought, could spend
his life in maintaining a firm foundation for funda-
mental truths, with no aid from the rancour of fanatical
zeal, and without holding a brief for any narrow
doctrinal creed. More than any other of his con-
temporaries he combined an absolute devotion to
philosophical inquiry, with the calmness and the
chastened moderation that belong to the philosophical
character. To most of his philosophical contempo-
raries, doctrinal Christianity was a matter in which
they had at best only an occasional interest. They
would fain keep on civil, even on respectful relations
with its avowed adherents, and any attack upon it
they deemed inexpedient, and would even, in a mild
way, combat philosophical tenets which seemed likely
to subvert its foundations. But further than that they
were indisposed to go. For their philosophical specu-
lations they drew an ample arena, the combats on which
were conducted according to stated rules, and all the
combatants, whatever the variety of their arms and of the
devices on their shields, were to be treated more or less
as members of a brotherhood, whose variety of opinion
contributed additional interest to their not unfriendly
encounters. On the fringe of that arena there lay
the wide extent of conventional belief and traditional
doctrine, which they regarded as something outside
their pale of interest, and the consuming zeal of which
they were scrupulous not to imitate. Such an attitude
might be enlightened, dignified, and even intellectually
bracing, but it did not contribute either to earnestness
or to sincerity of thought.
With all this Reid was essentially in contrast. He
remained on friendly terms with his intellectual con-
CONTRAST WITH HIS CONTEMPORARIES. 207
temporaries. He was divided from them by no bitter-
ness of partisanship. His wide range of interest was
in sympathy with theirs. He adopted many of their
methods. Like them, he looked on the inductive
method propounded by Bacon as the sole guide for
human inquiry, and vied with them in abjuring the
errors of metaphysical hypothesis. He professed him-
self anxious to carry into the sphere of mental and
moral science the principles which Bacon had advo-
cated in physical inquiry ; and it was in obedience to
this anxiety that he applied himself to what was called
an examination of the powers of the mind. So far
Reid resembled the others, and in method seemed to
follow their example. But, in truth, it is the aim of
his researches far more than their method that fixes
his place in philosophical inquiry. His object was to
vindicate the fundamental laws of belief, and to place
truth on an unassailable foundation. If he proceeded
by the inductive method, it was to lead to a conclusion
the very opposite of that materialism which the in-
ductive method might seem to favour. It was to prove
that materialism was itself only one of those metaphy-
sical hypotheses which its supporters had so uniformly
decried.
His method was not really a purely inductive one,
as he himself would fain have believed. Its sheet-
anchor was the foundation of belief as something
independent of all hypothesis, defying explanation or
analysis, and for that very reason to be accepted as an
unassailable truth. But he proceeded to support this
by driving home his inquiries into the phenomena of
the mind, and by so turning attention away from any
hypothesis as to what may be accepted as the basis of
knowledge. It was not his to establish a metaphysi-
208 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
cal refutation of materialism ; that was reserved for
Others in different surroundings, and unfettered by the
intellectual habits characteristic of Reid's time and
country. But by his persistent inquiry into the laws
of thought, he placed on a higher level the acceptance
of their essential truth and of^their unassailable neces-
sity ; he vindicated for thought that sovereign power
which could not admit the arbitrament of any alien
tribunal, which defied any analysis, and which baffled
the impotence of any hypothesis which sought to explain
it. His principle of common sense was the central point
in the system. The name provoked opposition, and it
is undoubtedly open to the objection of using a term
of ordinary language, where it denotes mother-wit, or
practical judgment, in a technical sense, to embrace
the primary and universal truths which the human
mind is compelled to accept. But the very homeliness
of the term had no doubt its attraction for Reid, who
desired above all things to find for this supreme and
fundamental sovereignty of thought an acceptance
more ready than would have been accorded to the
jargon of philosophical technicalities. Whatever fault
may be found with his nomenclature, the central
feature of his system, by means of which he controlled
and steadied the speculations of those of his country-
men who might otherwise have been led to extremes
which they little contemplated, was just this doctrine
of common sense. It was by this that he attained to a
position essentially diff"erent from his contemporaries,
however much he adopted their methods. Had he
broken away from these, his influence might have been
smaller than it actually was. He worked through his
own countrymen, and he affected them mainly because
he used the methods and adopted the phraseology of
HIS CENTRAL PRINCIPLE. 209
their school. It was this which helped to make them
accept the central principles of his system — so essen-
tially different from those to which their more superficial
inquiries were conducting them. The bolder and more
pronounced materialists of England, such as Priestley
and Darwin, perceived how Reid's system told against
their own, and knew no measure in the energy of
their attacks upon it. On the other hand, in another
country and amongst very different surroundings, a
new edifice of philosophical speculation, more truly
akin to Reid's than any other of his time, was being-
raised by Imanuel Kant. It is odd to notice how
Dugald Stewart — the disciple and biographer of Reid
— had so little conception of the real trend of Reid's
system, as to append to the praise of Reid, a warning
against "the new doctrines and new phraseology on
the subject, which have lately become fashionable
among some metaphysicians in Germany."
Reid's tenure of his chair came to an end in 1780,
and he died in 1796. His life had been a singularly
calm one, and his chief characteristics had been an
indomitable faculty of patient thought and a sincerity
of purpose that never wavered. Such influence as he
possessed was gained by quiet and persistent effort ;
and he did not affect his contemporaries either by any
marked originality of genius, or by a striking or eccen-
tric personality. His contemporary exponent of moral
philosophy in Edinburgh was a man of a very different
type. There could not be a contrast more marked than
that between the quiet and simple minister of New
Machar, pursuing the even tenor of his way with the
silent and unobtrusive modesty of the secluded student,
and the bustling, impetuous, and somewhat theatrical
figure that now comes upon the stage.
VOL. II. 0
210 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
Adam Ferguson was born in 1723 in the Highland
village of Logierait, where his father was minister, and
where he was near enough to the turbulent elements
amongst the Highland clans to include amongst his
family traditions some experience of the realities of
civil war. He had no inclination to the Jacobite cause
in these days when its hopes ran high, and his first
publication was a translation of a sermon delivered
in Gaelic to the Highland regiment of which he was
chaplain, denouncing the Pope and the Pretender with
sound Whiggish orthodoxy ; but he was none the less,
in affection as well as in character, a thorough Celt,
with all the impulsiveness and dash that belonged to
the race ; and in later days, when Jacobitism was only
a romantic memory, he was wont to delight his friends
by his singing of Jacobite songs. Alone amongst the
philosophers he spoke the language, and was stirred
by the traditions of Gaul, and retained for that race to
the end of his life the passionate attachment which it
never fails to inspire. After he had mingled in the
gay society of Paris, and learned the ways of fashion-
able life, he still cherished his admiration for the
characteristic traits of his own people. " Had I not
been in the Highlands of Scotland," he writes long
after, " I might be of their mind who think the inhabi-
tants of Paris and Versailles the only polite people in
the world." But amidst the Highland glens he found
a courtesy all the more perfect that it was untaught.
He sees in the Highland clansman, who had never
passed beyond the mountains that shut his glen from
the world, one who " can perfectly perform kindness
with dignity ; can discern what is proper to oblige,"
and who, "having never seen a superior, does not
know what it is to be embarrassed."
ADAM FERGUSON. 211
From the school of Perth, Ferguson passed to the
University of St. Andrews, and thence to the divinity
classes at Edinburgh. In 1744 the offer made to him
by the Duchess of Athole, of a chaplaincy in the Black
Watch, made it needful that he should be licensed to
preach after less than the usual probation, and this
allowance was granted.
With his regiment Ferguson passed to the scene of
war, and he was present with them at the battle of
Fontenoy. According to report, he did not confine
himself strictly to his spiritual duties. Scott tells how,
when the regiment charged, the commanding officer
found his chaplain at the head of the column with a
broadsword in his hand. He was obliged to remind him
that his commission did not warrant his presence there.
"Damn my commission," cried the chaplain, whose
Celtic blood was stirred by the scene ; and he threw it
to his colonel. Whether the story is true or not, the
undaunted chaplain gained on the battlefield an experi-
ence which stood him in good stead as moralist and as
historian, and he loved to recall the scene in order to
give fresh point to a well-turned enunciation of some
moral exhortation, that had the ring of Eoman elo-
quence. "The author has had occasion to see the
game of life played in camps, on board of ships, and in
presence of an enemy, with the same or greater ease
than in the most secure situation," he tells us in the
preface to his " Moral Science." It would not be fair to
grudge him the benefit of such a picturesque allusion,
or to inquire too exactly how far it advances any philo-
sophical argument.
It may be doubted whether his formal profession as
a minister of the Church of Scotland had attractions as
strong for Adam Ferguson as that military experience
212 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
which fortune threw in his way. He continued to com-
pose sermons, which had a certain verve and eloquence
of their own ; but they were moral essays of a some-
what pretentious kind, in which religion played only
a secondary part. In this he merely reflected, in a
more than usually vigorous manner, what was a mode
of the day, which endeavoured to get rid of the old
doctrinal subtleties by turning its attention to a scheme
of ethics which difl"ered but little from that which was
expounded by the moralists of the later Roman re-
public. Some ludicrous stories are told of Ferguson
in this connection. We hear how he had lent a sermon
to an ignorant and unlettered brother in church, who
astonished his hearers by preaching on the superiority
of intellectual to mere supei-ficial qualities, supporting
his thesis by numerous quotations from Plato and
Aristotle, with whose writings he was not understood
to have any previous acquaintance. Further inquiry
elicited the very frank confession that the sermon was
the composition of the militant chaplain of the 42nd
Highlanders.
In 1754 he resigned his chaplaincy, moved thereto
perhaps more by weariness of the clerical profession
than by any desire of a more restful position in which
to pursue its aims. At all events, from that time forth
he abandoned the ministerial office. " I am a down-
right layman," he writes to Adam Smith, and begs to
be no longer addressed by the epithet of "Reverend."
Henceforward he turned his attention to ethical and
critical essays, with those excursions into political
speculation which suited the intellectual taste of the
day. He became a member of the Select Society,
established by the younger Allan Ramsay, and is here-
after to be counted as one of the leadinsj intellectual
APPOINTMENT AS PROFESSOR. 213
lights of Edinburgh, whose connection with any strict
religious creed was somewhat remote. lie became
tutor to the sons of Lord Bute ; and was soon engaged
as one of the warmest champions of Home, whose
theatrical essay in " Douglas " was giving scandal to
the stricter brethren. We hear of him as one of the
little company — composed of Robertson, David Hume,
Dr. Carlyle, and Dr. Blair — who took upon themselves
the characters of Home's tragedy in a private rehearsal.
Adam Ferguson, we read, took the rdle of Lady Ran-
dolph. The Scottish clergy had indeed made startling
advances in their ideas of decorum.
Like many of his brethren who felt that the pulpit
was an inadequate scene for the exercise of their
talents. Ferguson had his ambition fixed upon a chair
in one of the Scottish universities. In 1758 there was
a scheme on foot whereby a resignation was to be pro-
cured by the payment of a certain sum, and by a little
shuffling of the cards, a place was to be found for
Ferguson. The transaction did not seem to savour of
jobbery so much as it would have been held to do in
our own day ; and we must be chary of passing too
severe a sentence upon it when we find that amongst
its ardent supporters is to be numbered Adam Smith.
However that may be, the scheme miscarried — appa-
rently over a difference as to the amount to be paid.
Ferguson found consolation next vear in his appoint-
ment to the Chair of Natural Philosophy in Edinburgh.
It was characteristic of the time that Ferguson had
no misgivings in accepting the chair, in spite of utter
ignorance of his subject. His audacity gave rise to
Hume's friendly sarcasm — that Ferguson had more
genius than any of them, as in three months he had
learned enough of an obscure science as to be able to
214 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
teach it. In 1764 he exchanged this chair for the more
congenial one of Moral Philosophy, which he held till
1785.
In 1765 he published his "Essay on the History of
Civil Society." He was now sufficiently identified
with the somewhat lax school of speculative moralists,
upon which the more orthodox began to look askance.
Beattie was now preparing for his doubtful champion-
ship of the older methods of thought, and on what was
apparently a meagre acquaintance with the book, he
felt it to be his duty to decry it. " Our Scottish writers
are too metaphysical," he writes to Gray apropos of
the book ; " I wish they would speak more to the
heart and less to the understanding. But alas ! this
is talent which Heaven alone can bestow, whereas the
philosophical spirit (as we call it) is merely artificial,
and level to the capacity of every man who has much
patience, a little learning, and no taste." Gray refuses
to accept his friend's verdict on Ferguson's book.
" He has not the fault you mention," is Gray's reply ',
" his application to the heart is frequent and often
successful." The dry light of reason was indeed not
likely to be the chief concern of such a temperament
as that of Ferguson ; and it might have been wished
that the author of the " Minstrel " had remembered
his own maxim, and not rashly strayed, as we shall
presently find that he did, into a field for which
nature had not equipped him.
The fault of Ferguson was certainly not that he
neglected appeals to the heart or to the feelings. He
did not, indeed, seek to rouse the ardour of religious
fervour. With him the religious motive was a very
secondary one. "We must not," he says, "trust to
whatever may bear the name of religion or conscience,
HIS ETHICAL TEACHING. 215
or to what may have a temporary vogue in the world,
for our clh-ection in the paths of a just and manly
virtue." ^ Virtue, he says again, may transmit its lessons
" through the channels of ingenuous literature and the
fine arts, no less than in the way of formal instruction."
But the motives to which he did appeal — the assumed
instinct of perfection, the dictates of manliness and
courage, the impulse to heroic action — all these were
not unfitting engines in an appeal to the feelings of
the heart. Whether they would stand the dreary and
monotonous strain of the exigencies of daily life, and
would form motives sufficient for the ordinary frailty of
humanity, may well be doubted. But we cannot deny a
certain sympathy to the ardent Celt who then preached
a stoicism, based on heroism, to the callous spirit of
the eighteenth century, and who enforced its lessons
by the .wide experience which his adventurous life
had brought him. Life was a game, according to the
maxim which he is fond of repeating : we must play it
like men.
For a man so restless, so whimsical, and so impulsive,
no theory of life would have been tolerable which did
not suggest heroic action on a stirring scene. He had
all the Celtic craving for variety, and his curiosity to
learn the ways of men increased by what it fed on.
He had abundant opportunities to travel. As tutor to
Lord Chesterfield, he again visited France in 1774, and
held intercourse with Voltaire. To draw out the great
man, he tells us with some humour, " he encouraged
every communication, even jokes against Adam and
Eve and the rest of the prophets — (such jokes were
not over-galling, and such collocation did not seem
amiss, to Ferguson) — in order to be considered as
1 "Principles of Moral and Political Science," ii. p. .320.
216 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
one who had no ill humour to the freedom of fancy in
others." In 1776 we find him in America as secretary
to the Commissioners who had to treat with Washing-
ton, and carrying a momentous message to Congress.
He returned to throw himself with new zest into his
intellectual tasks : and in 1783 he published his
"History of the Roman Republic" — a work which
under the guise of history is in truth a series of lectures
on ethics and politics, with a strong leaven of stoicism.
Retiring from his chair in 1785, he prepared for the
press his " Principles of Moral and Political Science,"
which may be taken as the substance of his teaching
in the chair. It is a work which few but the curious
now find leisure to consult.
But Ferguson is none the less interesting as a typical
figure of his time, in spite of the not undeserved neglect
of his works. Amongst a galaxy of men — none of the
first rank in intellect, but all of more than respectable
calibre — he has a place all his own. He achieved it
partly by his wide and varied experience of life. But
it was aided by his Celtic temperament, which gave a
freedom and a verve to his speculation which Avas lack-
ing to others of his school. Morality was to him essen-
tially a thing of great deeds upon a great stage. The
type he sought for was that of Aristotle's great-souled
man. The subtleties of free thinking would have
vexed his soul as much as the subtleties of doctrine :
but he was more than any of them — however little he
would have avowed it — the type of a purely pagan
morality. His stoicism was a picturesque fiction, in-
deed, and none confessed more frankly than he that in
the afi"airs of everyday life he was nervous and irritable
to the last degree. Such inconsistency need not be
ascribed to him as a peculiarity amongst philosophers.
HIS PERSONALITY. 217
His courage, his vigour, his quick impulse, and his
warm affection are none the less worthy of note in an
age which is usually deemed to have been one of
apathetic formality. No wonder that, as he lingered
on in a hale old age to his ninety-third year, he com-
manded the respect and veneration of a younger genera-
tion, and earned the decisive verdict of Scott — " a firm
man, if ever there was one." In spite of the deadly ill-
ness of fifty years before, he remained hale and hearty
to an extreme old age, and lived to pronounce his nunc
(Jimittis after the news of Waterloo. He was, we
are told, a singular apparition : with long white hair,
animated eyes, and cheeks like autumnal apples ; stalk-
ing with dignified steps, a long staff held at arm's
length ; "his gait and air were noble ; his gesture and
his looks full of dignity, and composed fire ; " and with
his wrappings of fur and copious greatcoats, he looked
like a philosopher from Lapland. Nor did he owe his
fiery temperament to the free living common amongst
his contemporaries. Considerations of health forced to
an ascetic diet ; and his son tells us what a pleasant
sight it was to watch Ferguson and another of his
philosophical comrades forced to similar diet, " rioting
over a boiled turnip." Nor must we forget, in taking
leave of a notable and picturesque, although somewhat
erratic, personality, that it was in the house of Adam
Ferguson, where he gathered all that was distinguished
in the fScottish capital, that a memorable literary con-
junction was witnessed — when Burns, then in the
plenitude of his genius, met, and by an intuitive sym-
pathy singled out for notice, the boy who was to
divide with him the devotion of his countrymen —
Walter Scott.
The chair of Adam Ferguson was filled in 1785
218 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
by Diigald Stewart. By this time the phice of the
Scottish school of philosophy, both as regards Scotland
and beyond its borders, was becoming more and more
defined. That it was alien to much that was most
deeply rooted in the religious character of an older
2-eneration of Scotsmen, there can be no doubt. It
is just as little doubtful that beyond the sphere of
its influence there remained a large body of intelligent
and strenuous, if somewhat narrow, conviction, which
would have recoiled in horror from many of its con-
clusions, and would have suspected its methods, had
it ever troubled itself with inquiries into either. The
more rigid party in the Church did occasionally
question the influence of the philosophical teaching
of the day, and when the scandal rose to its worst
in the writings of Hume they attempted, without
success, to invoke the engine of ecclesiastical disci-
pline. But amongst the reading public, the free
discussion of these questions produced but little
disturbance. The chief exponents of the current
philosophy were careful to avoid polemics as far as
possible, and with the thinking public, this procured
for them, if not an altogether favourable, at least
a lenient construction. The most notable exception
to this rule was the publication, in 1770, of Beattie's
"Essay on Truth." Beattie had been born in 1735,
and, after studying for the Church, had abandoned
the intention when he found that his trial discourse,
in which he had indulged a too luxuriant fancy, was
sarcastically referred to as poetry rather than prose.
In 1760 he became a colleague of Reid, as Professor
of Philosophy in Aberdeen; and after some not un-
successful essays in poetry he came before the world
in the guise of a defender of the Faith against the
BEATTIES ESSAY ON TRUTH. 219
attacks of Hume. The book had an enormous vogue,
and procured for its author a renown which, how-
ever evanescent, was for the moment astonishing.
But it was in England rather than in Scotland that
its reception was most flattering. George III. in-
vited him to court, and conferred on him a pension
of £200 a year. The University of Oxford bestowed
on him their doctor's degree, and archbishops vied
with one another in compliments and invitations
that he should enter the Church. Johnson and
Burke, with that generous leniency of judgment
which giants ow^e to dwarfs, hailed him as the
champion of religion, and hushed such misgivings as
they may have felt about the value of the book by
loud praise of the author's good intentions.
But as a fact the book was but a piece of literary
flotsam such as is often cast up by the breaking waves
of controversy. As a philosophical disputant Beattie
is beneath contempt. Occasionally he scores a good
point, but it may almost always be traced to Reid. He
makes a sound accusation against the Scottish school,
that they were ignorant of the work of the ancient
philosophers and blind to their merits ; but the ac-
cusation is one which he was utterly incapable of
pushing home. The book is indeed a commonplace
and frothy mixture of popular invective and almost
childish argument. Had he possessed the sarcasm
of a Butler or a Swift he might have attacked philo-
sophic foibles as they had been attacked in "Hudibras"
and in the " Tale of a Tub," with no aid of argument,
and with only the keen lance of wit. But, alas, to
quote Beattie's own words of Ferguson, " that is a
talent which Heaven only can bestow." Only one
or two in an age can enter the lists of controversy
220 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
with no arms but those of wit. Many more may
venture to meet a sophism in argument, and to
encounter it with its own weapons ; but such an
encounter implies skill of fence, quickness of eye,
and consummate training. Poor Beattie had none
of these. In place of them he brought to the fight
only a mass of half-digested arguments, padded out
with irrelevant bursts of turgid invective. The
English Tories hailed such an ally — from a quarter
where he was least to be expected — and forgot in
their welcome to take a just measure of their recruit.
But in Scotland the book had a much less flattering
reception, and when it appeared in all the magnifi-
cence of a reprint in quarto, the list of subscribers
contains but a sprinkling of his own countrymen
amidst an imposing crowd of English names. In
truth, the need of such championship was not greatly
felt in Scotland. Whether because the Scottish school
of philosophers had captivated the taste of their edu-
cated countrymen, or because they had faithfully
reflected its tendency, it is at least certain that a
tolerably convenient pact had been arranged between
them. The Scottish Church and the Scottish reading
public were not unduly sensitive about the rigidity
of doctrinal orthodoxy; and the Scottish philoso-
phers, so long as they kept within certain limits and
show'ed no obtrusive scepticism, were not tolerated
only but respected. Hume's "Treatise" was now
thirty years old, and the teaching of Reid was a
more powerful antidote than the feeble commonplaces
of Beattie.
Such was the position of matters when Dugald
Stewart became the chief representative of our Scottish
school. In a certain sense he mav be said to close
DUGALD STEWART. 221
the list ; and in him we may assume it at once to
have culminated, and to have come to the end of
the work which was to be performed on the old
lines. His was not the most powerful intellect
amongst the exponents of the school, nor had he
even that measure of originality which belonged to
some of his predecessors ; but he summed up in him-
self many of their characteristics, and in the main
the inheritance which it had to leave to a later
generation was transmitted through his hands.
He was born in 1753. Unlike any of the others, he
was nurtured in the air of university thought : he was
the son of the Professor of Mathematics, and breathed
in his youth the atmosphere of an academic society.
After spending some years at his own university, he
passed to Glasgow, where he came under the influence
which predominated in all his speculations — that of
Dr. Reid. From Glasgow he returned at the age of
nineteen, to undertake the duties of his father, who
was disabled by illness ; and a few years later he
added to these the duties of deputy for Adam Fer-
guson, during his mission to the American Colonies
as secretary to the Commissioners who were to treat
with Washington : undertaking, with that vigorous
power of mental exertion which was characteristic of
his race, a course of lectures on astronomy. Such an
extended range of systematic study might terrify the
slacker energies of a later day, and it is to be feared
that we cannot apply to ourselves the soothing reflec-
tion, that the standard of attainment demanded was
less than that which would be expected in these days
of greater specialisation. The very comprehensiveness
of intellectual interest served as a stimulus, and
enabled Stewart to bring to the service of the main
222 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
occupation of his maturer years, a wealth of illustra-
tion which strict application to a single subject would
have rendered impossible.
In 1785, on the resignation of Adam Ferguson,
Stewart succeeded to the Moral Philosophy chair, the
duties of which he discharged until 1810. His vene-
ration for Ferguson was second only to that which
he felt for Reid ; but no two men could have been
more striking contrasts in character, than the fiery
and impulsive Celt who had gained his chief lesson
in life in the camp and in action, in travels and in
affairs of State, and that calm, self-centred, cautious,
and well - balanced inheritor of university traditions
who took his place.
It would be impossible to claim for Stewart the
fame of an original thinker, or to maintain that he
inaugurated any new philosophical era, or even con-
tributed very largely to the development of thought.
He was cautious to follow in the footsteps of those
amongst his predecessors whose teaching seemed to
be most sound, modifying their views only in minor
points. Such a system as was common to them all —
admirable as an educational instrument — admitted of
endless modifications in its discursive review of mental
processes, and in its ample exposition of these pro-
cesses to be detected by observation of human life.
Such an analysis of more or less patent phenomena
permitted variety not only between different expo-
nents, but between the exposition of the same
teacher from day to day. New facts occurred, new
observations accumulated, new relations were per-
ceived ; one process of analysis suggested another, and
new fields of illustration constantly opened themselves
to the view.
HIS WIDE INFLUENCE. rlo
But if he brought no original impulse to the school,
the limits of which were indeed fairly well defined,
there was no one who expounded its methods with
greater acceptance or success than Stewart. His
argument was not always close or accurate ; his style
was diffuse, and his illustration sometimes lavish in
its copiousness. But his range of learning, as learn-
ing was esteemed in his day, was wide. He had
travelled much, and had mixed on easy and familiar
terms with men of every class. He had a fund of
smooth eloquence. His character, calm, benevolent,
and studiously courteous, fitted him admirably to attain
that unquestioned and unquestionable authority which
made him potent as an oracle amongst his students,
and gave to his professional prelections something
of the influence of powerful pulpit ministrations- In
his time, and mainly through his influence, although
also through the high traditions of his predecessors,
the University of Edinburgh became the resort of
men of all countries. From England many of those
most fitted by birth, station, and ability to influence
the coming generation, thronged to the northern
university as to a ^lecca of learning. In his class-
room many who, but a few years before, would have
looked upon Scotland as a country sunk in ignorance
and poverty, and alien in political ideas, sat side by
side with the Scottish youth and imbibed the notions
which were to form their principles thi'oughout life.
Sydney Smith and Brougham, Palmerston and Lord
John Russell, Scott and Hamilton, were all amongst
his pupils. At an age when their own minds were
most open to such impressions, they caught the en-
thusiasm which his teaching inspired, and learned
to find their intellectual sustenance in a learnins:
2 24 THE SCOTTISH SC'HOOJ> OF PHILOSOPHY.
Mliicli was Scottish to the backhono. There they
imbibed, and fioiii thence tliey transmitted an admira-
tion for their teacher, and a firm faith in his guidance
which conki hardly l)e paraUekHl unless we go back
to the groves of the Athenian Academy.
Hut Stewart's teaching extended beyond the sphere
of mental or moral philosophy, and passed into the
range of practical politics. Such an extension always
has its dangers. It necessarily bases its political
theories upon the same lofty level as its moral aspira-
tions, and assumes for them an authority which is
frequently open to question, and which opponents
are apt most bitterly to resent. Whatever theories of
morality may be devised, there can be little variance
as to the practical precepts of virtuous action. Uut
political science admits of no such uniformity of judg-
ment. Its foundation rests in history, and its precepts
must vary according to our reading of history and our
application of its lessons to the circumstances of our
own time. Men w'ill vary infinitely in reading and
applying these lessons, and they will sturdily refuse to
accept the maxims of their opponents, how^ever cun-
ningly deduced, as an unbending rule of political
conduct. The political disquisitions of the Scottish
philosophical school were not exempt from such an
assumption. The whole bent of their thought had
inevitably carried them in the direction of Liberal
ideas, of which the Whig party claimed a monopoly.
They had shaken themselves free from the narrow^
and bigoted sectarianism which had kept Scotland in
bondage for long. They prided themselves with some
justice on having given intellectual freedom to their
country. While for the most part they kept on good
terms with the Church, their association with her had
HI8 CONNECTION WITH THP: WHIGS. 225
been rather that of courteous toleration than of close
sympathy. They accepted the latitudinarianism of her
dominant party — that of the Moderates — but they had
no interest in her ecclesiastical politics, and did not
understand the pride of an Establishment that was
jealous of dissent and proud of alliance with the State
as a means of freedom and independence. In propor-
tion as the Church extended her claims and sought to
assert authority over the universities, and drew closer
and closer the bond that knit her to the Tory party,
the philosophers drew apart from her. Amongst them
Dugald Stewart was perhaps the most pronounced in
his Whig sympathies, and it did not tend to cordiality
that he occasionally assumed a tone of almost arrogant
condescension, and took sedulous pains to disown any
interest in ecclesiastical afiairs. In his earlier days
Stewart had gone far with the French encyclopsedists,
and had cultivated a sympathy with the aims which
they set before them. It is true that he disavowed
their later tendencies, and did not disguise his detes-
tation of many of the principles which bore fruit in
the French Revolution. But his method of combating
these was by what he called " an enlightened zeal for
political liberty," and what the opposite party decried
as a dangerous tampering with revolution. As the
tide of political feeling rose higher, and divided
Scotland into two angry camps, the philosophical
speculations which had hitherto been accorded an
easy toleration began to be stigmatised by the Tories
as a seed-bed of innovation, dangerous alike to Church
and State, and the fervent zeal of the Tories was de-
nounced by the Whigs as an attempt to build up a
new tyranny upon the ruins of freedom either in
thought or in politics. The calm of the academic
VOL. II. p
226 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
precincts was invaded by the angry voices of political
and ecclesiastical strife, and the Scottish school of
philosophy, in its narrower and home-bred phrase,
was broken up amidst the darkening clouds of an
embittered warfare. Henceforward it assumed a new
shape, and its older traditions lingered only as a
memory. Its firm hold upon the intellectual growth
of the nation was gone. The Scottish universities
were still to boast names of great weight in philo-
sophical speculation. But they no longer governed
the minds and dominated the feelings of a whole
generation. They were no longer of exclusively
Scottish growth. Their work belongs no longer to
the history of Scotland, but to the history of philo-
sophy. Their intiuence was confined to an academic
clique.
The very generation which followed Stewart's tenure
of the Moral Philosophy chair showed how surely this
change was operating. To his bitter chagrin, and by
the weight of party influence, his successor in 1820^
was not his own nominee, Sir William Hamilton, but
John Wilson, better known under the sobriquet of
" Christopher North." A few years later Hamilton
obtained the Chair of Logic, and for the next genera-
tion these two — a strange and ill-assorted couple —
represented the philosophical teaching of the uni-
versity. Both were Oxford men, powerfully influ-
enced by the spirit of that university, and owing
comparatively little to their Scottish education. But
with this, which in itself distinguished them from
their predecessors, all resemblance ends. Wilson was
' Stewart ceased to do the active work of professor in 1810, but he con-
tinued till 1820 to hold titular office, during the tenure of Brown, who
discharged the duties of the chair from 1810 till his death in 1820.
END OF THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL. 227
a turbulent personality, with a whimsical strain of
romance and poetr}', a few stray notions of literary
criticism, and an overflowing torrent of animal spirits
which he himself and many of his contemporaries
accepted as genius. But of any power of concen-
trated or systematic thought he was absolutely desti-
tute. He might carry on the traditions which made
literary criticism one of the subjects of philosophical
disquisition, but it was in a method and with aims
far different from those of his predecessors. He was
open to literary impressions by which they were un-
stirred, and he caught something of the spirit of a
school of poetry which had not arisen in their day ; but
for philosophical speculation he was incapable either
by nature or by training. His compeer Hamilton was
a man of far other calibre. To him philosophy en-
folded secrets to which the Scottish school resolutely
closed their eyes ; it pointed out new paths upon
which they would not have dared to enter. He
attained a position in the history of philosophy of
which Scotland might well be proud. But he spoke
to a studious and a narrow class, and powerful as his
influence was, it never guided the nation's thought,
and never attempted to mould her history.
Such, then, during the course of the century, was
the progress and the decay of the Scottish school of
philosophy. No history of the nation could ignore
that school as a potent influence. But it does not
belong to history to estimate its place in the region
of philosophical thought. Only some of its most dis-
tinctive features come within our range. There were,
doubtless, limitations in the range of these thinkers,
and in certain respects an insuflficient equipment for
their task. They were ignorant of the achievement
228 THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.
of aucient philosophy, and knew but superficially its
chief exponents. Its infinite depth of meaning — its
irony, and what we may call its humour, were sealed
books to them. Of mediaeval philosophy they were
equally ignorant, and of its vast results, and grasp of
metaphysical conceptions, they could not form the
most faint idea. Bacon was to them a veil between
the thought of their own day and the more dim and
distant past, and beyond that veil they never sought
to penetrate, save to ridicule what they deemed to
be the vain and useless gropings of ages whose very
alphabet of thought was to them nothing but mean-
ingless hieroglyphics. Nor, to come to a much later
day, can we claim for any of them any grasp of thought
even remotely approaching that of Newton ; any such
delicate philosophical perception as that of Berkeley ;
nor even that consummate power which Johnson, in
spite of all his impatience of consecutive philosophical
argument, wielded with such ample ease, of striking
out of a single philosophical maxim its kernel of
human interest. The realm of thought which was
being opened by their contemporary, Kant, was one
into which they had no wish to enter, and where they
could have found no foothold. To these deficiencies
they added some positive faults. They lacked ease
of expression, and to many of them, we must re-
member, literary English was almost a foreign tongue
to be acquired by slow and painful effort. They often
used artificial and conventional language ; and they
sometimes erred against the instinct of humour, and
forgot the pitiful contrast between their lofty theories
of human perfectibility and the very wretched reality.
But for all this it would be mere blindness to decry
their merit, to minimise their influence, or to forget
ITS LIMITATIONS AND ITS STRENGTH. 229
the pride with which Scotland may fairly regard them.
Rarely has such a long succession of men been found,
who not only shaped the thought of their country with
such consistency, but kept its intellectual aims on
so high a level of dignity. From no country of such
size, in the face of such adverse fortune, and whose
rise from the deepest depression had been so recent
and so sudden, has there sprung up a distinct and
well-defined school with such a vitality of its own,
and which can maintain with such justice its claim
to be reckoned with wherever human thought and
its phases are objects of curiosity and research.
230
CHAPTER XVIII.
HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
Before entering on the discussion of last chapter,
into which we were tempted in order to survey a
special field of Scottish intellectual effort, we had
traced the progress of political affairs down to the
dispute as to Erskine's tenure of the Deanship of the
Faculty of Advocates. The assault had ended, as it
was bound to end, in his being deposed from the
office. The only surprising thing is that he should
ever have proposed to continue to represent a pro-
fession the vast majority of which held his openly
expressed opinions in abhorrence. In the later re-
miniscences of those who were then entering upon a
political struggle, in which they deemed themselves
the pioneers of enlightenment, that contest over a pro-
fessional election is recounted with the epic grandilo-
quence of an Homeric conflict. But there was really
nothing out of the ordinary about it. A few young
Whig advocates disliked their Tory elders, and would
have been very glad if the personal popularity of Henry
Erskine had enabled him to hold a post where he
had flouted the opinions of these elders. The design
failed ; and they found it a good opportunity for
denouncing the narrowness, the bigotry, the intoler-
A CHALLENGE TO THE TORIES. 231
ance of the Tory party. But in truth the incident
marks only the determination of the Tory party at
Jast to take active steps to curb what they deemed to
be dangerous tendencies on the part of those who dis-
puted their supremacy. Up to this time party spirit
had not run very high in Scotland. For the greater
part of the century, most Scotsmen, who did not adopt
Jacobite views, had professed a general adhesion to
the tenets of the Revolution Whigs ; but these tenets
covered a very sound substratum of practical Toryism.
Those who held more advanced views were deemed
to be so unimportant that they might be treated with
an indulgent toleration — all the more because there
was a disposition to treat political difference with
equanimity. But the limits of indulgence were reached
when the official representative of the most conser-
vative profession in Scotland was found to be an
apparent sympathiser with revolutionary tenets. It was
a challenge to combat which the Tory party could
hardly shirk ; and the issue proved their incontestable
supremacy. At the same time it gave to their oppo-
nents that definite attitude as a political party, which
was the first necessary step in their advance. In later
days the Whig party were wont to count the deposition
of Erskine as the opening of their calendar. Some
of them played no very heroic parts in the struggle,
and gave votes against Erskine at the bidding of
powerful patrons. Nothing makes a man so strong a
partisan as to have voted against his party and his
conscience, and then to find that it has not paid.
As the century drew to its close, Scotland had
changed so completely that it now contained ample
material for new political combinations. We have
ah'eady seen that altered economical conditions were
232 HENRY ERSKINP: AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
giving rise to new problems, and that there were disturb-
ing elements in society which occasionally broke out in
open revolt. But besides this the whole condition of
the nation was greatly changed. The landlord was no
longer the unquestioned superior, looking to the at-
tachment and loyal submission of his tenants as his
most precious privilege. Instead of that, he held his
land too often with the niggard hand and selfish aim
of the man who had to depend upon the money value
of his domain, and to whom sheep were more profit-
able tenants than men. The clans were broken up,
and the son and grandson of many a man who carried
sword and target in the battles of his chief, now used
his thews and sinews only as chairman or caddy in
the Edinburgh streets. The balance of numbers and
of weight was passing from the country to the towns ;
and even in the towns themselves the older commercial
families, who formed an aristocracy of their own, were
being thrust aside by a new and energetic body of
manufacturers, of lower social position, of rougher
manners, and likely to form easier recruits for any
party which aimed at sweeping reforms. The popula-
tion of Scotland had grown from about 1,000,000 at
the time of the Union, to about 1,250,000 in 1755,
and to about a million and a half in 1790. But it
had gravitated towards the towns in a far greater
proportion. To the ideas of our own day, indeed,
the towns appear small. Only seven had a popula-
tion which reached five figures — Edinburgh, Glasgow,
Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, Paisley, and Greenock.
But these towns had grown, in the aggregate, by
100,000 in the forty years preceding 1790 — consider-
ably more than their total population in the year of
-4^-^ Union. On the other hand, in many of the
STRENGTH OF THE OLDER TRADITIONS. 233
country districts there was a distinct decrease, and
the shifting of the population was only one sign of
the change in the condition of the nation.
It by no means follows, however, that because
great changes were in progress, Scotland was willing
to forget her past. On the contrary, the very genera-
tion which saw the older types undergoing disin-
tegration, became the most careful to mark them,
and the most sedulous to preserve their memory.
Traditions which had before been accepted as matters
of course became invested with a new dignity. Scot-
tish antiquities, Scottish vernacular literature, the
ballads that lived by oral transmission amongst the
people — all these became the objects of enthusiasm
and of untiring study. Scotsmen saw that charac-
teristic features were being obliterated, and strove to
preserve their memory.
It was in Edinburgh above all that the feeling of
attachment to older traditions prevailed, and it is there
that the history of Scotland was centred during the
closing years of last century. There, for part of the
year at least, was gathered all that was most character-
istic of Scottish life. There the wires of the adminis-
tration were pulled. There new agricultural schemes
were promulgated and discussed. It was the seat of
Scottish law, of Scottish ecclesiastical government, of
Scottish banking. It was still the resort of such of
the Scottish aristocracy as had not yet yielded to the
tempting custom of dividing their time between their
estates and London. It was through Edinburgh that
the stranger chiefly knew Scotland, and he found in it
an epitome of almost every Scottish type. Edinburgh
was not then, as it soon afterwards became, in the
words of Sydney Smith, "a pack of cards without th^,,^^:% %
234 HENEY EPuSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
honours." It combined within it a strange medley of
coarseness and refinement, of sottish living and high
thinking, of rough buffoonery and stately manners.
Pomp and dignity were to be seen side by side with
conditions of life in which the decencies of modern
usage were set at defiance. In spite of the growth of
the New Town, stately equipages and courtly dresses
were still to be seen moving about the fetid alleys of
the old city, which were blissfully exempt from any
rules of sanitation or even of cleanliness. In many of
the social gatherings there was to be found a severe
etiquette side by side with arrangements that would
have disgraced a village ordinary. The Assembly
Room, where the most aristocratic society held its
dances — ruled on the most stringent lines of social
formality — was situated in one of the ancient wynds.
It contained only one room, through the open door
of which the smoke of the footmen's flambeaux was
wafted in, and soon made the atmosphere dense to
suffocation. At a certain period of the evening danc-
ing was suspended for supper to be brought in. When
the festivities came to an apparent end, the ladies were
conducted to their chairs in the glare of smoking
torches, and were attended to their homes each by her
cavalier, with hat in one hand and drawn sword in the
other. But the festivities did not really end there.
When the picturesque train had been escorted through
the narrow lanes and under the foul-smelling archways,
the same cavaliers returned to the supper-room and
held it a point of honour to bring in the daylight by
drinking to the health of their mistresses — " saving the
ladies," as it was called — until the larger part of the
company lay helplessly drunk. Yet these same gentle-
men were nice in maintaining the punctilios of honour,
EDINBURGH AS A CENTRE. 235
careful as to all the rigidities of conventional etiquette,
and would have been horrified had they been charged
with a brutality that would not have been amiss in a
company of Covent Garden porters.
The amusements were not all of the baser kind.
Music was enthusiastically cultivated, and in a grimy
room in the squalid purlieus of the Cowgate — St.
Cecilia's Hall, which Cockburn could recall in later
days, with perhaps some partiality of memory, as " the
most beautiful concert-room he had ever seen " —
performances of no mean pretension were given. The
theatre was now largely patronised, and Mrs. Siddons
had no more enthusiastic audiences than those of
Edinburgh.
There were no doubt those who denounced the more
frivolous pursuits of Edinburgh society — lamented
the loss of pristine rigidity — and foretold still further
laxity as rapidly approaching. But even they neither
preached nor practised any severe asceticism. They did
not fall short of their latitudinarian brethren in the
enjoyment of good living. Their suppers were as
social, their symposia as long and as copious as thiose
of the Moderates. The severer aspects of religion
were softened down, and in the descriptive phrase
of one who could recall these days there was even
amongst the High-flyers a large measure of "pious
pleasantness " that made them not less acceptable as
members of a genial and self-indulgent society.
Such is one aspect of Scottish society about the
close of the eighteenth century. Undue laxity was not
the feature which most struck some observers. A
picture drawn by a pencil touched with sarcasm, and
in which the tincture of sympathy has not the faintest
trace, sometimes helps us to realise characteristic traits.
236 HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
Eminent as the Scottish capital not unjustly claimed
to be — in intellect, in fashion, and as the centre of a
bright and attractive social life — it had another aspect
that might strike the casual English traveller, and if
we watch it with his eyes, it helps us to picture it with
a good deal more of vivid reality. In the year 1811,
two young English travellers visited Edinburgh : and
the impression it made upon them is painted for us
in a few pages of deft and humorous description by
the one of the pair who has left a biography ^ of his
illustrious companion, that is unique in its wayward
humour, and in its odd blending of sarcasm and
admiration — so intermixed that we can hardly tell
where one ends and the other begins. Shelley and
Hogg took up their residence in Edinburgh for some
weeks in that year ; and no spirits ever existed upon
which its quaint combination of all the decencies with
all the sordid ness of life ; of picturesque beauty with
mean and repulsive corners ; of gay society with
sombre formality — could strike with more whimsical
effect. Its inns were dirty and slatternly, but the
fare was good ; its lodgings capacious but melancholy ;
and above all a dominant gloom which respectability
thought it decent to cultivate, and which clung with
most tenacity about the strict religious observance
which it united with a generous measure of con-
viviality, seemed to pervade the air. The travellers
found a well-developed sense of national superiority —
in Scottish phrase, " a good conceit of themselves "■ — to
be flourishing in the modern Athens. According to
its inhabitants its Old Town could not be matched for
solemn and historic interest, nor its New Town for
spacious and grandiose magnificence. To learn its
1 Hogg's " Life of Shelley."
A PICTURE BY AN ALIEN HAND. 2?>7
usages and to see its sights was in itself an education
for the ignorant Saxon. In its own estimation it stood
unrivalled for its wealth of erudition, and for the pro-
foundness of its philosophical speculation. Its lower
classes were uncouth in appearance and unintelligible
in language ; but underneath the unpromising outside,
they compelled themselves to believe that there lay
mines of indigenous philosophy. Above all, the stolid
solemnity of the crowds that " drew nigh unto the
kirk " on the Sunday, and moved in one unbroken
mass of melancholy, but complacent, dejection to
their places of worship, struck the young poet with
a sense of almost agonised bewilderment, and his
friend with a humorous ludicrousness that his pages
hav'e preserved to us with vivid liveliness. It was
Shelley's lot to be rebuked for profaning the Sabbath
solemnity by laughter in the street — which almost
brought him within the terrors of the law ; and with
daring curiosity he penetrated the churches only to
be brought to the verge of hysterical frenzy by the
dire denunciations which struck upon his sensitive
ear. He even witnessed a solemn catechising of " the
domestics and the children," which roused him to
a shriek of laughter, only good luck enabliug him to
escape the dire penalties of ecclesiastical wrath. The
whole picture is surpassingly humorous. It is strange
to recall the wayward and sensitive poet moving in a
scene peopled by figures that to him were as distant as
the denizens of another world. The outward strangeness
baffled and perplexed him ; the solemn staidness of the
citizens moved the sarcastic vein of his friend ; but to
both the real spirit of their Scottish fellow-subjects
was hidden beneath a veil as impenetrable as any
Cimmerian fog. The life of the two nations was slowly
238 HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
blending ; but to casual travellers like these, Scottish
character was still shut off from their knowledge by a
thick and impassable barrier, which poetic imagina-
tion could not pierce, and whose solid mass only
blunted the edge of the darts which sarcasm hurled
against it. Travellers like Hogg and Shelley knew no
more of the life of Scotland, and no more appreciated
its real meaning, than do the visitors to a waxwork
understand the thoughts and feelings of those whom
the figures represent. They could not distinguish
convention from reality, habit from conviction, what
was formal from what was bred in the bone.
Scottish society was a blend so curious that it
would have taken wiser heads than those of this
young couple to understand its strange and mingled
features. But this delicately poised situation, in
which the old and the new were nicely balanced,
could scarcely remain long unchanged. The time was
coming when old memories were to be assailed by
intrusive innovations. One by one, the old haunts
were deserted, the old figures vanished, the old
customs were passing away. The levelling hand of
modern usage was ruthlessly pushing aside the quainter
forms of the older society and substituting for them
more and more of its own dreary monotony. The
aristocracy began to drift away from Edinburgh. The
society of the Scottish capital became more exclusively
professional, and suffered by the change. Even the
professional element was diminishing in range, and
there were signs that the literary supremacy of Edin-
burgh might pass away. Its little coteries of philo-
sophers and literati were no longer what they had
been a few years before. The purely intellectual web
was wearing perilously thin, and had to be replaced
STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE OLD AND THE NEW. 239
by something a little more stirring to the blood and
more suggestive to the imagination. Life was be-
coming less interesting, and a solace was not to be
found in the lucubrations of philosophy. Men craved
instinctively for some of the inspiration of romance
to relieve the dismal struggle between picturesque
but decaying memories- and the prosaic monotony of
modern life.
Such changes as those which we have noticed,
even had there been no other cause for division, must
inevitably have produced different effects on the men
who came under their influence, according to their
temperaments. Some must have welcomed them ;
others must have clung regretfully to the relics of the
past. Some must have found in them a much-needed
emancipation from usages and conventions that were
irksome and unmeaning. Others must have hated
their intrusion into the quiet and even tenor of a
genial and comfortable society. But all such differ-
ences were soon to be sharply accentuated by schisms
that had deeper causes than individual temperament.
It was these that became active and virulent in the last
decade of the old century, and the opening years of
the new one.
It is curious that the name to which the newer I3arty
looked back as their leading representative, and about
which the first keen party fight was fought, was that
of one who, by birth, tradition, temperament, and taste,
belonged far more to the old than to the new i^egime.
Henry Erskine was a scion of one of the oldest families
of the Scottish aristocracy. He was not without pride
in his descent, although it was too genial to excite
resentment, and tempered by too much taste to be
ridiculous. His earlier days had been spent in the
240 HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
gay scenes which crowded the old town when it was
still the resort of the Scottish aristocracy, and he had
every gift of nature to make him an ornament of such
a society. Pre-eminently handsome, he had a grace of
manner that made him welcome in every circle, and
the influence of his wit and bonhomie was irresistible.
He entered into all the genial life of that gay society,
but was singularly free from its coarser and more
licentious characteristics. Without being a student,
he had a retentive memory and scholarship much
above the level of that usual even in the professional
circles of Scotland. Clinging fondly to her traditions,
and with no disdain for her provincialisms, he was yet
qualified by every grace and accomplishment to shine
in far wider circles. With friend and foe alike his
easy geniality and his light and ready wit made him
a choice companion, and won him lifelong friends
even amongst those most sharply divided from him
in political opinion. Even the victims of his sar-
casm forgave one in whom good-humour was always
uppermost, and in whose presence dulness seemed out
of place. Some of his gifts he shared with his elder
brother, the Earl of Buchan, and with the younger,
who, after a brief service in the navy and afterwards in
the army, suddenly started to the foremost place at the
English Bar, and rising to the Woolsack, left behind
him a memory of forensic eloquence that has perhaps
never been equalled in the legal annals of England.
But he was without the consuming conceit and ab-
surdity, which sometimes approached insanity, in the
elder brother, and he had none of that gloom and
waywardness that obscured the splendid talents of the
younger. For more than half a century Lord Buchan
was a standing jest to the citizens of Edinburgh. In
HENRY ERSKINE AND HIS FAMILY. 241
his own mind he was the chief prop of Scottish
patriotism, the originator of all that was most notable
in the products of genius or the discoveries of science
in his day. He patronised Washington — whom he
honoured by the title of cousin — lectured the royal
family, gave his imprimatur to the works of genius,
and in his old age supplied the materials for a
wondrous piece of tragi-comedy by forcing himself
into what seemed likely to be the death-chamber of
Scott, in order to explain the arrangements for the
funeral, which were to be carried out under his august
patronage. He began as the adherent of Revolution-
ary principles, and ended by kicking the Edinburgh
Revieiv from his door, and in either case he deemed
that his decision was conclusive of the matter. In
grace of person and dignity of manner, with all this
absurdity, he rivalled his brother Henry ; and even his
lofty assumption of patronage never broke the fraternal
affection that bound the brothers to one another, and
never provoked the dexterous wit that played so lightly
about others. To those who knew them, it seemed
strange that one family should produce so much wit
and so much absurdity ; but to Lord Buchan the only
wonder was that one house should bring forth such a
galaxy of talent. It was the Duchess of Gordon who
answered his boasting of the family talents by remark-
ing that she presumed the wit came by the mother, and
was settled on the younger branches.
In the history of Scotland, save as an instance of
odd eccentricity nearly akin to madness, Lord Buchan
is a negligible quantity. But it was altogether diffe-
rent with Henry Erskine. For a quarter of a century
he stood forth as the leader of the party opposed to
Dundas, and the two figures towered easily above all
VOL. II. Q
242 HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
others. No two men could have been more sharply
contrasted. Dundas was without literature, scholar-
ship, or the lighter accomplishments. Such eloquence
as he possessed was based on force and common-sense,
and in no wise upon grace or elegance. If he had
genius, it Avas for action, and his strength lay in con-
summate judgment, in dexterity in the management of
men, and in restless and untiring industry. Erskiue
gave to his profession only what he could spare from
music and poetry and genial interest in all the varied
affairs of men. He was a force at the Bar, not from
the extent of his legal knowledge, and not from the
grasp of his intellect, but from the wit and grace which
coloured all he did. He contrasted strangely with the
prominent figures of the Parliament House. Beside
the coarse and uncouth, but massive personality of
Braxfield, the quaint oddities of Monboddo, the farcical
absurdity by which Eskgrove furnished endless mirth
to the mimics of the Bar, Erskine seemed like a
denizen of another world. He introduced within the
gloomy portals of the Parliament House a grace of dic-
tion, altogether free from pedantry, to which its walls
had never before rung. He formed a new fashion and
began a new school of forensic eloquence, and that,
combined with his irresistible personal fascination,
made his name, and, long after, his memory, things to
conjure with. It was the combination of high birth,
of strong attachment to fashions which were waning,
of graceful and genial social gifts, with opinions of a
democratic and revolutionary caste, that made of him a
personality so attractive. In a society that was assum-
ing more and more of a narrow professional colouring,
he stood out as a representative of aristocratic elegance,
varied accomplishments, and principles that were
DIVERSITIES IN HIS CHAEACTER, 243
deemed dangerous and anarchical. Such a figure has
an in-esistible attraction. He was a link with an
older society, and made an admirable figurehead for a
political party that stood in need of just such a leader
to give them weight and influence.
But with all this Erskine's political career was
astonishingly ineffective. His interest in the popular
movements of the day was generous enough, but was
combined largely with something of the graceful con-
descension of one who was an aristocrat by birth and
taste. His part in ecclesiastical affairs was not that of
the earnest Presbyterian, who was drawn towards the
tenets of an older and more rigid school. It was
necessary for him to become the ally of the High-
flyers, but there was little of real community of
sentiment between him and them. So far as the
religious opinions of his family went, they partook
of the strain of religious thought inculcated by Whit-
field (whose teaching never proved very congenial to
Scotsmen), and by the sect which followed the lead of
Lady Pluntingdon. He himself, by the accident of his
being brought up apart from the rest of his family,
never came directly under this influence ; and he was
so strongly inclined to the Episcopalian form, that at
one time he seems seriously to have contemplated
taking orders in the English Church. Political
exigencies, perhaps, as much as anything else, made
him in later life a prominent champion in the Assembly
of the party opposed to the Moderates, but it may
be doubted whether he had anything more than a
formal and superficial sympathy with his ecclesiastical
associates. As a lawyer, with all his ready wit and
quick intellect, and with all the sway which his
graceful eloquence acquired for him on a scene where
244 HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
dull and ponderous pedantry had long been the pre-
vailing characteristic, he never gained the reputation
or the weight which sound legal learning would have
brought to him. In politics he was rather prized as
the leader of a section whose social influence was small,
and whose position was vastly raised by the alliance of
a man in the first ranks of the Scottish aristocracy, than
obeyed as one whose administrative capacity fitted him
to shape the counsels of a party in the State. The period
when he first held office was unfortunate. He became
Lord Advocate for a few months in 1782, under the
ill-omened Coalition Government of Fox and North, and
he then became identified with Fox's India Bill, which,
had it passed, would have aff'ected most adversely the
hopes of aspiring Scotsmen of attaining power and
influence and wealth in the East. When that Govern-
ment fell and was replaced by Pitt, Erskine was so far
mistaken in his political forecast as to think that Pitt's
power was only a laughable farce which must come to
condign failure before many weeks were over. The
results of the election of 1784 proved how lamentably
he and his party had been mistaken, and he found
himself one of a hopeless minority with no prospect
of recovering power for many a day. No career was
thenceforth possible to him but one of resistance,
not only to the dominant political party, but to all
the prevailing current of opinion in society and at the
Bar. In a certain sense this gave him a unique
position. He was the friend and intimate of all who
formed the most select of Scottish society, but he was
in sympathy with those who stood outside its pale. To
his advocacy was naturally intrusted any cause which
seemed hopeless, and which could be maintained only
by one who had no political future to be wrecked, and
HIS POSITION AT THE BAR. 245
whose rank enabled him to identify himself without
danger with unpromising clients. His generosity made
him the ready patron of the poor litigant, and his
name was hailed as that of the friend of the weak ;
but he had also to plead the cause of those who had
nothing to commend them save that they had incurred
the terrors of the law, and whose interests were to be
served rather by bold and impassioned appeals than
by legal argument. He became the leader of forlorn
hopes, the man whose popularity and wit enabled
him to defy the powers arrayed on the side of the law
with an ease and a nonchalance which would have been
impossible to a man of less assured social eminence.
In this position he was greatly aided by his election
to that office of Dean of the Faculty of Advocates,
his deposition from which has already been discussed.
No one doubted his chivalry or his honour; no one
could accuse him of fighting only that he might force
his way against prescriptive privilege. In all the end-
less byplay of a stirring and active society he took
a leading part. When Mrs. Siddons came to thrill
Edinburgh audiences, her chief patron was Henry
Erskine. His protection encouraged and stimulated
the genius of Burns, and his personal charm drew the
poet into a warm admiration and a sense of grateful
friendship, and made his wayward and not very de-
finite political opinions assume the guise of devoted
adherence to the party led by Erskine. If the thick
crust of conventional Toryism was to be broken, there
seemed no champion whose spear was so likely to shatter
it as Harry Erskine.
At times he had strange clients One of the most
curious of these — a figure strangely illustrating one
phase of Edinburgh life — was Deacon Brodie. He
246 HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
was a young citizen belonging to a respectable com-
mercial family. By specious manners and unfailing
audacity he had acquired considerable influence, and
as a member of the close corporation had dexterously
managed to gain political influence, which he employed
on the side of the Whig candidate, Sir Thomas Dundas.
But, in spite of all this, strange stories were told of his
life. Whispers were heard that his means of liveli-
hood were doubtful and that he was in close alliance
with criminals. His morals were licentious and he
was known to be an inveterate gambler ; but it was
further asserted that he had been all but detected
when himself carrying on the business of a burglar.
At length he was concerned in an organised robbery of
the Custom House, and the treachery of some of his
confederates brought him within the grasp of the law.
His only reliance was in Henry Erskine, and with
that " most game cock of the lot," as he called him in
his sporting parlance, he took his trial with some con-
fidence. The cause was hopeless ; the evidence was
overwhelming ; a well-concocted alibi broke down ;
and Erskine had to fight only by dexterous appeals to
the pity and the fears of the jury. Even his eloquence
was of no avail, but the scoundrel did not lose hope,
and he perhaps thought he might place reliance on the
political party whose cause he had favoured. Even
when he was condemned, he hoped that a trick might
rob the scaffold of its terrors for him ; and he jested
with his fellow-councillors to the last, and took leave
of some of them with the words, " Fare ye well, Baillies ;
ye needna' be surprised if ye see me among you yet to
tak' my share o' the Dead Chack" — as the collation
which followed an execution was then called. But
the gallows did its work securely, and the memory of
AS A PARTY LEADER. 247
the honest Deacon remained only to tell us something
of the strange ingredients that went to make up the
civic life of the Scottish metropolis a century ago.
As the reforming party began to develop their
opinions, and found them met by the ever-increasing
fear of change which the French Revolution was
spreading amongst ihe dominant class, it was only
natural that the leading part played by Erskine should
become more and more prominent. But here also we
find that he somehow failed to assert his authority.
So far as Burgh Reform was concerned he was at one
with his followers, but he refused absolutely to adopt
the scheme of Parliamentary Reform, and refrained
from joining the Society of the Friends of the People
on this ground. His brother Thomas went farther in
this direction ; but Henry was sufficiently in sympathy
with the dominant feeling of his own class to think
that the moment was ill-chosen for urging the wider
movement of Parliamentary Reform, and he lost much
of his weight in the inner counsels of his party from
his scruples.
When the more stringent Acts against sedition,
however, were being pressed, he put himself in the
forefront of the struggle ; and it was by attending and
taking a leading part in a meeting to denounce them
that he aroused the opposition of the Faculty of
Advocates, which led to his loss of the place of Dean
in 1796. By this time the antagonism of the two
parties was fully marked. The war, added to the
Revolution, had joined patriotic fervour to the fear of
anarchy. The nation was stirred by military ardour.
The Volunteer force was organised, and all classes of
citizens crowded into the ranks. To have refrained
would have been to court the reputation of a Jacobin
/
248 HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
and the disgrace of cowardice. Both parties joined in
the prevailing occupation of military drill by which Edin-
burgh seemed for a time to be turned into a military
camp ; but while the one side found the occupation sym-
pathetic and rejoiced in the mimicry of war, the other
was compelled to go through the manual exercises with
reluctant hearts, and consoled themselves . by secret
gibes against their more enthusiastic comrades, whose
hearts were stirred, as well as their political principles
advanced, by the prevailing fervour.
But a new type of political partisan was now quickly
rising, which was based on other ideas and had far
other sympathies than those of Erskine. A younger
generation was coming up, of very different fashion
from those whose memories carried them back to
the days when Edinburgh society, with all its quaint
and piquant ways, w^as gathered in the wynds about
the High Street, and clung to old traditions, old
usages, and a dialect that marked them as folk
apart. The younger generation had more than politi-
cal ideas to stir their energies. They were young,
they were poor, they were ambitious ; they thought
not meanly of their own abilities, and they not un-
naturally wished to storm the strongholds of hide-
bound custom and old-fashioned manners. To them
these old-fashioned ways savoured of" a world which
was not disposed to admit their claims, and which
treated their pretensions with disdain. In the older
ways there was not a little which was absurd, and
which formed an easy butt for smart ridicule. In
the days gone by it was impious to sharpen the
shafts of ridicule against the dignitaries of the day ;
their oddities and eccentricities were accepted as
part of the established order of things. The younger
HIS YOUNGER FOLLOWERS. 249
spirits pined for something more lively, but they
submitted to this drudgery, and solaced themselves
with dreams of romance. Scott has painted such a
youth for us in the Allan Fairford of " Redgauntlet,"
where not a little of autobiography is woven with
the character. But the new generation had no such
dutiful submission as Fairford practised, and perhaps
they had not the resources of consolation which Fair-
ford's romance supplied. They had to make their
way, and political partisanship of a more or less pro-
nounced type seemed a good way of making it. They
were resolved to break the bonds, and in their reminis-
cences of the early struggle they perhaps ascribed to
themselves a little too much of political enthusiasm,
and too small a dose of personal ambition. They
pictured to themselves, in these reminiscences, a
Scotland groaning under a galling tyranny, pining to
be free, and led to a noble resistance to the yoke
under a gallant band of young men, who were ready
to imperil their future welfare, perhaps even their
freedom, in the struggle. They could hardly be ex-
pected to see themselves only as a band of ambi-
tious youths, galled by the formalism of their elders,
and determined to push their way through the last
remnants of a fast declining fashion. On the whole,
Scotland was profoundly contented. A few enthusias-
tics brought themselves within the meshes of the law.
A small band of Edinburgh advocates coalesced into
an active, brisk, and self-confident partisanship ; but
the mass of Scotsmen were quite content to go on
in the old ways. They heard of the excesses of
Revolutionary fury with undisguised horror, and re-
garded anything which seemed to partake of such
ideas with impatience and contempt. When war
250 HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
was added to anarchy, they readily entered into the
enthusiasm for the national defence, and found a
ready vent for their patriotic fervour in surrounding
themselves with the pomp and majesty of something
that looked like military discipline. In this party
none was more pronounced than Walter Scott, who
threw himself with unbounded ardour into the Volun-
teer movement, and made that movement a close ally
of the Tory party. That party was no servile tool
of bigotry and intolerance. Its motive power was
national patriotism. It was not exempt from errors,
and amongst these, perhaps, the chief was that it
treated the young Whig party a little too seriously.
That party certainly did so itself.
The leading spirits of this little group were all
young men. Erskine was their titular head, their
hero, and their ornament. But they belonged them-
selves to another type. iVmongst them were Francis
Jeffrey, Henry Brougham, Sydney Smith, and Francis
Horner. It would be absurd to deny their con-
spicuous talents and praiseworthy enterprise ; but
they certainly had the defects of their qualities.
Jeffrey was a man of extraordinary sprightliness and
untiring zeal. He had keen literary interests, and,
Mrithin a very limited range, much acuteness of
critical insight. He saw very clearly what was as-
sailable in the existing state of things, although his
political ideas were rather those of the versatile lawyer
than of a statesman, and were, as those of the lawyer
are apt to be, confined in their range. To him and to
his friends, the old ways of Edinburgh were, at best,
amusing, but more often irksome and distasteful.
He would gladly have broken down the distinctive
marks of Scottish nationality. After a course at
FRANCIS JEFFREY, AND HIS CIRCLE. 251
Glasgow University, he studied as an undergraduate
at Oxford ; and although the spirit and tone of the
English university was profoundly distasteful to him,
his antipathy did not prevent his returning to Edin-
burgh with a grotesque imitation of the Southern
speech. As was said of him by Lord Holland, " he
lost his broad Scotch and only gained the narrow
English." In his later years he cherished a deep
and abiding love of his country, but it was the love
of long custom and of an affectionate nature for the
scene of his early friendships — not the romantic love
of the poet or the passionate ardour of the enthusiast.
We are bound to admit his deftness and his versatility;
no one could deny his political sincerity ; it would be
rash even to belittle his literary gifts. But to him
the wider range of imagination was a closed region.
As a lawyer he made no claim to professional erudi-
tion. Even as a forensic orator he never attempted
to appeal to the feelings, or to rise to the highest
flights. But he poured forth arguments with a
rapidity and a versatility that at once astonished,
amused, and flattered his hearers, and made him
eminently successful in appealing to the not very
high standard of the juryman's intelligence. So it
was in literature. His estimates of men and books
were quick, confident, and lucidly expressed, but
singularly narrow in range. His political views were
definite and practical, but of wide or far-reaching
political ideas he had absolutely no conception. Nor
could it be said that thedittle clique of which he was
perhaps the moving spirit contained any member
who can claim a place in the foremost rank of any
line of life. The boisterous force and ill-balanced
energy of Brougham disturbed the serenity of the
252 HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUxXGER WHIGS.
Court of Session for a few years before he carried
them to a larger scene, where they failed to win for
him the permanent respect of his conntrymen. The
sprightly wit of Sydney Smith found a short and not
very congenial field in Edinburgh. The plodding
assiduity and eminent respectability of Horner en-
abled him to carry away from Edinburgh a well-
earned esteem, although even his friends were obliged
to admit that he owed nothing to talent or genius,
and we are painfully struck by the truth of Scott's
passing jibe, which found in Horner's solemn earnest-
ness a certain reminiscence of Obadiah's bull. All
these last speedily forsook the scene where they
never found themselves at home, and part of their
weakness was that they never undei'stood either the
humorous or the romantic side of the phase of life
that was passing away, and at which they tilted with
quite unnecessary energy. Their work was full of
limitations. It was useful in its kind ;* attractive by
its very confidence and succinctness ; decaying and
neglected by a later generation, because it was with-
out the saving salt of humour and without the living
breath of imagination.
Such was the little knot of young men^^ — not all
Scotsmen, not all remaining in Scotland, not, as a
rule, very closely attached to Scottish nationality, but
yet for a few years exercising considerable influence
over her destinies. Personal circumstances to a large
extent accounted for their attitude, and circumstances
also, rather than deep conviction, developed their
political ideals. These were not indeed as definite
as they afterwards fancied them to be. In the supreme
interest of the war, schemes of political reform were
not very strongly pressed. Burgh Reform had indeed
THEIR STRENGTH AND THEIR WEAKNESS. 253
its adherents, but they were not very active in the
cause. Parliamentary Reform was receding into the
distance, and failed to command the support of any
considerable party. Fear of anarchy and impatience
and contempt of political theories, much more than
any deliberate preference for tyranny and oppression,
made men ready to support repressive measures against
all that savoured of sedition, and intolerant of those
who excused or palliated it — as the young Whig party
were suspected of doing. But more than all, the patrio-
tic ardour was strong, and the Whigs were guilty of
the fatal error of displaying a lack of sympathy with
that ardour. It was this and the scant sympathy they
showed for what was distinctive in Scottish tradition
that weakened their influence and made it that of an
active, self-confident, and pushing clique rather than
that of a weighty political party. Between the mem-
bers of the party there was no very close cohesion.
Erskine was their ostensible leader, whose name they
revered and whose character reflected honour on them,
but he did not guide their counsels. The rasping
vanity and bitter virulence of Lauderdale made him
little fitted to acquire influence amongst a group of
young men who trusted their own wit and did not
spare his foibles. Sir Gilbert Elliot, afterwards Lord
Minto, was being quickly estranged from the whole
party, and followed the guidance of Burke rather than
of Fox. Even amongst themselves the little group did
not always see eye to eye, and were ready to accuse
one another of a flippancy and pertness from which
none of them was wholly exempt.
On the other side was the party which, belonging
equally to the new rather than to the old generation,
yet clung to the old political ideas from temperament
254 HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
and impulse rather than from any bigoted dislike to
reform. They reverenced the name of Dundas, and
were grateful for the honour he had brought to their
country. Pitt, as the champion who had fought against
long odds, was to them a chosen hero. Their feelings
were racy of the soil, and they were unwilling to bate
anything of Scottish nationality or to lose her dis-
tinctive character by modernising tendencies. Their
patriotism was without bounds, and into the pomp and
display of military preparations they entered with a
boyish enthusiasm that fanned the flames of their
political zeal. It was no wonder that they were im-
patient and intolerant of a young and arrogant clique
that flouted Scottish prejudices, decried loyalty, and
whose views of the war were strongly coloured by their
conviction of England's waning power and distrust of
the rectitude of her cause. We need hardly wonder
that it was this party rather than the other which
attracted to itself the strong common-sense no less
than the enthusiastic genius of Scott. He was the
friend and companion of many on the other side, but
political animosities broke and weakened many of these
bonds ; and amongst those friends, whose names have
passed like chafi" upon the wind compared with his
enduring fame, there gradually grew up a fashion of
decrying his Toryism as an intellectual weakness, as
an error to be condoned rather than as an essential
part of his character. Nothing is more amusing than
to watch their comparative estimate of themselves and
him, and to find them placing Scott and Jeff'rey side by
side — not wholly to the disadvantage of the latter — as
ornaments of the Scottish capital.
It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that the
Tory party in Scotland had not an aspect less pleasing
THEIR TORY OPPONENTS. 255
than that which it presented to Scott's imagination and
patriotism. A large proportion of that party was hide-
bound with prejudice, narrow, jealous, and selfish in
their aims, and defending privilege only because privi-
lege belonged to their class and faction. There can be
no doubt that much of the administration — the muni-
cipal administration much more than that of the cen-
tral authority^ — was at once oppressive and corrupt. It
would be wrong to say that there was any conscious
tyranny or any deliberate cruelty. But society was
in danger, and the dominant class had neither the
humour nor the leisure to weigh individual rights very
narrowly. There was something of the rough-and-
ready discipline of the quarter-deck about the manner
of preserving the peace. Men will always forgive a
good deal of this sort of hectoring on an emergency
if those who hector are honest, able, and clear-sighted ;
but if they are selfish, purblind, and narrow, if for the
brisk confidence of command they substitute the in-
trigue and wire-pulling of a corrupt and selfish clique,
they are only too likely to work up any irritation which
exists into chronic and deep-rooted discontent. The
economical conditions of Scotland were undergoing a
rapid transformation. New classes were asserting them-
selves. It was hopeless to suppose that the conditions
of labour recognised by the existing law could adapt
themselves to the state of things created by growing
commerce and manufactures. The restrictions upon
land tenure were galling and antiquated, and hardly
capable of defence. Above all, local administration was
hopelessly rotten, and each year that it continued was
adding to the permanent evils that it wrought.
We have seen how both Pitt and Dundas had, in
their younger days, been ready to welcome Reform.
256 HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
How such plans had been broken and such hopes
dispelled in England is an episode in the larger history
of the Empire. But it is certainly to be regretted
that the abandonment of Reform for England carried
with it the same result for Scotland. There the
anomalies were even more glaring and absurd — at
any rate, they were more matters of common know-
ledge. It would have been a bold — perhaps almost
a reckless — course for Dundas to have continued to
embrace within the tenets of the Tory party a fixed
aim of Reform, and to have based the principles of
the party upon the hope of a realisation of that
Reform as soon as foreign troubles were settled and
as soon as the dangers of sedition and anarchy were
dispelled. The influence of the Crown, the dead
weight of the English Tories, would probably have
made such a scheme impossible. But this we may
safely say, that it would have deserved success, and
that in all probability it would have given a different
aspect to the fortunes of the Tory party in Scotland
for the whole of the next century. Nor would there
have been, in such a scheme, anything either incon-
sistent with the traditions which had been inspired
by the most clear-sighted amongst the Tory leaders of
the past, and with the principles of Dundas himself,
or alien to the sympathies of the best section of the
Tory party at the moment. The ideals of Swift and
Bolingbroke had shown how Tory principles could
be identified with the advocacy of popular rights,
with the redress of anomalies, with a broadening of
the basis upon which loyalty rested. A later day
was to revive these ideals. At one time it seemed
as if Pitt and Dundas might have anticipated that
later day. Had they been able to do so, the history
A SHORT-SIGHTED POLICY. 257
of Scotland since their day might have been very
different, and her political position might have been
reversed. But the dead weight of the less intelligent
section of their party was too heavy for them. Fate
made them the leaders of a Toryism which had its
generous, its romantic, and its patriotic side, but which
was dominated by the hard and dull resistance to all
change which was the natural instinct of a narrow,
a selfish, and a privileged class.
The error is one which is chiefly to be traced in
its results, and we need not blame too severely those
who failed to grasp at the moment the possibilities
of the situation. Had they boldly pushed schemes
of Reform at a moment of national danger, they would
probably have encountered insuperable difficulties,
would certainly have alienated many of their own
party, and might have given to their opponents the
chance of bringing a charge of unscrupulous and
reckless truckling to the forces of anarchy. The
Whigs of that day were not very bold. They dreaded
anarchy, partly because it might discredit themselves,
still more because it indirectly helped the Tories ; and
they would not have been unwilling to denounce
any wide-reaching scheme of Reform as a concession
to anarchical tendencies. However that might be,
we may regret the failure of the Tory leaders to
embrace a bold plan of campaign, nor are there
wanting indications in contemporary evidence that
such a plan might have been successful, i^gain and
again we find Scott asserting that the Radicalism
of 1793 was a safer and less disorderly element than
the Radicalism of 1816.^ "Had the party," says
Cockburn, " with the absolute command of Parlia-
1 See Locklmrfs "Life," vi. 119, 140.
VOL. II. R
258 HENRY EHSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
ment, taken the gradual reformation of their evils
into their own hands, they might have altered and
strengthened the foundation of their power." ^ Ob-
stinate and bigoted resistance to change was for the
moment a safe — perhaps the only easy — course, but
it was a short-sighted one, and year by year its
inadequacy became more clearly recognised.
Such as they were, however, the two political parties
now became more clearly divided into hostile camps.
They had each their own rallying-points. For the
Tories, the annual celebration of the King's birthday
on the 4th of June came to be the moment for the
revival of loyalty and for confirming the dread and
hatred of Revolutionary ideas. On the other hand,
the birthday of Fox w^as made to serve as the annual
renewal of Reforming faith.
In 1802 came the first vigorous and decided effort of
the younger Whig party in the establishment of the
Edinburgh Revieiv. It showed an energy, an intel-
lectual alertness, a power of initiative, that compel our
admiration. It came to replace a host of periodicals
carried on after a dull and plodding method. It was
written with a force, a vivacity, and a liveliness that
marked a new advance in journalistic — that is to say,
in conjoint — literary effort. Its very name acquired
for the Northern capital an influence far beyond her
own immediate circle. But it is easy to exaggerate its
importance. One of those who belonged to the little
clique that found no words too strong to describe their
own achievements, speaks of the new Review as "a
pillar of fire " 2 which was, forsooth, to guide a nation
wandering through the desert in the darkness of the
night, ^^'hen we look back from the safer perspee-
^ See Cockburn'p >' Memorials," p. 279. ^ Cockbiirn.
THE EDINBURGH REVIEW. 259
tive of a century, the phrase is grotesque enough in
its exaggeration. So far from guiding the nation's
march, these voung men were indeed following foot-
steps that were very freshly printed, and had very
little distinctness of idea as to the direction of their
course. The sceptical philosophy which had established
itself in Scotland during the century just closing, had
left a taste for a sort of easy dialectic and a habit of
somewhat crude rationalising. This developed very
easily into that very tempting, but cramping, pursuit,
smart critical disquisition, which found its own self-
complacency gratified by summoning before its judg-
ment-seat the customs, the ideas, even the achievements
of the past, and passing upon them a ready and unhesi-
tating condemnation, according to a criterion which it
applied without any qualms of modesty or of doubt.
The Edi7iburgh Review did not make itself so much the
organ of a political party, as the medium of a phase of
thought on which that party throve. Nothing could
have been more alien to the deeper instincts of the
national feeling. But none the less these dapper
critics, wrapt in the conviction of their own infallibility,
found a congenial soil in Scotland as it then was.
They were the natural outcome of the facile latitudi-
narianism that had masqueraded as free-thought for a
generation past. They dreaded nothing so much as
being thought provincial, and so they forgot to be
national. They were shocked to find themselves
charged with irreligion ; but there can be no reason-
able doubt that their whole attitude was one, not of
scoffing at, but of ignoring, religion. It was not
religion only, but that wide range of feelings — even
of tastes and predilections — which lie close to its
domain, that ' found but scant recognition from this
260 HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
little clique. They had their petty code, their peremp-
tory canons of criticism, as shallow as they were definite,
and in the application of that code and these canons
they were narrow and mechanical. Phases of thought
which were alien to their own ; depths of speculation
which they could not fathom; flights of imagination
which were beyond their ken — above all, a type of
poetical creation which they never learned to appre-
ciate— all these were treated with a smart and attractive
sarcasm, and made the butt of perfectly self-satisfied
ridicule, which mistook itself for wit. This pleased a
wide class in a generation which was active-minded,
alert, and fairly educated, but where profound intel-
lectual power and wide scholarship were rare. Nothing
flattered the conceit of such a class so much as the
notion that they were in possession of a touchstone
that made them infallible judges of all literary merit,
and of all speculative theories. Nothing inspired that
infallibility with more sprightly confidence than to put
into its hands the weapons of sarcasm and ridicule.
Nothing made its self-complacency more impenetrable
than just that fair modicum of education and of
reading, widely diffused, but never learning to com-
pare itself with really profound or extensive scholar-
ship. This luscious and toothsome diet was just what
the Edinburgh Revieiv set before its readers ; the
appetite they brought themselves ; and for a time,
with a certain class of Scottish society, and with a
certain type of minds beyond her borders, the Review
and its promoters were much in vogue.
Its distinctly partisan phase — so far as politics were
concerned — rather developed out of the taste to which
it pandered and out of the ideas upon which it worked,
than was the prime motive with which it started. In
ITS POLITICAL PARTISANSHIP. 261
its early days it ran a tilt against no principles of the
Tory party. It was only as it grew older that it began
deliberately to press the views for which the Whigs
were fighting. It was by an article on the Spanish
campaign,' which seemed to preach the hopelessness, if
it did not even ridicule the folly, of national resistance
to foreign despotism,^ that the Rexneiv first assumed
for itself a pronounced party bias, and alienated the
sympathies of many who had before been amused by
its sprightliness if occasionally irritated by its pertness
and its flippaucy. But the new line now adopted,
which ran counter to the patriotic ardour, then in the
full impulse of its force, did more than alienate the
Tories. It gave pause to many even amongst the
Whigs. If Scott's Toryism made him instantly cease his
own contributions, and even withdraw his name from
the list of subscribers to the Review, we must not forget
that it was Lord Buchan, the Whig head of the family
to which Henry and Thomas Erskine belonged, who
kicked it from his door, in the full belief that the
contumely oifered by his aristocratic toe would finally
destroy the influence of the young and unabashed
periodical.
So far the new party had the best of the fight. Even
those who were most opposed to them admit that they
counted on their side the brightest and most energetic
amongst the young men of the day." They were, by
their position and by their inspiring motives, quick to
^ Tlie article was written, it is understood, by liroiigham, and was
strongly denounced even by some of his fellovz-contributor.-;.
- This is the verdict of Lockhart in " Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk.^' But
we must not forget that Lockhart was writing anonymously, and that the
compliment may have been j^rompted, as much by a desire to conceal his
own identity as by the sincerity of his belief in its truth. The " Letters "
contain a good many hints that rather attenuate the praise.
262 HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
attack and ready of fence. In the existing state of
tilings they had, undoubtedly, much to provoke their
ridicule, and much to give point to their smart invective.
They mistook their own restlessness and ambition for
missionary zeal ; they fancied they were born to reform
the world ; and they exaggerated the cleverness of their
own invective because they saw so clearly the absurdity
of much that they attacked. But the moment that they
ventured on decided advocacy of opinions which had
many enemies they found themselves in turn attacked.
The business of publishing was just at that period
acquiring new and unprecedented activity in Scotland.
Hitherto the booksellers had proceeded on narrow
lines, and had never ventured to gauge the possibilities
before them. One of the most notable of the older
school was Creech, whose shop was the resort of the
literati of Edinburgh, and who was himself a notable
figure in the social and civic life of Edinburgh, but
whose business ventures never went much beyond that
of agent for the London publishers. In Scotland
education was so diffused as to offer splendid scope
for new enterprise by providing a wide reading pub-
lic. The possibility was first perceived by Archibald
Constable, and he saw with unerring judgment that
authorship, like any other employment, must be based
on business principles. He had already partly worked
the rich mine that lay in the genius of Scott. He
made a bold appeal to the reading public, and was
thus able to offer a price for his literary wares that
was a revelation to the world of letters. It was in the
pride of this new discovery, and the possibilities that it
opened, that he launched the Edinburgh Review, and he
maintained his supremacy until the spirit of party, added
to trade competition, started new rivals to his power.
BLACKWOOD S MAGAZINE. 263
He had started the idea of authorship as something
which might yield a high recompense to the author,
and yet enrich the publisher ; and it was as a business
enterprise that he fostered the zeal of the promoters
of the Edinhuryh Revieiv.
But Archibald Constable was now to meet a rival :
and Blackwood soon found an opportunity of mak-
ing himself the literary agent of the opposite party.
Much to their surprise the Whigs found that they
possessed no monopoly of controversial deftness, and
that the art of using the weapons of sarcasm and
ridicule in controversy was not theirs alone. They
had found it easy to lead an attack : they found
it more difficult to meet the outspoken jests of
a keen, a cynical, and a sarcastic band of oppo-
nents. In 1817 BlachivoocVs Magazine was started,
and the young Whigs, who had assumed a rdle
which they could fill to their own complete satis-
faction in the ridicule of their elders, found that
their own withers were susceptible of considerable
wringing. In the satire of the Chaldsean MS., con-
tributed to Blachvood's Magazine, the caustic pen of
Lockhart found an admirable vehicle for ridiculing the
members of the Whig party. In the heat of the fight
personalities were permitted which not even literary
skill could excuse, and which have fortunately ceased
to be in accordance with the taste of a respectable
reading public.
Meanwhile some notable incidents had occurred in
the history of parties. Pitt had found it necessary to
face, in addition to the vast burden of costly and not
very successful war, the galling aggravation of Irish
rebellion, which a generous fiscal policy towards Ire-
land had done nothing to avert. He provided a
264 HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
wholesome sedative in legislative union ; but when
he attempted to add to that measure one for the
removal of Catholic disabilities, he had found himself
met by such opposition from the king as compelled
him to resign in 1801. The Government of Addington,
who took his place, involved no decided change of
policy ; it was only a shadow of Pitt's administration,
without the guidance of the master hand. When war
broke out again in 1803, in spite of all efforts to avert
it, there could be little difference of opinion as to the
danger with which an overwhelming military despotism
was threatening, not England only, but all Europe.
One pilot alone was fit to face the storm, and for three
years more Pitt stood forth, the "beacon light" in
danger, the "warder on the hill." But just at the
crisis of her fate the " stately column broke," the
" beacon light was quenched in smoke." Crushed by
anxiety, with a burden too great for broken health
to bear, amidst clouds and thick darkness, Pitt closed
his marvellous career. Before he died, his heart had
received its bitterest wound in the virulent, but some-
what ignoble assault which, amidst the plaudits of a
crowd of respectable mediocrities, was made upon his
closest friend, Henry Dundas, now Lord Melville. It
was in 1805 that a paltry charge was started against
Melville, which the solemn pedantry of some who
ought to have known better magnified or degraded
into a charge of embezzlement. Administrative reform
had in the last generation made immense advances ;
but as an inheritance from the past, considerable
irregularity in the system of public accounts had not
unnaturally survived. In the inquiries of a Commis-
sion it had emerged that some such irregularity had
occurred in the accounts of the Navy when Dundas
IMPEACHMENT OF MELVILLE. 265
had been Treasurer. One of his subordinate officers,
a zealous and devoted civil servant, had apparently
been allowed to transgress some rules which had only
of recent years been enforced ; and money belonging
to the naval accounts had been employed for other ser-
vices. How far the petty irregularity in the behaviour
of the accounting officers had gone it is difficult to
say ; but no one who knew Dundas could suspect him
personally of any dishonesty or greed of personal gain.
When first called upon for explanations he had treated
the inquiries somewhat cavalierly ; and in the con-
sciousness of personal rectitude he had refused any
explicit answers. His enemies found here just the
means of a telling attack which suited them ; and one
is tempted to even greater provocation against the
apparent friends who admitted with astonishing ease
the probability of charges, from which Dundas's char-
acter might alone have been a sufficient defence. An
impeachment followed, before the House of Lords.
Not for the first time in recent memory all the
theatrical ceremony of a State trial was invoked in
order to give dignity to what was really a mockery of
legal procedure, in which the solemn pharisaism of
austere political virtue was allied with the paltrier
venom of political animosity, in order to magnify into
a portentous charge of corruption and malversation,
what was at most but a condonation, on the part of
a minister, overwhelmed with vast responsibilities at
a great crisis in the nation's history, of some irregu-
larity in the accounts of his subordinates. The
ultimate result was the dissipation of the cloud of
suspicion ; but such was the virulence of faction that
even the acquittal did not prevent insinuations of
guilt, or turn aside the cowardly and ungenerous
266 HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
animosity which studiously kept alive memories that
served to weigh down the influence of an opponent
too strong to be crushed by other means. When the
charge was first started it was hailed with unseemly
joy by those who had been wont to tremble at Dundas's
voice. But this triumph, although it produced some
notable effects, and above all added an additional
bitterness to the anxieties of Pitt's closing days, was
short-lived. The clamour was still at its height when
Pitt died in January 1806. His Ministry was suc-
ceeded by that of All the Talents — with Lord Grenville
as Prime Minister, Thomas Erskine as Lord Chancellor,
Henry Erskine as Lord Advocate, and Lord Lauder-
dale as the manager of Scottish affairs. Lender that
Ministry the trial began in April 1806; and it ended
in June, in a triumphal acquittal. The tide now
turned quickly. The news was received with joy in
Scotland, where those who knew Lord Melville, both
friends and foes, were well aware that peculation was
one of those petty crimes to which his life and char-
acter gave the lie. Edinburgh proposed to celebrate
his triumph by a public illumination. Political fore-
sight and tact, no less than generosity, would have
prompted his opponents to remain quiescent in the
national rejoicing, even if they did not share it. But
by a strange excess of timidity or of spite the outward
manifestation of that rejoicing was prevented by John
Clerk, now Solicitor-General, who issued a warning to
the magistrates, on the ground that the illumination
might lead to rioting.
The Ministry that was guilty of this pettiness was
short-lived and ineffectual. They attempted changes
in the Law Courts, which on many grounds seemed
reasonable enough, but which were certain to cause
SHOPtT-LlVED WHIG MINISTRY. 2G7
searchings of heart amongst those who suspected all
such reform as a tampering with the Union. Some of
their proposals were carried out by their successors,
but they were themselves unlucky enough to incur the
odium of first mooting the change, and at the same
time to lose the credit of succeeding in the attempt.
The Ministry fell in April 1807, and the real power
of Melville was at once restored. He was once more
sworn of the Privy Council, and although his place in
the Government was taken by his son, his influence in
Scottish afi"airs continued to his death.
The fall of the Ministry of All the Talents brought
to an end the short-lived gleam of sunshine that had
fallen upon the Whigs of Parliament House. Their
reign had not been a prosperous one. Henry Erskine
had once again, after an interval of three-and-twenty
years, donned the gown of Lord Advocate. He had
entered Parliament, but he had done so with two heavy
make-weights against him — the burden of years and of
a great reputation. The wit which shone brightly in a
circle accustomed to the easy domination of his grace-
ful personality found no scope in the new scene of the
House of Commons. His eloquence was already recog-
nised in Westminster Hall, where the Court of Appeal
had been thronged by a critical audience eager to com-
pare him with his younger brother, who had won the
greatest triumphs of the English Bar ; but it never
succeeded in gaining for him a Parliamentary reputa-
tion, even although the powerful personality of Pitt,
which had been like an incubus on the facile eloquence
of Thomas Erskine, was removed. It may be doubted
also whether he fully retained his influence in his own
party, even although his name was a rallying-point,
and still had all its efficacy as a centre of affection
2G8 HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
and of pride. But the Erskine family was no longer
dominant in the councils of the party. The brilliant
career of the Lord Chancellor was destined before
many years were over to fall under a cloud. The over-
weening vanity and almost insane eccentricity of Lord
Buchan made him the object of amusement rather than
respect ; and Henry Erskine was not of the stuff out of
which a failing party can fashion a useful tool. No
wonder that he found his merits recognised more in
words than in deeds, and that, when the Whigs were
hoping, a few years later, to secure some new influence
through the unstable and fickle alliance of the Prince
Regent, one of their wire-pullers should have written,
in words that unwittingly came to the eyes of Henry
Erskine, "We must get rid of the Erskines." ^ Erskine,
indeed, was to owe to the generosity of the Tories, and
not to the loyalty of his own party, his nearest approach
to high judicial office."
Meanwhile the Tories recovered their power, not
only by the renewed influence of the Dundas family,
but by the conspicuous talents and character of some
of their leaders. Some of the foremost of the Whigs
gradually gravitated towards their party. Lord Moira
and Lord Minto, successively Governors - General of
India, were now more closely associated with the
Tories than the Whigs. In 1808, Robert Blair, whose
calm strength and superiority to personal ambition won
for him the unquestioning respect alike of political
foes and friends, became Lord President, and for two
short years gave all the weight of his consummate
1 Ferguson's " Henry Er-kine and liis Times," p. 513.
- In 1804 Charles Hope, who had long been his friend, in spite of shar])
political controversy, had pressed upon him the post of Lord Justice-Clerk,
wliich Hope accepted only after Erskine's positive refusal.
TORIES AGAIN IN POWER. 269
intellect to enhancing the dignity and authority of the
Court, and to improving its procedure, and established
a reputation that made his premature death fall on all
with the effect of a national calamity/ When Lord
Melville passed suddenly away while awaiting the
funeral of his friend Blair, and in the house next to
that in which Blair had died, he transmitted much of
his own influence as the secure inheritance of his son.
It was only the modesty of his nephew — now the Chief
Baron — which prevented him from acceding to the solici-
tation that he should accept the headship of the Court
which his father and his grandfather had filled so well.
During these years, from 1807 to 1816, the office of
Lord Advocate was held by Ai-chibald Colquhoun of
Killermont, a man of high respectability, and distin-
guished as one of the intimate friends of Scott, but
commanding no weight of political influence. The
management of Scottish affairs during these years
rested chiefly with the Dundas family. The larger
questions of reform were for the time laid to rest,
but the Government during these years remodelled
the Court of Session, which in 1808 ceased to sit as
one Chamber, and was reconstituted as two Divisions,
one of which was presided over by the Lord President
and the other by the Lord Justice-Clerk. In 1815
there was established the Jury Court, with three Com-
missioners, for the trial of civil cases with a jury. This
did not indicate any bigoted resistance to change, and
it looked as if minor reforms at least might be carried
out with the assent of both parties.
1 One of the most notable complinieut.s ever paid to Blair was the
sotto-vocc remark of John Clerk, when Blair had demolished in a few
sentences an elaborate but sophistical argument by Clerk — " Eh, man 1
God Almighty spared nae pains when he made your brains."
270 HENRY ERSKINE AND THE YOUNGER WHIGS.
The literary struggle, however, was maiutained with
no cessation of energy, but rather with an increase of
bitterness, between the Edinburgh Revieiv and Black-
woods Magazine. The latter was carried on with a
recklessness of satire and invective which could be
excused only by the youth and audacity of men who
loathed the self-complacency and narrowness which, in
literary as well as in political measures, they attributed
to those who had first brought the weapon of ridicule
to bear, and who proved so sensitive to attacks which
they had certainly provoked.
Meanwhile in the field of practical politics there was
little active fighting. The nation was now at one in
regard to the war, and all other thoughts were hushed
in the absorbing impression of national danger. In
Charles Hope, who had succeeded Blair as Lord Presi-
dent, the Court had a distinguished head, whose char-
acter gave him a commanding sway, and who had now
stript much of the impetuous ardour which had in earlier
days sometimes impelled him to a partisanship, always
honest, but occasionally injurious to his judicial char-
acter. On the whole the administration of Scotland,
although too much concentrated in a single clique, and
repressing with too blind a Toryism the tendencies
that were making for inevitable change, was yet none
the less vigorous and able, and by no means lacking in
enlightenment.
But the heavy cloud of national danger was dispelled
in 1815, and the result of the sudden closing of the
long foreign war was to create, or at least to give
impetus to, serious domestic difficulties. What these
were we shall see in the next chapter.
271
CiHAPTER XIX.
THE OLDER TORYISM AND ITS FAILURE.
In 1815, the close of the war, in the battle of
Waterloo, marked an epoch the like of which had
hardly occurred in the history of the British nation.
The nightmare that had weighed on the souls of a
generation had suddenly passed away. The bands of
an iron and aggressive tyranny were shattered. The
long travail of an arduous and often hopeless struggle
in which Pitt and Nelson had spent their lives was
now over. The cost had been heavy, but the prize
was won, and the greatness of the country was once
more vindicated before the world. The event affected
different men in the Scottish nation according to their
temperaments and their sympathies. Some, like old
Professor Ferguson, took it as a double release, and
were content to close their lives in what was to them
the calm sunset after a long and stormy day. Others
felt that it braced their patriotism anew, and inspired
them with hopes of still better days to come for their
nation. Others again felt it only as a relief from what
they deemed a too great burden of military spirit, and
were glad that the nation was freed from the over-
whelming pressure of a great cause, the enthusiasm
for which had not appealed to their imaginations, and
272 THE OLDER TORYISM AND 1T8 FAILURE.
which had never compensated them for the postpone-
ment of domestic reforms upon which their pohtical
party had staked its future. It is curious to note how
some of them received it — not so much as the break-
ing of a dark and dismal cloud achieved by the stead-
fastness of the nation, but rather as the turning-point
which might make their little schemes bulk more
largely in the eyes of a nation that had escaped from
one absorbing efibrt. "The appearance of everything
was changed," says Cockburn. " Fear of invasion,
contempt of economy, the glory of our arms, the
propriety of suppressing every murmur at any home
abuse, the utter absorption of every feeling in the
duty of warlike union — these and other principles,
which for twenty years had sunk the whole morality
of patriotism in the single object of acknowledging no
defect or grievance in our system, in order that we
might be more powerful abroad, became all inapplicable
to existing things." It is a strange and ill-assorted
catalogue, entirely ignoring the fact that for these
twenty years the nation had been right in feeling that
one duty stood pre-eminent above all others, and that
the absorption in that duty was not only a necessity
of national existence, but a means of strengthening
the moral fibre of the nation. The crisis had passed,
and brought time and leisure for other thoughts, but
it was easy for the parochial politician to forget that
the devotion which that crisis had called forth had
a value in itself, and that the substitution of a state
of things which left the scene free for the lesser fights
of political parties was not all pure gain. The war
had certainly retarded much-needed reforms, but it
was absurd to suppose that with the more ardent and
patriotic spirits the romance of war should suddenly
TORYISM AFTER THE WAR 273
pass away, and that they should rest contented with
the more demure and less exciting work of pursuing
internal reform. Memories of factious opposition
rankled in their thoughts, and they were in no way
disposed to turn a willing ear to proposals that had
been urged amidst the smoke of cannon and in the
extremity of national danger.
But the nation emerged from the war transformed
in its whole character. Material conditions had vastly
changed. New ideas had taken hold of the minds
of men, new interests occupied their thoughts.
Changes in the social state which had been imper-
fectly measured amid the noise of battle, now became
apparent in all their force and significance.
During the quarter of a century that ended with
1815, Whiggism had been gradually crushed out of
the higher social ranks of Scotland by the sheer
weight of Tory predominance. The personal influence
of Henry Dundas had done much to accomplish this.
But many circumstances had helped him. The hard-
headed common-sense of the nation was impatient
of theories and of doctrinaire schemes of reform
which were, to say the least of it, ill-timed. Wealth
was increasing, and those who were busy in acquiring
a share of it had no mind to be diverted from the
pursuit by whimsical plans of reform, which were
somewhat impatiently classed with revolution. The
sense of nationality was strong, and that sense is
always inclined to be Conservative in its sympathies.
The respect for tradition, for family influence, for a
certain rugged discipline which accommodated itself
to the temper of the nation, was a powerful ally of
the Tories. It is true that some of the distinctive
features of that discipline had passed away. Social
VOL. II. s
274 THE OLDER TORYISM AND ITS FAILURE.
usage bad been strangely modified. The old rigidity of
manners bad been softened and made more adapt-
able. Tbe higb and impregnable fortress of Presby-
terian doctrine had fallen before the assaults of
modern thought. Daring speculations had trans-
formed Scotland from the most dogmatic to the
most latitudinarian of nations. All this, it might
have been thought, would have had a precisely oppo-
site effect, and instead of confirming the domination
of the Tories might have prepared the way for the
triumph of the Whigs. But we must remember who
were the chief representatives of this easier code
of morals, and this latitudinarian type of religion.
They were the Moderates in the Church; the pro-
fessional classes who held all that privilege and
hereditary right could give them, who advocated
greater freedom in morals and religion not because
they hated tradition or longed for change, but be-
cause they disliked the bigotry, the narrowness, and
the obstinacy which they associated with the stricter
school, and who refused to accommodate themselves
to a code of morals and religion which would have
robbed of its charm that easy and pleasant social
life which was the most prized of their privileges.
The High-flying party provoked their sense of humour,
and humour, always a powerful ingredient "in the
composition of feeling and of sentiment, is apt to
prove an element of divergence rather than of union
between an intellectual class and its less educated
fellow-citizens. Thus it was that the very elements
that were working to remodel Scottish society,
and to transform Scottish character, became allies
of the Tories, and helped to draw them further and
further from the classes below. The more that
INCREASE OF REFORMING ZEAL. 275
Toryism came to crush out the nascent seeds of
^^'higgism from the upper class of society, the more
reforming zeal penetrated the lower classes, and
seemed to gather to itself some of the enthusiasm
of the older Covenanters, and to appeal to impulses
in the heart of the nation which were the strongest
and the most enduring. '
The more that the reforming spirit, expelled from
the upper classes of society, filtered downwards, the
■more extreme became its aims, and the more bold
and violent its methods. It was no longer a ques-
tion of calling small and select meetings of professional
men, of agitating for Parliamentary and burgh reforms,
and of indulging in vague aspirations after liberty.
On the contrary the new and wider Radical party
was animated by a sullen discontent ; its spirit was
that of obstinate and dogged resistance to authority ;
its aims were socialistic and subversive ; and its
methods were those of the secret association, which
was prepared at small provocation to proceed to
violent means. The contagion of the times had
bred a fever in the blood, but very palpable outward
circumstances aggravated that fever, and made the
inflammation spread.
The change in the social condition of Scotland
during the generation that had just passed, had been
extraordinarily rapid and far-reaching. From being
a nation almost incredibly poor, it had already laid
the foundations of manufacturing and commercial
wealth. The towns were growing with surprising
quickness. The country districts would in any case
have been deserted under the attractions of constant
employment and comparatively easy wages which were
open in the manufacturing centres. But the state
276 THE OLDER TORYISM AND ITS FAILURE.
of agriculture was, from independent causes, telling
in the same direction. More enlightened methods
were pursued, agricultural experiments became a
favourite hobby, increased capital was required, and
as a natural consequence large farms took the place
of petty holdings, and the rural population was
necessarily decreased. So far as the Highlands were
concerned the same thing occurred on a vast scale.
The political economists of the day saw — and, so far
as their own range of vision extended, saw quite
correctly — that the best commercial use of the vast
tracts of Highland land was not to attempt upon them
a feeble culture which a sterile soil and an inclement
sky alike forbade. To people these tracts with sheep
was a scheme of eminent commercial sagacity ;;
whether its social wisdom was so certain is quite
another question. It was due to Sir John Sinclair's
restless and pervading influence that vast flocks of
Cheviot sheep now occupied the mountains which
a few years ago had been valueless, except as the
homes of a numerous and ignorant, but withal an
interesting, population. The Highland estates became
enormously more valuable ; but they lost their popula-
tion. In place of petty occupiers, who maintained
a precarious existence upon their scanty holdings,
there came a few well-to-do tenants who could afl:ord
to stock the land ; who paid good rents with perfect
regularity, but who owned no allegiance to their
landlord, and were disposed to resist any domination
on his part. Those who, fifty years before, had been
the poor but almost insanely proud members of a
clan which owed obedience only to its chief, now
found a home across the Atlantic, or swelled the
crowd of artisans who sought employment in the
SOCIAL CHANGES. 277
towns. But if an increasing manufacture brings a
wave of wealth, it brings also a surf of poverty, and
leaves a flotsam and jetsam of misery and discontent
which has no parallel amongst the population of a
mountain-side. To these last money payments were
almost unknown, but they rarely lacked that small
modicum of sustenance^ with which habit had made
them content. Glasgow had ceased to be a
little town upon the banks of an insignificant river,
scarcely known except as the seat of an ancient
university. Its population and its wealth were ad-
vancing by leaps and bounds. It had already a
foretaste of its great future as an emporium for the
world. But its demure and cautious burgesses no
longer found themselves surrounded by a well-dis-
ciplined and respectful bevy of apprentices and artisans.
They had to fight for every inch of commercial ground
they gained, and the city already held in its midst the
beginnings of the noisome slums and Alsatias where
the artificers of that wealth were crowded in disease,
and squalor, and discontent. The old comradeship,
the old sympathy between class and class, the old feel-
ing of kindly nationality which bridged over the gulf
between different ranks and softened the contrasts
of wealth and poverty — these were things that could
not breathe in the atmosphere that gathered about
the crowded dwellings of the Glasgow artisans.
There were those also, not pent in city lanes, and
conning day by day and hour by hour their theme
of discontent, but scattered amongst the outlying
counties, whom economical conditions made the object
of pity and of reproach to the national conscience.
The Highlands, as we have seen, had undergone a
vast change. Depopulation was a sad and regrettable
278 THE OLDER TORYISM AND ITS FAILURE.
remedy ; but had it been suffered to proceed un-
checked it would have worked its cure. Unfortu-
nately, however, it was checked, and that in the most
unwholesome way, by the influence of artificial causes.
The heavy duties placed on salt and barilla, which
were the sources from which soda could most easily
and cheaply be obtained, rendered it impossible to
use them with profit for the purpose. Some substitute
had to be found, and, most unfortunately for the
Western Highlands, it was found in the kelp gathered
in the seaweed. As the price of soda grew, the kelp
manufacture, which was profitable only in consequence
of an unwise import duty, was enormously developed,
and became a staple industry in these unhappy regions.
It gave a false stimulus to population ; once again
these regions, which could not by any bounty of
Nature rear more than a scanty number of inhabitants,
became crowded beyond their capacity. The artificial
stimulus died away, and a state of matters even more
distressful than that which followed upon the dissolu-
tion of the old clan system and the sweeping away
of the smaller holdings again presented itself.
Throughout the whole of Scotland there was thus
growing, in spite of all its advance in wealth and in
commercial activity, an uneasy sense of discontent.
Social conditions had grown up with which existing
social arrangements could not grapple. Poverty was
growing side by side with wealth; and the question
soon forced itself upon the attention — How was that
problem of poverty to be dealt with ?
In the later years of the war matters had been
steadily going from bad to worse. From 1808 to 1813
there had been a series of bad harvests. Foreign
supplies were closed, and, as a consequence, there
POVERTY AND DISAFFECTIOX. 279
had been an enormous rise in prices — wheat rising
from 75s. to 108s. a quarter. This naturally gave an
artificial stimulus to agriculture. In 1813 there had
been an abundant harvest. Two years later came the
peace, which suddenly opened the Continental markets,
with their competition fatal to the farmer at home.
In 1815 wheat fell to 60s. a quarter; and in order to
safeguard the agricultural interest, the price at which
corn could be imported was raised from 66s. to 80s.
An inflated agricultural prosperity was bolstered up by
artificial legislative restrictions, already condemned by
the most enlightened thinkers of the day.
The evil was not confined to agriculture. There
had been an immense amount of over-trading. Goods
had been thrown upon the foreign markets far in
excess of the demand. The rapid growth of wealth
had stimulated emulation beyond the bounds of
prudence. Bankruptcies ensued. The manufactures
received a sudden check. Thousands were thrown
out of employment ; starvation threatened the thick-
pent populations of the larger towns ; and sanitary
arrangements were so utterly neglected that disease
soon followed upon the heels of want. Wages fell to
the starvation-point ; and yet in 1816 the crop was once
again very bad, and war prices prevailed. The hand-
loom weavers, whose occupation w^as just that which
gave most opportunity for the perpetual discussion of
grievances that gradually rubs them into a sore, were
thrown out of employment. Disaffection was rife, and
it was scarcely kept in check by a threatening display
of military force. Now, in face of a lately acquired
peace, and when the nation had scarcely done rejoicing
over a splendid victory, she seemed to be torn by
internal discussions far more dangerous and more fierce
280 THE OLDER TORYISM AND ITS FAILURE.
than those which had been crushed with an impatient,
and perhaps somewhat ruthless, hand in 1793. In
the face of such a state of things, one party desired to
make these discussions the instrument of their own
political advancement ; the other was disposed unduly
to neglect them, because the memory of the struggle
in which the nation's very existence had been im-
perilled was yet fresh upon them.
To deal with such a state of matters there was re-
quired a Government at once firm and enlightened.
Without any tampering with the forces of Revolution,
a far-seeing Ministry might have shaped the new im-
pulses to good ends, and might have reconstructed the
political machine so as to have fitted it to new social
conditions, and given to all classes their share in the
vastly increased wealth and power of the Empire.
Unfortunately no such Ministry appeared ; and for
a dozen years the titular Prime Minister was Lord
Liverpool, the man of all others least capable of
impressing himself on such an epoch. He was
eminently respectable, conscientious, and industrious ;
with sufficient tact and conciliation to combine in his
Administration the most diverse elements, and yet to
provoke no jealousy against himself. But he was
essentially a mediocrity ; and as such he w^as First
Minister during twelve years of most critical impor-
tance in our history, and yet shaped no policy, had
not the faintest conception of political reconstruction,
was blind to all the deeper movements of the time.
He had inherited the traditions of a narrow clique,
and believed it to be a part of the scheme of Providence
that this clique should be left undisturbed in their
privileges, and, in the slumber of a respectable lethargy,
should dispose of the destinies of the country. They
LORD Liverpool's premiership. 281
thought themselves to be the defenders of the Con-
stitution and to be keeping Eevolution at bay. The
opposite faction raged against them as tyrants and de-
nounced them for their stubborn resistance to Reform.
In truth, they were only dullards, whose imagination
could not even conceive the magnitude of the task that
had fallen upon them.
But Lord Liverpool's premiership covered a long
series of years and a chameleon-like change of policy.
Himself the creature of circumstance, he serves only
as a titular connecting-link between men of the most
diverse character and tendencies the most opposite.
The first part of his term of office was that in which
the master-spirit was Castlereagh — that dark and
Uirid character, whose name became a by-word of
reproach amongst the opposite party, as representing
all that was most reactionary and repressive in the
Toryism which they held to be only a form of the
worst political profligacy. It was, indeed, far from
being even a tolerable regime. It represents all the
worst features of a narrow, selfish, and lethargic oli-
garchy, Avhich vainly imagined that it could grasp the
sceptre dropped by Pitt.
The second period in Liverpool's premiership is
that in which, under his titular headship, there
were combined three men who, each of them, repre-
sented a principle and a policy ; now bound together
by a mutual respect, now estranged by radical dif-
ference of view ; each rendering to the other that
homage which magnanimity demands, and which it
instinctively accords ; perplexed by misunderstandings,
but nevertheless conscious, as their predecessors never
were, of the greatness and dignity of their task, and
each earning his honoured place in history by virtue
282 THE OLDER TORYISM AND ITS FAILURE.
of political insight, of courage, and of great achieve-
ment. If the first part of Liverpool's premiership is
stained by the selfishness of a narrow and purblind
clique, the second is ennobled by the names of Can-
ning, of Wellington, and of Peel. The first period was
one in which it seemed that the Government held
its duty performed when it was quick to take alarm
and stern in its repression. The second was one in
which new ideas were pressing to the front, and
in which differences of opinion amongst the leaders
rested not upon nervous timidity and selfish intrigue,
but upon broad grounds of principle. The lesser
spawn of faction still knew only the old names and
the old passwords of party, but the Toryism of Peel
and Canning had as little in common with the Toryism
of Castlereagh as light has with darkness.
It is, however, no part of our business here to enter
into the details of party struggles in the arena
of St. Stephens, nor to trace the course of Imperial
politics. We are concerned with these only as they
affect the history of Scotland. And here also we can
see that the difference between the two periods is
clearly reflected, however little the adherents of each
party, immersed in the personal struggle, might per-
ceive the larger issues involved.
In 1816, when the alarm was at its height, and
when discontent was rapidly ripening into revolt and
social anarchy, the Lord Advocate Colquhoun was
promoted to the office of Lord Clerk Register. To
the place thus left vacant, which was soon to involve
difficulties calling for consummate tact and most
delicate statesmanship, there succeeded Alexander
Maconochie, a man of mediocre talent and of no com-
manding position at the Bar, known chiefly as the
THREATEN I NGS IK SCOTLAND. 28S
son of a judge who had acquired high reputation in
his day. Upon him, in conjunction with a typical
member of Lord Liverpool's earlier Administration,
Lord Sidmouth, then Home Secretaiy, fell the duty
of providing against the danger with which Scottish
society, especially in the city of Glasgow, appeared
then to be threatened. The weavers of that city had
lately entered into a combination for demanding higher
wages, which had been checked and punished with the
rigour which the law then dealt out to all such com-
binations. But this only aggravated the discontent.
The combinations now assumed the form of active
political associations, which undoubtedly cherished
designs of violent measures to subvert existing society.
They had their counterparts in England ; and in Scot-
land, as in England, the Government set itself to
countermine these machinations by the doubtful and
dangerous expedient of political espionage. The spies
of the Government comprised one Richmond, who had
himself narrowly escaped the penalty of the law as a
member of one of the trade combinations, and whose
honesty was as open to doubt as that of the fraternity of
informers usually is. From his information it became
known that the weavers' association had bound itself by
an oath to adopt violent measures if its grievances were
not removed ; and suspicion was attached even to the
men of the Black Watch, then quartered at Glasgow.
Richmond, from some scruple, refused himself to take
the oath, the taking of which might have helped him
to obtain further information, but he was able, never-
theless, to procure Avhat purported to be a copy of it
for the use of his employers.
In the beginning of 1817, the state of tension, both
in England and Scotland, became still more strained.
284 THE OLDER TORYISM AND ITS FAILURE.
An attack was made on the Prince Regent by the
London mob as he was returning from opening Parlia-
ment ; and this was at once made the ground for intro-
ducing such coercive measures as had been adopted in
1795 after a similar attack upon the King. It was
proposed to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act. The de-
bate took place on the 26th of February, just after the
Lord Advocate had taken his seat as member for the
borough of Yarmouth in the Isle of Wight. The
House still hesitated to adopt a measure so severe as the
suspension of the Habeas Corpus; but its scruples were
removed when at a critical point in the debate the Lord
Advocate read to the House the terms of the oath dis-
closed by Richmond. In view of such clear evidence
of daring disaffection the objections of the Whigs were
swept aside and the proposed measure became law.
Arrests were now made in Scotland, and two offen-
ders, Alexander Maclaren, a weaver, and Thomas Baird,
a grocer, were arraigned, the first for uttering a speech
incentive to violence, and the second for having pub-
lished it. Maclaren was a workman whose record was
good. He had been employed as foreman, but the pres-
sure in the labour market had reduced him to absolute
penury, so that even with superior skill he could earn
only five shillings a week for fifteen hours of labour a
day. He had been a sergeant in the Volunteers, and,
until the grip of poverty had made him desperate, seems
to have been a loyal supporter of the Administration
and an opponent of disorder. His crime was that at an
open-air meeting held at Kilmarnock ona wild winter's
night, he had used some dangerous expressions. He
had urged his hearers to petition the Crown. " Let us,"
he said, "lay our petitions at the foot of the throne,
where sits our august prince, whose gracious nature
TRIALS OF MACLAREN AND BAIRD. 285
will incline his ear to listen to the cries of his people,
which he is bound to do by the laws of the country.
But should he be so infatuated as to turn a deaf ear to
their just petition, he has forfeited their allegiance.
Yes, my fellow-townsmen, in such a case, to hell tvith
our allegiance." He had spoken of the House of Com-
mons as decayed and corrupted ; as " not really what it
is called, not a House of Commons." He had declaimed
against a Government who, in the midst of the French
Revolution, with its aspirations after liberty, had " de-
clared war not only against the French nation, but
against the friends of liberty at home." He had
abused the " hirelings of the Church." He had
declared England to have been governed for twenty-
five years by " a usurped oligarchy, who pretend to
be our guardians and representatives, while, in fact,
they are nothing but our inflexible and determined
enemies." These words were strong. They may have
had some justification, but however posterity may judge,
practical politics must always be chary of admitting
justification for an incentive to sedition. They were,
however, such as would at a calmer time at most have
been received with some severe, perhaps some con-
temptuous, criticisms. He was an unpractised speaker;
he had been unwilling to appear as spokesman at all ;
and had it judged his words with the calm impartiality
of confidence, the Government might have easily found
an excuse for the vehemence of a starving man. Baird
was a man of higher station and of more prosperous
circumstances. He also had been connected with the
Volunteer force, where he had held a captain's com-
mission, and while a sincere, he had always been a
moderate, advocate of Parliamentary Reform. His
crime was that of having printed and disseminated the
286 THE OLDER TORYISM AND ITS FAILURE.
speeches made at the meeting, although he had in
vain remonstrated against the violence of some of the
expressions.
In all this there was nothing which could not have been
safely left without notice, and certainly without criminal
prosecution. But the Government determined to pro-
secute on the somewhat vague charge of sedition, which
had been invoked in the trials of 1793, and Avhich was
more comprehensive than the crime of " leasing-mak-
ing," although the latter was better known to Scottish
jurisprudence. But " leasing-making " involved a per-
sonal offence against the sovereign, which might have
been hard to prove. The charge of sedition was more
dangerous to personal liberty, because the proof rested
upon a series of more or less doubtful inferences with
regard to the effect of words, as to which difference
of opinion was inevitable. No specific act had to be
proved ; no definite consequences had to be shown to
follow from the words. It was enough to demonstrate
that the words were such as would direct hatred, con-
tempt, or distrust against any part of the Constitution.
Arguments on such a theme must always be somewhat
subtle, and their inferences more or less remote; and in
such a case the resort to fear or prejudice in support of
the arguments which the prosecuting counsel employed
was almost certain.
It cannot be said that there was any browbeating
of witnesses, or any such evident bias on the Bench
as had been seen when Braxfield conducted the trials
of 1793. Both the Court and the prosecuting counsel
were studiously courteous, and treated the defending
counsel with ample respect. But they gave voice to
the general uneasiness which pervaded the upper
classes, and felt no doubt whatever as to the im-
THE PROSECUTION AND THE DEFENCE. 2S7
perative duty v/hich lay upon them to save society
by crushing out any inflammatory appeals to a starv-
ing and discontented crowd of workmen. Behind
all their arguments there is a fixed conviction that
in the main the Constitution, as it existed, was ex-
cellent, and that to attack it was a crime. Abstract
opinions on Keform miglit be held, but if they were
based on condemnation of existing arrangements — and
it is hard to say on what else an argument in favour
of Reform could be based — then they became criminal.
Particular Ministries might be criticised and attacked,
but if the attack became general, if it was directed
against the constitution of any existing Estate of the
realm, then it was seditious, and was held to deserve
condign punishment as such.
The defending counsel were John Clerk, a fierce
and pugnacious Whig of the older school, and Francis
Jeffrey, whose eloquence was such that even Lord
Hermand, with that generous and impetuous frank-
ness that was characteristic of him, declared that if
he had been a juryman, and had been obliged to
give a verdict after that speech, he feared that his
own judgment would have been led astray, and
thanked Heaven that no such duty was imposed
upon him. No very intolerant prejudice existed
where such kindly criticism was dealt out to the
eloquence of Jeffrey by a judge whose political
opinions were diametrically opposed to all that
Jeffrey represented.
The defence offered by him did not apparently
rise to any very great height of forensic eloquence.
There were the same appeals as in 1793 to the
vehement rhetoric of Pitt and the Duke of Richmond
in favour of Reform, as justifying the expressions
288 THE OLDER TORYISM AND ITS FAILURE.
which were now arraigned as seditious ; and these
appeals were answered, as they had been answered
before, by telling the jurymen that it was not their
duty to find that lawless expressions, which might
have been uttered in the past, rendered such expres-
sions less lawless as now arraigned, and that the
fact of the House of Commons having neglected to
notice, and even condoned, dangerous rhetoric, was
no reason why such dangerous rhetoric was now to
be excused. Jeffrey could quote from the mouth
of Lord Meadowbank, the father of the Lord Ad-
vocate, bold and fervid words in favour of the resort
to armed resistance ; but it was answered with that
logical precision which, however cogent in form, is
apt to fail in being persuasive, that the fact that
armed resistance might at times be a moral duty,
did not render it any the less a legal crime.
The jury found the prisoners guilty, and they
were sentenced to the comparatively mild punish-
ment of six months' imprisonment. But such a con-
viction could not strengthen the Administration, and
the honours of the fight remained with the defending
counsel and with the political party to which they
belonged.
The result of the next trial was even more un-
fortunate. The Rev. Neil Douglas, who belonged
to the sect of the Universalists, or those who, in
opposition to Calvinistic doctrine, preached the creed
of universal salvation, carried on religious worship in
a hall of the Andersonian Institute in John Street,
Glasgow. His congregation consisted of the poorest
class, and his pulpit manner seems to have combined
a certain rude imaginative power with a perfervid
rapidity of utterance that made the old man at times
OF NEIL DOUGLAS AND ANDREW M'KINLAY. 289
unintelligible. In lecturing upon the Book of Daniel,
he drew a somewhat dangerous parallel between
Nebuchadnezzar and George III., and between Bel-
shazzar and the Prince Regent. Much depended
upon the application of the parallel, and it was diffi-
cult to say whether the poor King was said to be
driven from the society of men for crimes like those
of Nebuchadnezzar, or only likened to the Babylonian
kini? in fate, although distinguished from him in life
and character. In any case, the preacher evidently
prayed for the King and Prince with a fervour which
might claim to be loyal, even although it might infer
a somewhat uncomplimentary assumption of the urgent
need for Divine intervention on their behalf. Jeffrey
and Cockburn were the defending counsel, and they
had an easy task in procuring the acquittal of the
prisoner ; the Solicitor-General had himself only ven-
tured to ask a verdict of not proven.
The Crown counsel now directed their efforts to
a new batch of trials, which were to turn upon the
evidence of the informers they had employed, and
which were to fix guilt upon some of those who had
taken the oath which had been read to the House
of Commons with such dramatic effect by the Lord
Advocate. The principal trial was that of Andrew
M'Kinlay, a Glasgow weaver. There seems to be
little doubt that MKinlay was implicated in a trea-
sonable association, and that he had administered
the seditious oath which bound the adherents of that
association. But the conduct of the Crown lawyers
was bungling and inept, at the very moment when
bungling and ineptitude were most fatal. The charge
was at first one of treason. That was abandoned, and
again and again new indictments were attempted.
VOL. II. T
290 THE OLDER TORYISM AND ITS FAILURE.
Alike the friends and the opponents of the Adminis-
tration were stirred to anger and contempt. The
Scottish Tory members felt themselves betrayed, and
complained of the scandalous mismanagement of
Government business. Romilly and the English
Whig lawyers w^ere joined with Brougham in open
derision of the Lord Advocate Maconochie. Lord
Sidmouth was, however, loyal to him, and at length,
in July, the trial began. But it resulted in a dismal
failure. The case was ill-prepared. The witnesses
were doubtful and suspect. In such a case it is
almost inevitable that recourse be had to those who
turn Crown witnesses in order to procure safety for
themselves. This must necessarily give rise to sus-
picion, and for that very reason scrupulous care must
be observed. The Crown witnesses were kept secluded.
The agents for the defence were denied access to them,
and were not even told what their testimony was to be.
Finally, one of them managed, by throwing from the
window of the room where he was confined a roll of
tobacco in which a paper was concealed, to convey the
impression to the prisoners' friends that he was being
bribed to betray his old confederates. On the day of
the trial a dramatic scene occurred. This witness was
asked in the usual formal way " whether any one had
given him a reward, or promise of reward, for being a
witness ? " The answer, to the surprise of all, was
"Yes." "By whom?" he was next asked. "By
that gentleman" — pointing to the Advocate Depute.
Rarely has such a scene taken place in a British court
of law. We need not believe that the charge was
strictly true. But the examination of the witness
had been conducted with extreme carelessness and
irregularity. It was admitted that promises of safety
COLLAPSE OF THE PROSECUTION. 291
had been given. This involved transport to another
place, and from that to promise of a livelihood was
but a short step. We may admit that the character
of the leading Crown lawyers rendered it impossible
to believe that they had personally been guilty of
tampering with a witness. But inferior agents had
been mixed up with the work, and it is more than
probable that expressions had been used which gave
countenance to the notion in the witness's mind that
a distinct offer had been made to him. The Crown
counsel were now the arraigned instead of the
arraigners. The defending counsel knew how to
make the best of this startling turn of matters. The
trial was quickly closed with a verdict of Not Proven,
and the remaining trials were abandoned. But the
matter did not end there. The case was severely
handled in the House of Commons, and covered the
Scottish Administration not only with condemnation
but contempt. Even the English Attorney-General
could not assert that the course pursued by the Lord
Advocate was consonant with English practice, and
the defence made that the Lord Advocate was not
only public prosecutor but a police magistrate, was
one which had a dangerous and doubtful aspect. It
was not surprising that proceedings which were not
only abortive but discreditable closed the career of
Maconochie as Lord Advocate. In 1819 he ascended
the Bench with the title of Lord Meadowbank.
For a year matters went quietly enough. Discon-
tent appeared to be less rife, and Government had no
temptation to renew the prosecution. The agitation
for Burgh and Parliamentary Reform continued, but
it appeared to be carried on by more constitutional
methods. The Cato Street conspiracy and the Man-
292 THI': OLDER TORYISM AND ITS FAILURE.
Chester Eiots, however, had shown the temper which
prevailed in England, and Scotland was to follow suit.
In 1820 the office of Lord Advocate was filled by-
Sir William Rae, who had succeeded Maconochie. In
some respects he was well qualified to represent the
Scottish Bar. He was the son of Lord Eskgrove, a
judge of the Court of Session, whose grotesque man-
ners, coupled with a strong and outstanding character
and a firm grasp of the older traditions of the Scottish
legal school, had made him a notable personality, and
a few years before his death this worthy judge obtained
the honour of a baronetcy. His second son, Sir
William Rae, was now the holder of the title. Sir
William had never won a leading practice, and Avas one
of those whom the newer and more energetic school of
rising lawyers had pushed aside ; but he was none the
less a respectable representative of the older school,
whose rigid Toryism was tempered by high cliaracter,
however hemmed in by narrow conceptions of consti-
tutional liberty. To his lot it fell to deal with a state
of matters that came within measurable distance of
civil war.
After the abortive trials of 1817 there had followed
a period of comparative calm. But the distress in-
creased, and with this distress came a fierce agitation
for political change. Parliamentary Reform, although
it had been pushed aside in the stress of war and of
threatening danger, had been long a moot topic, dis-
cussed with more or less of moderation. It now
assumed a more violent form. The name of Reformer
was now discarded for that of Radical, and the more
truculent methods now used were met by a correspond-
ing bitterness on the opposite side. Both parties were
facing one another with more hostile intent, and there
SECRET SOCIETIES. 293
was a tension and strain in men's minds that boded
no good to social order. The riots in Manchester
in August 1819 brought the nation into the temper of
armies spoiling for the fray, and into that mood where
constitutional methods are apt to disappear in the
bustle of opposing camps. A little spark would then
suffice to kindle a conflagration. Before the year was
over a meeting took place on Glasgow Green, in which
the Manchester rioters were spoken of as the martyrs of
liberty butchered by a selfish and ruthless Administra-
tion. Secret societies were organised, and there was
an uneasy tension in men's minds like that electricity
in the air which precedes a stormy convulsion in
Nature. The combinations of workmen assum.ed a
menacing form ; bills were posted up inviting all
operatives to abstain from labour on a certain day ;
and those who had any property to defend felt them-
selves to be on the brink of anarchy and revolution.
The constitutional reformers discountenanced all violent
methods, but it was only natural that, in the general
alarm, they should be roughly confounded with the
Radicals in a common condemnation. The Lord
Advocate, who on the whole kept his head better than
some of those higher in the Government, was not dis-
posed to exaggerate the danger, but to have disregarded
it would have been a gross neglect of his duty, and
peace was preserved by an abundant display of armed
force. In April 1820 there was recrudescence of the
dangerous elements, and on Sunday, the 2nd of that
month, the secret committee which called itself the
" Committee of Organisation for forming a Provisional
Government," posted proclamations commanding the
people to cease from work, and summoning them to
armed insurrection. Glasgow wore the appearance of
294 THE OLDER TOEYISM AND ITS FAILURE.
a city under martial law. The Yeomanry were called
to arms, and while the peaceful citizens were on their
way to church, when the streets should have been
slumbering in their usual Sabbatical calm, they found
every corner occupied by military pickets, and troops
of hussars galloping through the city. It was rumoured
that the London mail was to be stopped a few miles
from Glasgow, and that this was to be the signal for
open rebellion. It was easy for the Whigs, who chafed
at their long exclusion from power, to blame the
Government and to sneer at their unnecessary fears.
Selfish bungling and an inability to discern the signs of
the time might have had much to answer for in pro-
ducing such a state of things. But the atmosphere was
surcharged with excitement, and we can scarcely be
surprised that the dominant party were in no mood to
listen to counsel based on a belittling of their alarm.
On the following day it was evident that one part of
the orders of the Secret Committee had been obeyed,
and for miles round Glasgow the labourers ceased from
work and gathered in sullen and threatening crowds.
On Wednesday it was believed that these crowds were
to move against the city from the surrounding country,
and that only by an overpowering display of military
force were the would-be rioters to be held in check.
Sixty thousand men were virtually gathered to defy the
law, and bands of armed rioters marched about the
roads, surrounding the country mansions and demand-
ing the surrender of arms. The inhabitants were kept
in a state of nervous tension, listening to the sounds
of midnight dril], and the blacksmiths' shops were
burst open, their owners expelled, and the forges used
for the manufacture of pikes. Had the military force
of Scotland been what it was seventy years before,
THE RADICAL WAR. 295
when the Highland clans marched unopposed into the
heart of England, the Constitution would not have
lasted for a day. At that time it was only the romantic
and forlorn hope of a decaying party that had to be
met ; now it was the forces of Revolutionary violence
that had to be held in check.
On the morning of Wednesday the 5th of April,
when it was expected that the attempt was to be
made, the authorities were found to be fully pre-
pared. Five thousand troops were drawn up in
the streets — more than enough to hold in check
the disorganised and half-armed forces of lawless-
ness and anarchy. When night came on the
crowds became more bold ; drums were beat and
shots exchanged. A crowd of three hundred men,
more resolute than the rest, had the courage to face
the soldiers, but a cavahy charge scattered them,
and a dozen of the ringleaders were made prisoners.
Farther off in the country, at Bonnymuir, the "Eadical
war," as it was called, rose almost to the semblance
of a pitched battle. A band of armed rioters there
attacked a trooper of the Yeomanry, whom they
stopped on the highway. He returned to his head-
quarters, and a troop of Yeomen sent to disperse
the crowd were met by a volley from the rioters.
A few minutes ended the fray, and nineteen men
were taken prisoners, after a hopeless struggle in
which a few lost their lives. The Government could
no longer trifle w^ith such a state of affairs. The
rioters were terrified, but mildness would soon have
revived their spirits. The search for arms was vigor-
ously prosecuted, and many arrests followed. A Com-
mission of Oyer and Terminer was issued, and sat
for the trial of the rioters between 23rd June and 9th
2!) 6 THE OLDER TORYISM AND ITS FAILURE.
August at the places where the riots had been most
outrageous — Stirling, Glasgow, Dumbarton, Paisley,
and Ayr. It was composed of the Lord President
Hope, the Lord Justice Clerk Boyle, with the Chief
Baron and the Chief Commissioners of the recently
established jury court, and two of the Justiciary
Judges. In all, true Bills were found against ninety-
eight persons, fifty-one of whom managed to escape.
Twenty-four were sentenced to death, but only three
were executed — Wilson, who was hanged at Glasgow
on the 30th of August, and Hardie and Baird, who
were hanged at Stirling on the 8th of September.
Enough had been done to vindicate the law, and the
Government had shown itself ready not only to check
anarchy, but to impress upon the local authorities a
wholesome sense of their responsibility for the main-
tenance of order.
But the difficulties of the Government did not end
here. The Opposition was vigorous and alert, and
was at no loss for material w^herewith to feed the
flame of discontent. They might deride the danger
of anarchy and disorder which the Government had
to meet, but they found their opportunity in a deep-
rooted anger which pervaded the great mass of the
nation. In proportion as the Government of Lord
Liverpool increased the rigour of the Tory principles,
the Whigs sought for new cries against them, and
the middle-class was not slow to respond to their call.
As Prince Kegent, George IV. had been the ally of
the Opposition, but he was now estranged from them,
and in the degrading quarrel between himself and
the Queen there was found a new means of attack
upon the Government. Popular discontent assumed
the championship of the Queen, and the vindication of
#')
MEETINGS TO DENOUNCE THE GOVERNMENT. 297
her fancied wrongs became a new rallying cry, how-
ever little her cause had to connect it with the graver
incentives to discontent. The Administration found
itself assailed at once by those who were jealous of
the Tory monopoly of office and of power, by those
who suffered from restrictive laws that fettered in-
dustry and crushed the popular voice, and by those
who fancied that, in becoming the champions of a per-
secuted woman, they were resisting the high-handed
tyranny of a profligate aristocracy that truckled to the
Crown.
The popular aspect of this opposition showed itself
by the common and not very convincing expedient
of public meetings. Such meetings had long ceased
to form an ordinary part of the public life of Scotland.
To hold them in the open air was, under the existing
code, illegal ; and the Administration were able to
close the doors of most of the public halls against
those who sought to use them for the purpose. At
the close of 1820 the Lord Provost of Edinburgh
was asked to summon a public meeting in order to
petition the King to dismiss his Ministers. He
refused to do so, but the Whig leaders determined
to proceed without his sanction. The meeting was
held on the 16th of December at the Pantheon, a
large building ordinarily used as a circus, and it was
attended by all the leading Whigs of the capital.
Abundant ridicule was thrown upon the scheme, and
Tory poetasters made merry over the unabashed lust
for office which they assumed to be the chief incen-
tive of the Whigs. The meeting was large and en-
thusiastic, but its very size made it unruly, and gave
to the other party an easy opportunity of deriding
such an appeal to the mob in the interests, as was ,_,. f^
298 THE OLDER TORYISM AND ITS FAILURE.
asserted, of selfish seekers after office. The meeting-
was, indeed, dominated chiefly by the Whig section
of the Parliament House, whose professional jealousies,
perhaps, did not very completely embody the deeply
rooted distrust which the nation felt for the Adminis-
tration. The chair was occupied by James Moncrieff,
afterwards a judge of the Court of Session, and promi-
nent parts were played by Jeffrey, Cockburn, and Clerk,
all of whom suffered personally from the domination
of the Tories, and had something to hope from the
triumph of the Whigs. But the speeches at the
meeting found their echo in a wider audience out
of doors, and a petition against the Ministry w^as
signed with more than seventeen thousand names.
The Edinburgh meeting was only one of many held all
over Scotland, and no gibes or sarcasms of the Tories
could hide the fact that the Government was face to
face with a rising storm of popular discontent. The
days of that purblind Toryism which had marked
the earlier period of Liverpool's Administration were
numbered, and a demand for Reform which would
not be gainsaid had asserted its indubitable force.
Within a comparatively narrow circle the battle
was meanwhile raging fiercely. A literary war of un-
exampled bitterness was being carried on, and it
soon proceeded to extremities, in which personal
character was not spared, and from which there
arose consequences revolting to the better feelings
of society.
The Edinburgh Revieiu and Blackwood had, as
we have seen, for some years been the rally ing-points
of either party. But numerous more or less reputable
prints took part in the fray. During the preceding
century many newspapers had been established in
TRUCULENCE OF THE PRESS. 299
Scotland, and the three insignificant journals which
existed at the Union had now increased by tenfold.
Whatever their sympathies, however, they had scarcely
assumed the guise of party organs; but in 1817 the
Scotsman was established as the champion of the Whig
party. The Clydesdale Journal was founded in the
West of Scotland as the Tory organ ; and in 1820 it
began to appear in Glasgow under the name of the
Sentinel. Its attacks on the opposite party were fierce
enough, but they were outdone by those of another
paper founded in 1821 under the name of the Beacon.
Its ostensible editors were men of no position or mark,
but it was supported both by the purses and the pens
of men of greater weight Avhose contributions were
secret. Its tone was truculent enough, and those
attacked displayed a sensitiveness which public men
have learned in later days to discard. First, Mr.
James Stuart of Dunearn, who was attacked by the
paper, took the law into his own hands and caned
the printer in the street. A second object of vitupera-
tion, Mr. James Gibson, appealed to the Lord Ad-
vocate, who denied partnership in the concern, but
admitted that he himself and others had subscribed
a bond pledging themselves to be responsible for its
debts. This rash admission involved many leading
Tories in the squabble, and the affair went near to
involving a name so honoured as that of Scott in a duel.
The matter was arranged only by the withdrawal of the
parties to the bond, ;md this virtual surrender led
to the fall of the paper. But the venom of personal
attacks continued with increased bitterness in the
Sentinel. Again the man most severely attacked was
Mr. Stuart of Dunearn, who was stigmatised as a
coward in some verses which appeared in the paper.
300 THE OLDER TOP.YISM AND ITS FAILURE.
His anger now led him to institute proceedings
against the publishers, one of whom saved himself
from an action for libel by giving up the name of
the writer, who was discovered to be Sir Alexander
*Boswell of Auchinleck, the son of Johnson's bio-
grapher. A duel was the consequence, and in it
Boswell was killed. The death of a well-known and
respected member of Edinburgh society awakened
men's minds to the outrages to which political bitter-
ness might lead, and gave a certain pause to the
fiercest fighters. Men of self-respect sought to dis-
sociate themselves from such scandals, and a certain
self-restraint supervened which tamed the thoughtless
rancour of this guerilla warfare of the pen. But for
the time the matter was judged solely on party lines.
Stuart's second was the Earl of Rosslyn ; that of
Boswell was Mr. Douglas, afterwards Marquis of
Queensberry. Stuart was no practised shot, and the
issue of the duel was unexpected. Few in that day
were so opposed to the practice of duelling as to
consider that Stuart's action merited punishment, and
the general voice of society was not against him ; but
none the less the trial of Stuart for murder became
in reality a party struggle, and his acquittal was a
triumph for the Whigs.
The Government now resorted to a means of re-
prisal which was at once bungling and undignified.
It appeared that the two publishers of the Sentinel
had dissolved partnership ; that Borthwick — the be-
trayer of Boswell's name — had agreed to relinquish
his property on being recouped the money value of
his partnership, and although the bargain had not
been completed by the payment of the price, it was
thought that an action for theft might lie against
ATTACKS UPON THE LORD ADVOCATE. .".01
him for the abstraction of Boswell's manuscript. The
action would at best have been founded upon a tech-
nicality, and however base was Borthwick's conduct
— and of this no question can be raised — to indict
him upon such a charge came perilously near to
persecution. However that might be, the Govern-
ment did not even show the courage of holding to
the course which they had chosen. They vacillated,
changed their tactics, and eventually abandoned the
prosecution. The matter was made the subject of
an animated debate in Parliament, where the conduct
of the law officers was impugned by Mr. Abercromby,
and a condemnatory motion was rejected by a narrow
majority of twenty-five. So fierce was the spirit
aroused, that the debate almost led to duels between
Mr. Abercromby and the Advocate Depute, and these
were prevented only by the arrest of the advocates,
who were summoned to the bar of the House and
compelled to make an apology.
The whole proceedings raised a ferment which it
was hard to appease, and amongst other consequences
they led to a bitter attack upon the powers of the
Lord Advocate. That officer had by various cir-
cumstances concentrated enormous prerogatives in his
hands. He exercised by prescriptive right almost all
the authority of the Administration in Scotland. He
represented the powers of the ancient Privy Council of
Scotland ; and by recent usage he joined in himself
not only a large mass of legal prerogatives, but was at
the same time the sole repository, so far as the Scottish
people were concerned, of the power of the Crown in
Scotland. The extent of his authority had long been
a matter of gibe and sarcasm. On one occasion it was
announced that all the great officers of State had left
302 THE OLDER TORYISM AND ITS FAILURE.
in a single coach for Scotland ; and after an imposing
string of titles, it was added that the coach contained
only one person - — the Lord Advocate. But these
sarcasms now became concentrated in a deliberate
attack upon the office. The Whigs made this a party-
cry, but it had enough of speciousness to induce Sir
Robert Peel, who was now Home Secretary in place of
Lord Sidmouth, to make some inquiry on the subject
and to ask for a report from the judges. Their report
was adverse to any change, but the matter was none
the less urged in the Edinhurgh Revieiv. One of
the most strenuous advocates for a change was Henry
Cockburn ; but his views were modified when, at a
later day, the office fell to his own party. It was a
strange error of tactics on the part of the Whigs that
they urged, not the substitution of a purely political
officer for the Lord Advocate, but that the administra-
tion of Scotland should be centralised in the hands of
the Home Secretary. It was ouly a part of that short-
sighted policy which made them belittle the national
independence of their country, and, in their fear of
the ini?uence of the Duudas family, to prefer that
the symbol of that independence should be destroyed
rather than that it should be in their opponent's hands.
They lived to repent such tactics.
Matters such as these, however, after all only aftected
a comparatively small section of the population. The
Opposition had, in the flowing tide of popular dis-
content, a lever far more powerful than that which was
supplied by the petty feuds of the Parliament House.
The older type of Toryism was swept away by irre-
sistible forces stronger than those of any faction.
A change came over the spirit of Lord Liverpool's
Administration. The place of those who represented
CHANGE IN THE SPIRIT OF ADMINISTRATION. 3 03
only the dull and torpid weight of selfish Toryism
was taken by the statesmanship of Canning and of
Peel. Inert resistance was no longer deemed to be
the sovereign and infallible antidote to disaffection.
We have now to see the beginnings of various plans —
partial indeed and imperfect, but none the less honest
in intention — for removing the causes of popular dis-
content, and setting right the grievances by which the
time was out of joint.
304
CHAPTER XX.
LARGEE AIMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
If the spirit of Castlereagh had continued to guide the
Administration of the country for many years longer,
the result in Scotland would have been grave. It
is hard to say to what length resistance might have
been pushed by the mere inert weight of a dead,
unintelligent repression, in the hands of a party
whose political horizon was bounded by the aim of
maintaining obsolete privilege. Any substantial foun-
dation which the Tory party possessed rested, in the
earlier decades of the nineteenth century, not upon
its ostensible leaders, but upon a vein of sentiment
and feeling which pervaded the country, and which
led abler and more honest men to cast in their lot with
it. That sentiment was fed upon tradition, upon dis-
trust of the catchwords and parrot-cries of the Whig
Reformers, upon patriotic zeal and the memory of a
long and heroic struggle, and upon profound hatred
for Revolutionary propaganda. It was not disposed to
be too critical of the methods which the responsible
Government followed in checking that propaganda.
It respected the law and did not identify its assertion
with persecution. It hated those who sought to be-
little England, or who shrank from the Imperial task
UNEASINESS AMONGST THE TORIES. 305
which it fell to her to discharge. Above all, in Scot-
land it was inspired by national feeling, and detested
anything which seemed to obliterate national tradi-
tions. There was in that party much which needed
only enlightened statesmanship to give it force and
energy, and even the boldness necessary for political
advance. To such statesmanship the nation would have
been ready to forgive some severity in repressive mea-
sures. But that by no means proves that it did not
perceive that some reform was necessary, and that it
would not have been willing to follow courageous and
enlightened leaders upon a path of wise and moderate
improvement of political conditions. As things were,
the Tory party was uneasy and disturbed. The wisest
heads in that party saw that repression might be
carried too far. They perceived, only too clearly, that
no one had arisen to grasp the reins that had fallen
from Pitt's hands. They hated the glib and self-satisfied
creed of the Whig faction, but they in their hearts
distrusted still more the blindness of those who be-
lieved that Reform was to be met by an obstinate
refusal to read the signs of the times.
After the death of Castlereagh the Government of
which Lord Liverpool was the nominal head began
to wear an aspect quite different from that which it
had previously borne. Liverpool continued in office,
but only because his was the most convenient name
under which various elements could be grouped. His
weakness could excite no jealousy. The state of
matters was one which would appear strange under
the rules which now operate in regard to the solidarity
of a Government. We would find it difficult to imagine
how Ministers divided upon essential points should
continue to hold office together, and how the members
VOL. II. u
306 LARGER AIMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
of the same Admiuistration should be in discord over
a matter so essential as that of Catholic Emancipation.
But in fact the spirit of the Government had changed,
and the odd divergence of its members on leading
features of policy was, for the moment, no unhealthy
symptom of the working of the new and more liberal
ideas that were making their way slowly but surely.
Peel and Canning made government in Scotland
possible ; the continuance of Castlereagh's influence
might have converted it into another Ireland. The
Cabinet now contained men whose statesmanship was
founded upon principles and upon ideas, and who
were not merely the representatives of a narrow and
selfish clique. Their general policy was liberal in the
best sense of the word. They differed upon several
fundamental topics, but they w'ere at one in the desire
to redress grievances, to govern the country for the
country's good, and to judge political questions by
a standard altogether different from that of selfish
class interest. Into the general tendency of their
administration it is not our business here to enter ;
we have to attend only to its effect on Scottish
politics.
Outwardly the change in the spirit of the Adminis-
tration produced no very distinct alteration in the
position of parties in Scotland. The office of Lord
Advocate remained in the same hands. There was on
the part of the ruling party the same unwillingness to
adopt reforms without due caution, the same dislike of
innovation, and, in deference to feelings which were
deeply rooted in many of their supporters, the same
hesitation to grant concessions which would alter the
fundamental features of the Constitution. But the
influence of those who resisted reform became less.
PROGRESS OF REFORM. 307
and they were compelled to admit light on oue after
another of the dark places of Scottish administration.
A spirit was arising in Scotland, not in the narrow
arena of political faction, but amongst her leading
men on both sides, which was in sympathy with the
higher tone of English statesmanship, and which was
bringing about a new era in her administration. The
struggle in the Parliament House continued with all
the bitterness of selfish ambition and with all the
virulence of personal animosity, but the spirit which
prevailed throughout the nation was being essentially
transformed.
Already, as we have seen, the venerable monument
of the Supreme Court of Judicature had undergone
considerable changes. It was now the subject of
further modifications. The manner in which political
trials were conducted had greatly improved during the
last generation, and we can no longer find instances
of the grim and drastic humour which travestied
justice, and which alternately shocks and amuses those
accustomed to the more decent procedure of modern
times. But abuses still remained. Amongst these
was the method of selecting juries, which left them
virtually to the choice of the presiding judge. In
1821 an alteration of the law in this respect was
proposed, by which the juries were to be chosen by
ballot. The Bill failed in that session, but in 1822,
after being opposed by the Lord Advocate, it was
supported in a modified form by the Home Secretar}^,
and by the operation of the new Act a certain number
of peremptory challenges was secured to the prisoner.
The proposal for ballot was again put forward in
1824, and although then defeated, it was carried, as a
Ministerial measure, by the second Lord Melville. It
308 LARGER AIMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
could not any longer be averred that the Tory party
was rigidly opposed to all reform.
In the session of 1824 a Bill was introduced by the
Home Secretary for a remodelling of the judicature,
founded upon the report of Commissioners who had
been appointed in 1823. The century so far had seen
great changes in the Court of Session — the chief
monument of Scottish independence, and at the same
time the chief centre of time-honoured abuses. In
1808 the Court had been divided into two divisions,
and the old conclave of the fifteen judges had come
to an end. In 1815 juries had been introduced in
civil cases. The method of choosing juries in criminal
trials had quite recently been changed so as to lessen
the power of the judges. Now the change was to be
introduced into procedure. The Commission consisted
not of Scotsmen only, but included English members,
whose presence might well have excited some national
prejudices. Their report was sweeping, and their
recommendations, which tended to the shortening of
procedure, and to greater finality of judgments, roused
much searching of heart amongst those who had bat-
tened on the old abuses. Those interested against
the changes were able once more to get up an appa-
rent agitation in Scotland against the measure, and
it was abandoned for the time. The next session,
however, saw it placed upon the statute-book.^
Meanwhile other topics had again commanded at-
tention. The question of Burgh reform was stubbornly
fought on both sides. The abuses of the system were
only too evident ; and in 1822 the Lord Advocate
was forced, in deference to the conviction on both
sides that reform was necessary, to introduce a mea-
1 6 Geo. IV. cap 120.
CANNING PRIME MINISTER. 309
sure for giving a jurisdiction over the burgh accounts
to the Court of Exchequer, while leaving untouched
the glaring abuse of self-election by the magistrates.
Instead of appeasing, that Bill only stimulated the
ardom- of those who pressed for sweeping reform. The
stronghold of privilege was being rudely assailed, and
the days of its triumph were numbered. The larger
question of Parliamentary reform, which was destined
to revolutionise the Constitution, was now in the air.
Whatever might be the arguments for such reform in
England, they were of tenfold strength in Scotland.
The wisest heads amongst statesmen might view that
question with alarm, and might see in it the seeds of
revolution ; but they were not likely, in face of such
a question, to attach undue importance to the com-
paratively provincial topics of minor reforms in Scot-
land, or to spend their force in defending abuses in
which only a narrow and selfish clique were interested.
One by one these abuses were assailed, and only a
half-hearted defence of them was attempted. The
gust of popular opinion was now blowing more freely,
and was scattering the dust of long-established usage,
which seemed to be venerable only because it had
slumbered undisturbed so long.
^Yhen Canning became Prime Minister upon the
death of Liverpool, this tendency became still more
marked, and to many in Scotland it seemed as if a
Whig Ministry had really taken the place of the Tories.
The Lord Advocate remained the same, but the powers
of this office were for the time effaced. Lord Melville,
who had long exercised much of the influence which
he had inherited from his more strenuous father, now
ceased to do so, and Scottish business was intrusted to
the new Home Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, who was
310 LARGER AIMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
to act with the advice of three men who were avowed
adherents of the Whig party — Lord Minto, Aber-
cromby, and Kennedy of Dunure. It may be doubted
whether such an arrangement, which dissipated re-
sponsibility and tended greatly to increase the per-
nicious influence of any factious clique, was a sound
or wholesome one. It aroused a certain suspicion and
distrust, but, on the whole, the Ministry of Canning
commanded the support of all that was best in Scot-
land, and the blessings that it might have brought to
the country were none the less considerable because
it was not too closely identified with the triumph of
the comparatively narrow Whig clique in the Parlia-
ment House, which claimed to have a monopoly of
political foresight, and to be the sole defender of
popular rights. Greater changes were soon to be pro-
posed, and on the imperial question of Parliamentary
reform Scotland was to be split into opposite camps,
corresponding to those which divided England. But
for the moment it appeared as if the keen party fights
which had raged in Scotland for more than thirty
years, with a bitterness in inverse proportion to the
arena on which they were fought, were to be hushed
in a common desire to have done with effete usage
and with the worn-out lumber of political abuses.
Even the contact with the large political arena of
England was not without its effect in this direction,
and it is noteworthy that we find Scott impressed
strongly by the fact that all the little divisions which
held men asunder in Scotland, and labelled them
under party names, were less marked and produced
less bitterness of animosity in London than upon the
floor of Parliament House. Political animosity is
never so keen as when it divides a profession, and is
THE NARROWER POLITICAL FIGHT. 311
stimulated by rival claims to the prizes of that pro-
fession; and this is precisely what happened in the
legal circles of the Scottish capital.
It was this element of professional jealousy which
gave a false and misleading colour to the political
history of the country during the first thirty years of
the present century. With the Whigs no wickedness
or folly was too great to be ascribed to their opponents.
It was their constant assumption — an assumption which
grew to be a cardinal article of the Whig creed — that
the long domination of the Tories in Scotland led
naturally to the swing of the pendulum which brought
power to the Whigs, long trodden under foot, but ever
struggling to raise the standard of political virtue. On
the side of the Whigs, we are often told, there was all
the ability, all the vital energy, and all the political
virtue of the nation : their opponents were wedded to
privilege, and for more than a generation had owed
their supremacy to nothing but the prevalence of dull
routine, to the fictitious nervousness of Revolution
which they were able to inspire, to the warlike
enthusiasm which they kindled by the pomp and
circumstance of the parade-ground, and to the fact
that they were the dispensers of the loaves and fishes
of promotion. These are hardly very adequate ex-
planations when we come to examine them. It seems
to be forgotten that the prevailing spirit amongst the
Moderates and Tories, whatever else it was, was cer-
tainly not predominantly one of dulness and routine.
On the contrary, they had managed to infect Scottish
life with an almost undue spice of sprightliness and
vivacity, and to shake with a surprising and refreshing
roughness some very inveterate habits of routine and
conventional solemnity. The displays of the parade-
312 LARGER AIMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
ground were hardly likely to throw a glamour over
the eyes of a nation not prone to scenic effect, nor
were attacks on property apt to rouse undue nervous-
ness amongst a people the great majority of whom
could indulge in the proverbial laugh of the poor
when confronted by the robber. The truth is that
the triumph of the Moderates, who, for all practical
purposes, may be said to have formed the soundest
element in the Tory party, had been due to the
inevitable reaction against the severe sanctimonious
rule of the Covenanting spirit. Human nature could
not stand such a prolonged strain, and several con-
current influences tended to encourage the reaction.
Crushed, defeated, and discouraged as it was, the
Jacobite leaven had nevertheless permeated the nation,
and more zest was given to it by the fact that it seemed
to reflect the national spirit that still chafed against
the Union. A small but singularly powerful intel-
lectual society, which cherished national traditions
and was imbued with the "kindly" spirit of the
Scot, made dexterous use of this prevailing feeling.
The grip of the landed aristocracy on the heart of
Scotland was strong, and, in spite of the selfishness
and greed which often marked its economical action,
it did not lose its influence by withdrawing itself from
a homely sympathy with other classes, even while it
retained its pride of birth and its tenacity of the
privileges — sometimes the empty privileges — of rank.
The strength of the Tories lay in their close sympathy
with the mass of the nation, as exemplified in the
character and career of such a man as Henry Dundas ;
and that strength was far too great to be swept away
by a small political clique of smart Whig writers, who
sought their allies largely to the south of the Tweed,
WIDER MOVEMENTS IN THE NATION. 313
and who prided themselves upon being superior to the
provincial prejudices of their own people. The in-
fluences which sapped the foundations of the Tory
supremacy lay far deeper than that clique, and appealed
by more powerful motives to the national character.
These influences came from difi'erent, almost from
contrary, sources. In the first place, the Tories carried
down from the days of the Moderates a certain mood,
half cynical and half humorous, which inevitably made
them cling less closely to old prejudices. They had
associated freely with the society of the English capital,
and were mellowed by the association. As the danger
from abroad passed away, and the tension of men's
minds was less, a general softening of political
asperities supervened, and the bitterness of faction
became less, except within the small circle of aspiring
placemen. Movements towards reform found a certain
sympathy in both parties. It seemed as if a fusion
might take place, and towards the close of the period
of which we are treating the Government of Canning
seemed to be based on such a fusion. Something else
than the mere selfishness of privilege was now the
motive power in politics.
But by far the most important of the influences which
now began to afi'ect Scotland was of a very difi'erent
kind, and came from the religious revival. Again and
again throughout the previous century the old religious
spirit had attempted to reassert itself, to impose a strict
system of ethics, to rekindle strong enthusiasm, to
bring back the Church to the purer ideal of primi-
tive independence, and to a stricter view of orthodox
belief. Each such attempt had led, so far, not to a
change within the Church itself, but to a new secession
from her fold. Such secessions had not been based in
314 LARC4ER AIMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
any case upon the preaching of new doctrines or upon
the assumption of new liberty, but had been resolutely
directed to the restoring of some old doctrine or the
furbishing anew of some crumbling carved work in the
pinnacles of the ecclesiastical temple. For a time, and
over a restricted area in the West, the okl Covenanting
spirit had welcomed the religious revival as imported
from England under the influence of Whitfield ; but it
was soon found that an invincible barrier of orthodoxy
divided him from the Scottish sects, and he neither
understood nor appreciated the wire- drawn subtleties
upon which their religious enthusiasm rested. The
religious revival was to be of Scottish growth, and was
to find in Scottish soil the genius that was to give it
force and influence. The descendants of the High-
flying party began to reassert themselves, and, under
the vigorous and racy, if somewhat boisterous and
demagogic, generalship of the Reverend Andrew Thom-
son, they recovered much of their influence over the
heart of the nation. But the main part in this new
movement was to be taken by a spirit touched to finer
issues and with far more expansive sympathies. The
predominating influence in the Scotland of the new
generation was that of Thomas Chalmers. His per-
sonality and his career are not of biographical interest
alone : they were the expression of a national force —
perverted indeed, and misrepresented by many of the
movements to which his consummate energy gave rise,
but none the less distinct in the enthusiastic support
it gave to the spirit of nationality, and powerful in its
personal influence. Of no man is the biography more
clearly the reflection of the various phases through
which the national spirit passed, and to none was it
given to leave the imprint of his character more in-
THOMAS CHALMERS. 315
delibly on the nation's history during his own genera-
tion. We may trace errors in that career, and we may
regret some of its results, but it is none the less part
and parcel of the nation's life, and brings no little
lustre to her history.
Thomas Chalmers was born in 1780. His family had
in previous generations given more than one minister of
respectable position to the Church, but his father and
grandfather were merchants of fair standing at Easter
Anstruther in Fife, a county which has contributed not a
few notable names to Scottish annals. He w as one of a
family of nine sons and five daughters, all educated under
the patriarchal sway which was still to be found in Scot-
tish homes, and which gave a sturdiness of character
altogether unlike anything which blind parental tyranny
would have inspired. His father combined with a
zealous Conservatism in politics a strict adherence to
the Calvinistic tenets, and an earnest cast of religious
principle which in his earlier years rather galled the
exuberant spirits and daring independence of his son,
although it neither lessened his respect nor impaired
the warmth of his affection. The temperament of that
son was one of vigour and intensity; his temper was
keen, his humanity and his enjoyment of life fervid
and impetuous, and in his earlier years he leant to-
wards the liberal view of ethics which characterised the
Moderates. He held a vigorous attention to secular
interests, and a combative assertion of secular rights,
to be in no way incompatible with the proper discharge
of ministerial duties. Although he early chose the
clerical calling as that which attracted him most, he
did not allow it to blind him to other interests, and
threw himself with vigorous earnestness, and under the
stimulus of a keen ambition, into the pursuit of mathe-
316 LARGER AIMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
matical science and of literary distinction. In later
days he looked back with bitter regret to what he came
afterwards to regard as undue latitude of opinion and
culpable laxity in religious fervour. There is nothing
in the record of these early years inconsistent with a
high sense of duty and a whole-hearted devotion to
the sacred office ; but it was combined with something
which, as compared with his later attitude, seemed lax
and worldly, and far beneath the lofty standard of ethics
and of religious zeal which he desired to impose upon his
native exuberance of temper. It is characteristic of him
that, with all his keenness of intellectual effort, he found
the teaching of Dugald Stewart tame and jejune, and
that the calm and balanced platitudes of that professor,
which a more complacent and self-satisfied majority
deemed to be the products of consummate philoso-
phical wisdom, repelled his sympathy and strained
his patience. His grasp of mathematical truths and of
applied science was rather vigorous and effective than
profound or exact, but he brought to both an ardent
imagination, which gave to these pursuits a vividness of
interest that absorbed his enthusiastic energy. To his
eyes they were coloured with a brilliancy and an at-
tractiveness which they assume only for a few. ^ It was
to these pursuits that his attention was chiefly devoted,
and in them that he hoped to find the best outlet for
his ambition. He had early found employment in
connection with the teaching of mathematics at St.
Andrews University, and he was firmly resolved that
his clerical calling should not interfere with his work
in this field. But his popularity as a teacher — a
popularity due to his marvellous powers of exposition
and to the rich vein of imagination which clothed his
conception of scientific truths — was resented by the
HIS EARLY AMBITIONS. 317
duller but more authorised representatives of the
Faculty, and he found himself thrust aside with little
ceremony by men to whom his genius was something
of a reproach. The repulse fretted his ambition, and
it assumed, in his eyes, the appearance of a slur upon
his profession. His pride taught him to believe that
that profession ought not to yield place, even in secular
eminence, to any such ignoble jealousy, and there was
no conscious personal feeling in his determined resist-
ance to the restriction which it was sought to place
upon him. He pressed his rights to the verge of
insubordination, and seemed to take a delight, which
might be undisciplined, but was far from ignoble, in
flouting the pretensions of older and duller men. As
an extra-mural teacher, he gathered audiences that
shamed the University professors ; and it was in the
character of a champion of the Church that he stood
forth as the sturdy assertor of his own independence.
This phase of his life soon passed away, but it left as
an inheritance a dislike and disdain of that aspect of
Moderation which was, above all, dominant in the
University of St. Andrews ; and that dislike assumed
the importance, at a later day, of a far-reaching episode
in the history of the Moderate party, and as such
coloured the subsequent history of his country.
He was yet a very young man when he became the
ordained minister of Kilmany. From thence he went
to Glasgow to be minister of the Tron Church in 1815 ;
in 1818 he was transferred to the newly-founded parish
of St. John's in that city ; from there he went back to
St. Andrews, in 1823, as Professor of Moral Philosophy;
and in 1828 he became Professor of Divinity in Edin-
burgh University, where he remained until the Disrup-
tion in 1843. Such is the brief record of the outward
318 LARGER AIMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
episodes of his career. It is rather, however, with the
phases of his thought and his activity, and with the
degree to which these influenced or reflected the
nation's history during his generation, that we are
concerned.
Chalmers at first belonged to the Moderate party in
the Church, and he was, even more decidedly, a strong
adherent of Conservative thought, as he conceived it.
But his certainly was not the Conservatism of privilege
or of reaction. He disliked Radicalism for its secular
taint, for its defective appreciation of national charac-
teristics, for its proneness to substitute socialistic
methods for the individualism which his innate love
of freedom craved as a necessity of his being. His
Moderatism, however, was short-lived. He had been
attracted to that party because it gave a wider range to
clerical activity, because it asserted individual liberty,
because it based the rights of the Church on the sound
foundation of the law, and pressed the privileges and
the independence which were hers by reason of her
alliance with the State. The Moderate party had done
great things for Scotland, and it found its adherents
amongst the brightest intellects of the Church. It had
been amply justified in its fight against what it believed
to be concessions to fanaticism, and against a narrow
and formal code of ethics. But Moderatism was essen-
tially unfitted to deal with the problems of the new
generation, when the rapid increase of wealth and of
population was accompanied by increasing poverty and
discontent, with all their baffling problems that craved
solution. To all the landmarks of national history
Chalmers was passionately attached — to the Church,
to the Crown, to the hereditary aristocracy. They
appealed to his imagination and his patriotism ; they
HIS INNATE CONSERVATISM. 319
were opposed to the doctrinaire radicalism which his
soul hated, and which he thought degrading to the
moral fibre ; and they seemed to him in no way incom-
patible with that attachment and sympathy between
class and class in which he placed his ideal of social
happiness. A monotonous identity of rank and interest
would have been distasteful to him ; the hereditarj^
distinctions enshrined to him a part of the nation's
history which he would not wish to see obliterated.
He would certainly not have recognised the name ;
he would most probably have scouted the idea ; but
Chalmers' political standpoint was none the less much
nearer than he knew to the type that it is the fashion
in our own day to classify under the name of Tory
democracy — to its enemies a laughing - stock, to its
friends the embodiment of a generous ideal.
It is typical of Chalmers, and it lends additional
interest to his career, that he had to maintain, even
when his religious opinions assumed a more sombre
cast, a constant struggle against certain vigorous im-
pulses of his nature which he dreaded as too secular.
He was full of enjoyment of life ; keenly alive to all
its interests ; drawn irresistibly into its contests ; fight-
ing for his convictions with a passionate love of the
combat. In his earlier days he had been an ardent
volunteer; he spoke of himself as one for whom the
military career would have been most to his taste ; his
pulpit eloquence burst forth in almost extravagant
defiances to the foreign foe who threatened our liber-
ties, and on one occasion, we are told, he prayed that
the day which saw the fall of British independence
might be his last. Literary distinction was the aim of
his early ambition ; and the very ring of his oratory
had much of the secular about it. He had a passionate
320 LARGER AIMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
love of nature, and clothed it with a halo of romance.
But with all this he was constantly on his guard
against these tendencies, and suspicious of their hold
upon him. The enthusiasm of his nature made him
dread lest they should make the light of religious fervour
burn more dimly, and perhaps also lest they should
be misunderstood by his later religious associates.
With no conscious dissimulation, he was nevertheless
constantly inclined to find a religious motive for im-
pulses and energies which did him no dishonour, and
if he could not find it, to distrust and battle with them.
The struggle did not render him less lovable or less
sincere.
It was in this mood that, as his conception of duty
deepened and his ideal of the clerical profession rose
more high, he broke away from the Moderate party
and threw himself with fervour into what he had before
thought "the drivelling fanaticism" of the Evangelical
school. The real distinction between him and others
of his party was that he combined the new light of
religious enthusiasm with an ardent conservatism. The
New Light party had been in sympathy with Whiggism,
and under that influence had verged towards Dissent.
Chalmers' attitude seemed based on a new conception.
In the ardour of his attachment to the Church and to
the Constitution he knew no bounds. While he would
admit no taint of latitudinarianism, he would confine
himself by no narrowness of sympathy. He bated no
jot of the legal privileges of the Church ; but he would
keep her lamp burning with a religious enthusiasm no
less consuming than that of the most fervid Dissenter,
inflamed with the zeal of a new-found sectarianism.
It was an attitude which a few years before would have
appeared absolutely impossible ; that it now found such
QUALITIES OF HIS ELOQUENCE. 321
an exponent was the chief feature of the generation.
It was, of course, upon the resistless power of his
eloquence that his influence chiefly rested. The echoes
of oratorical prowess are apt to wax faint as the spoken
word withdraws into the past, and becomes only a tra-
dition ; and we are then inclined to accuse a preceding
generation of undue bias and of a lack of critical dis-
crimination, when we recall its enthusiastic praises of
the achievements of eloquence which called forth its
admiration and stirred its pulse. But the testimony
as to Chalmers' power is too strong to admit of doubt
or cavil. Of the usual physical aids to eloquence
he possessed none. His voice was poor, his accent
provincial, his gesture monotonous, and even his eye
lacked fire and was veiled by a heavy eyelid. The
first impression upon his hearers was often unfavour-
able, and even when he had warmed to his theme his
expressions were sometimes uncouth and harsh. How
much of this was due to the unconscious art of the
orator who learns to touch the chords at first with an
uncertain hand and so enhances the later effect, we
cannot now say. To many the eloquence of Chalmers
as read, seems to have something of superficiality, and
undoubtedly he essayed subjects of scientific and of
philosophical interest where he had neither the learn-
ing nor the dialectic power to be more than a popular
exponent whose flow of language foams with the tur-
gidity of a shallow stream. But this need not blind
us to his genius and his skill. There was something
about the cast of his oratory that was peculiarly secular ;
at times we fancy ourselves reading a debating speech
by Burke or Sheridan ; the sentences at their best flow
with an easy cadence, and are enriched by copious
imagery and by skilful use of antithesis. Humour,
VOL. II. X
322 LARGEE AIMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
sarcasm, dexterous allusion, the keen shafts of irony
and indignation, are blended in their composition ; but
while the qualities are there which would have com-
manded attention at the Bar or in the Senate, the effect
and force of the whole is redoubled by the pervading
power of religious enthusiasm. A pulpit orator has at
all events this advantage, that, unlike other speakers,
he may always rely upon the heart-whole sympathy
of the vast majority of his audience. This is too apt
to engender platitudes ; with such genius as that of
Chalmers it gives to the ring and movement of the
orator the easy swing and sovereign force of an im-
petuous stream. It was this which gave to him
unrivalled sway over his countrymen.
The chief work in which Chalmers engaged when
in Glasgow, and which helped largely to decide his
attitude towards the questions and parties of his time,
was the attempt to solve the social problem of poverty,
and of its increase alongside of advancing national
wealth. He sought to give it a religious aspect. He
chafed at the secular avocations which crowded upon
his ministerial duties. He tried to find religious
grounds for each of his theories of political economy.
All this involves something of a fallacy ; but in the
case of Chalmers it had none of the moral weakness
of a fallacy. Mistaken he might be, but the earnest-
ness of his effort never to rest without some religious
impulse to fortify his ideas, gave them a sincerity
and a force in which their real value lies.
The problem with which he sought to deal was
that of Poor Eelief in the case of a new, a populous,
and an overcrowded city parish. The Scottish system
of poor relief was a matter of slow and indigenous
growth. At first the only aid given to the poor was
POOR RELIEF IN SCOTLAND. 323
that which rested upon certain social customs vary-
ing with each locality. In some parishes the yuletide
gifts were gathered by a band of volunteer collectors,
and distributed amongst the poor. There was a
wide prevailing custom of mutual help. The marriage
of a young couple in humble circumstances was an
opportunity for levying contributions on the neigh-
bours to establish them with the necessaries of life.
To smooth the anxieties of old age the locality would
contribute to provide grave-clothes, and so secure
for those ending their lives the prospect of a decent
burial. A class of licensed bedesmen were enrolled,
and custom had given them a sanction almost equal
to that of statute law. Certain days and certain hours
of the day were recognised in many towns as reserved
for the operations of the tolerated beggars ; as long
as the exactions were not unduly strained, the custom
was not resented by the fairly well-to-do. As popu-
lation increased, however, begging became more closely
associated with crime and degradation, and there were
efforts to repress it ; but these efforts were often hesi-
tating, and had to encounter some determined opposi-
tion from those who found in the old customs a relic
of neighbourliness and mutual helpfulness which they
would fain preserve.
So far as there was any organised administration of
funds for the poor, it was in the hands of the ecclesi-
astical authority. In 1597 this was entrusted to the
kirk-session. In 1672 there was a discretionary
power given to levy an assessment ; but even though
the heritors were combined with the kirk-session
in raising funds, their distribution rested with the
latter. In the last decade of the eighteenth century
the ratio of the enrolled poor — even although the
324 LARGER AIMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
imposition of an assessment had been common for
fifty years — was still very moderate. In 1791 it was
only eighteen for each thousand of the population,
as compared with forty-eight in England. In the
first quarter of the present century it increased con-
siderably ; but there was still a widespread unwil-
lingness to follow the lax example of England. It
was only when discontent and altered social condi-
tions forced the problem on men's attention that
the necessity of action one way or another was felt.
The necessity became more urgent year by year, and
at length, in 1840, it forced on an official inquiry,
the fruit of which was seen in the Poor Law of 1845.
But by many Scotsmen that issue of the long
struggle was looked upon with deep and lasting regret,
as a degradation of the nation's independence, and a
distinct premium upon unthriftiness and waste. The
work of Chalmers in this field twenty years before
this consummation was reached represents an attempt
by other, and, as he conceived, higher, agencies to
stave off the evil of a universal poor-rate.
This is not the place to describe with minuteness
of detail the scheme by which Chalmers proposed to
deal with the poor of his own parish of St. John's.
The general features of the scheme are, however, of
considerable interest. He based his plan on his own
reading of the lessons of political economy, and if
that reading was not strictly scientific, and bore —
perhaps too strongly to let it serve as a gauge of
the proper application of economical laws — the im-
press of his own emotions and his own convictions
as to what was for the ultimate good of humanity,
it is none the less attractive on that account. His
leading aim was to trust to men themselves to work
THE WORK OF CHALMERS IN THAT FIELD. 325
out their own salvation, and to rescue them from
outside agency which would limit their independence,
restrict their liberty, and weaken their moral fibre.
He detested the idea of an assessment for poor relief,
and he assailed it from every side, and with the most
diverse weapons. It checked the flow of generosity
and of mutual helpfulness, and thus starved the best
instincts of human nature. It broke with the memories
of the past, and created a rough breach in the tradi-
tion of Scotland. It made men into machines, and
effaced their feeling of a common brotherhood. For
the benefit of the economist he urged its extravagance,
as proved by the contrast between England and Scotland
in the past, and by the somewhat unconvincing com-
parison between what his own impetuous ardour and
personal influence could achieve in a single parish
with what was done by official agency over the wide
arena of England. It was, he asserted, false to human
nature because it sought to develop character by means
of a modicum of comfort, whereas character must be
the starting-point, and comfort not its source but its
result.
He sought to keep at a distance all official agencies,
and all statutory remedies. But there was a special
feature in his scheme which marks his attitude in
ecclesiastical matters. He determined to work on the
old parochial system, and to force each parish, which
he held to be represented by the congregation of
that parish, to recognise its own responsibility, and to
exercise its own energy in coping with the diflficulty
in its midst. Chalmers' ideal would really have made
of the Church congregation an ever active and powerful
agency of economical administration. The Church was
not merely to be a religious teacher, it was to gather
326 LARGER AIxMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
into its own hand the social organisation of the parish,
and to be the motive power in its civil administration.
His idea of an Established Church was not Erastian ;
it was not based upon any high notion of hierarchical
authority ; it was parochial in its essence, and he had
no sympathy with the conception of the Church as
a vast agency dominated by central discipline. But it
was none the less an extended and ambitious scheme
of ecclesiastical polity. To him the Church was not
necessarily the authoritative exponent of the Truth,
possessing an intrinsic claim to obedience as the
guardian and divinely appointed receptacle of true
doctrine ; it was rather an agency for spreading the
truth, to be judged and tested by the energy and
learning and sincerity of its clergy — not by their
ecclesiastical authority. It was to be a guide, a living
influence, an ever active ally of the State, sharing in
the task of economical administration, and exercising
its influence in every social question. In his concep-
tion its task was a great, a proud, and a dignified one ;
and yet it was to achieve it, not as possessing any
inherited authority, but by its own living energy. The
growth of new sects, the spread of religious dissent,
the rivalries that such dissent produced, Chalmers
was ready to ignore. To many phases of the new
sects, to much of their doctrine and many of their
principles, he was in no w'ay radically opposed, but
rather hoped that they would stimulate the Church
by a healthy rivalry. Other phases of religious
doctrine he looked upon as distinctly wrong, but
against these he would not show intolerance, not
because he judged them leniently, but because he had
no doubt of the ultimate triumph of the Church. If
her own energy did not enable her to hold her place,
HIS CONCEPTIOX OF THE CHURCH. 327
some other agency, more true to the high calliDg
which he held to be hers, would assume the task
and maintain the truth. That agency would be the
most active, the most sincere, the most faithful, the
most self-sacrificing : by its energy, not by its authority,
it would hold its place. If the State ignored it, the
loss would be that of the State, and not that of the
Church. Its identity from age to age, its traditions
and its inherited authority, its apostolical succession,
its hierarchical claims, all these meant little to him.
But a State which should ignore the religious principle
was to him no State at all. That Church which was
most living and most energetic, which rose most
completely to the height of its task, that Church
and that alone was the real palladium of the religious
principle ; and for it he would claim all the endow-
ments, all the authority which the State could confer,
and all the reverence which it was bound to show.
It is a peculiar ideal of a Church establishment, and
one to which, perhaps, only a minority of the adherents
of Church establishment in our own day would sub-
scribe. It is doubtful whether it took sufficient
account of the ever-shifting phases of the national
attitude towards religion. But it was a manly and
bold theory, and it served admirably to inspire his
own enthusiasm, and to give earnestness to his own
untiring activity and devotion.
This was the central inspiration of his own efforts
in organising poor relief The Church was to combat
the ills of poverty by raising the moral standard of
society. It was by its congregational agencies to be
the dispenser of a free charity, from which each man
would keep aloof only at his own peril. Its aid was
not to be restricted to those of its own creed ; but
328 LARGER AIMS IN POLITICS AND IX THE CHURCH.
such liberality was to rest not upon any abstract
theory as to the equal rights of all forms of belief,
but upon a sure confidence that the truth must prevail,
and that all variations from it were in their nature
evanescent and doomed to decay.
To such a man as Chalmers, success, within the
range of his own activity, was almost certain, and in
his own parish, so long as he remained as its adminis-
trator, and even while the impress of his own person-
ality as a great figure in the Scottish world was felt,
that success was assured. It was in 1818 that he
changed from the Tron Church, one of the old city
parishes of Glasgow, to the newly established parish of
St. John's. Up to that time the administration of
poor relief was singularly ill-organised. There were
two sources of that relief : first, the Church collection,
administered, on the recommendation of the kirk-
session of each Church, by the General Session, consist-
ing of all the ministers and elders of the city. When
their resources failed they were supplemented by the
town hospital, which administered the legal assess-
ment. This plan effectually crushed all independence,
and it was singularly extravagant. Those who ad-
mitted the paupers to the roll, in the first instance,
were responsible only for their own funds, and when
these were exhausted they were able to hand on the
poor whom they had placed on the pauper roll to the
unrestricted purse of the town hospital. They had
no motive to be strict in placing names on the pauper
roll, seeing that they were responsible only for a small
proportion of their cost. Such a system sapped all
legitimate strictness, and produced a stream that was
^,^ c,. ,., swollen by the laxity of the first admission, and by the
^ fr^^^^'^ase with which the burden was handed on.
THE PAROCHIAL SYSTEM. 329
Chalmers came to a clear understanding with the
Town Council — an understanding which was ratified
by the Court of Session — that the poor of St. John's
should be dealt with separately, and that the parish of
St. John's should assume the whole responsibility for
them. His first principle was the strengthening of the
parochial system. With him that was hereditary, as it
was, indeed, linked with all that was most character-
istic of the Scottish spirit. So strongly had his father
adhered to this principle that he had refused to go to a
church within a stone's throw of his own parish, even
when his son was to officiate in it. The parish was to
him, as it was to most Scotsmen, a mere extension of
the family principle — as strong in its bonds, and as
supreme in its command of his affections. To Chalmers,
it seemed that the most effective way of combating the
difficulties of the great towns with their gathering
crowds of population, and their seething social difficul-
ties, was the parochial system that had given its impress
to the country districts. The parish was to bear its
own responsibilities, and was to reap the benefit of its
own economies. It was to stimulate independence, to
promote mutual help, to cultivate sedulously the germ
of a pride of character, that grew best in the wholesome
soil of neighbourly sympathy. What was saved — and
much was saved — in the relief of pauperism was to be
spent on the establishment of parish schools. These
schools were to be cheap but not to be free ; and they
were to be open to all — rich and poor alike. Their
object was not to be that of raising men out of their
station, but that of making them worthy citizens what-
ever their station might be. His ideal was that of a
nation where even the humblest might be enriched ^K-^t r^
by what was more than outward wealth— where inH^t^^*
330 LARGER AIMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
tellectual pleasures were to be the common inherit-
ance of all — not a mere machinery for the redress
of social inequalities. These last Chalmers held of
comparatively small moment, and he regarded their
abolition as the daydream of whimsical theorists. His
object was, as he himself put it, " not to raise men in
the artificial scale of life, but to raise them on that far
nobler scale which has respect to the virtues of mind,
and the prospects of immortality. It is to confer a
truer dignity upon each than if the crown of an earthly
potentate was bestowed upon him." It might suit
political theorists to speak of this as a Utopia ; to the
mind of Chalmers it was a real and practical aim,
which his own earnestness and enthusiasm enabled
him to foresee in vivid realisation.
But, alas for the ultimate success of his scheme, and
for the hopes of Scotland, the current of feeling and of
political party was all against him. For a time the
scheme succeeded. Its economy was amazing. The
poor-law administration of the district, which had
before cost £1400 a year, sank to £280, and it was not
only easily met by the congregational funds, but left a
handsome surplus out of which schools were established
on a flourishing foundation, and the crying evil of the
city — its fall from the high ideal of Scottish education
— was successfully fought. The scheme met with keen
opposition and with untiring ridicule ; but its enemies
were forced at last to resort to the theory that its suc-
cess depended only on his own genius and his indomit-
able power of organisation. A Chalmers was not to be
found in every parish : his very success was a reproach
to his more lukewarm brethren, and the conviction
slowly spread that a remedy for the evils of a new state
of society must be sought by the more mechanical and
PECL'LIARITY OF HIS POSITION. 331
prosaic methods of legislation. Before his death —
when Chalmers had drifted into other controversies,
and had become the leader of the movement which was
to deal the Church of his enthusiasm the most deadly
blow that she had ever suffered — the necessity of a
legal assessment for the poor was fully admitted and
had become an essential part of the constitution.
Staggering under the disaster of the Disruption, the
Church could no longer hope to fulfil the function
which he had so proudly claimed for her ; and his own
hand had dealt the blow to which her weakness and
her crippled powers were due.
Powerful as he was as a party leader, and strongly
as he impressed himself upon the life of the nation,
Chalmers to a certain extent stood alone, and we are
often struck by the fact that his associates shared only
a portion of his spirit, and were his allies only in a
fragment of the scheme which he made his ideal, and
which was so rich in promise for Scotland. He broke
away from the Moderate party ; but he retained, in all
its force, the pride which had belonged to the Moderate
party in the previous generation, and which had made
the Church, as conceived by them, the influential ally
of the State, screened off from no secular interest, and
claiming a leading part in all agencies for good. The
Evangelical party impressed him strongly, and perhaps
affected him with an undue measure of what to its
enemies appeared sanctimoniousness : but even when
he spoke most strongly with the tone of the Evangelical,
he did not bate one jot of his desire that the Church
should take a lead in literature and in learning. He
was surrounded by many to whom such things had a
tincture of secularism, and who were ready to condone
feebleness and unctuousness for the sake of the fervour
332 LARGER AIMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
of their religious enthusiasm ; but his own spirit was
not tamed to conformity with such a view. No one
felt more strongly — even though at times he seemed to
recoil from the feeling — that religion might make a bad
man good, but could not make a weak man strong.
There was a vigorous solidarity in Chalmers' opinions,
even when they seemed to bring him into contact with
diverse parties. With his Evangelical fervour, he
retained something of the old spirit of the Moderates.
He distrusted above all, that which supplemented indi-
vidual effort and independence by formal or mechani-
cal aids. With the Whigs, he opposed the Corn Laws ;
but it was not because, like them, he thought the Corn
Laws unjust in their aim, or unduly favourable to the
agricultural interest, but because he thought them an
attempt to do by legislative means what should have
been left to the operation of natural laws. With the
Tories, he opposed Parliamentary reform ; but not be-
cause he feared that Parliamentary reform would destroy
privilege ; rather because he thought that political
weight should follow, and should not precede, worth
and education, and because he did not choose that the
constitution should be at the mercy of an unjudging
mob. He was no worshipper of rank ; but lie looked
upon hereditary distinctions as landmarks in the nation's
history, and as the expression of her traditions. No
man assailed more vigorously a craven fear of authority ;
but no one in Scotland had his enthusiasm more stirred
by the visit of George IV., which seemed to revive
something of the old spirit of Scottish loyalty. The
democratic spirit was strong in him, but he was repelled
by the impiety as well as by the iconoclasm of the
political agitator, and strove to dissociate his own
efforts at social reform from any sympathy with the
HIS RESPECT FOR CHURCH ESTABLISHMENTS. 333
violence of reforming zeal. There was no more devoted
Scotsman, no more keen presbyterian ; but his whole
spirit was attracted by the learned dignity and by the
ornate ritual of the Anglican Establishment. He was
the ardent supporter of her rich endowments, and he
owned with her a sympathy to parallel which we must
go back to the days of Robertson and Carlyle. " We
hold it," he says in a burst of admiration of the Angli-
can Church, " we hold it a refreshing spectacle at a
time when meagre socinianism pours forth a new supply
of flippancies and errors, when we behold an armed
champion come forth in full equipment from some high
and lettered retreat of that noble hierarchy." " Sir,"
he said on another occasion, when an opponent of
ecclesiastical endowments was decrying the vast reve-
nues of the Bishopric of Durham, " if all that has
been received for the bishopric since the foundation
of the See were set down as a payment for Butler's
* Analogy,' I should esteem it a cheap purchase."
As a parish minister Chalmers might have continued
to exercise a powerful influence on social questions
in Scotland during the decade from 1820 to 1830, and
might have won for the Church a decisive part in the
development of the nation. It is matter of regret that
in 1823 he broke away from that position, and chose
the more leisured post of Professor of Moral Philo-
sophy at St. xlndrews. It was in pulpit eloquence
that his strength chiefly lay, and the gain to literature
by his leisure was but small. Worse than that, his
leisure involved him more closely in the discussions of
the Church Courts, and in the heated atmosphere of
these scenes his more free and independent ideals
had less scope. Let us see how the contests on which
he now entered shaped his course and forced him step
334 LARGER AIMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
by step into an attitude which was widely separated
from that which he held as one who sought to make
the Church play a lofty part as social regenerator on
Conservative lines.
In the same year in which Chalmers transferred his
energies from Glasgow to St. Andrews, he took a
prominent part in a controversy in the Church Courts
which marked the advance of a new spirit in the
Church. The Moderate party had always vindicated
for the Church and her clergy the right to take a large
part in secular and, above all, in literary work. They
looked upon this as likely not only to contribute to
her dignity, but to liberalise her spirit. They dreaded
— perhaps with exaggerated fear — a too exclusive
absorption in ecclesiastical interests or in religious
occupations, and thought that the influence of the
Church was enhanced by the enlargement of the
horizon of her clergy, and by this opportunity of their
attaining a better competence than was provided by
the limited resources of their parochial charges. This
failing had led them to favour pluralities, and to resent
any self-denying ordinance by which ministers should
be debarred from adding parochial charges to other
offices. The Evangelical spirit which was now re-
asserting itself, and which represented, in a modified
form, the old spirit of the High-flyers, or (as they were
called when their tenets were even more pronounced)
the "Wild" party, was strongly opposed to this, and
resented the intrusion of secular engagements upon
the attention of those selected for parochial charges.
In the year 1823 this controversy was sharply exer-
cised over the case of Dr. Macfarlane, who, being
Principal of Glasgow University, was nominated by
the Crown to one of the charges of the High Church
OPPOSITION TO PLUKALITIES. 335
of Glasgow. The Presbytery refused to give effect
to the presentation, and the matter ultimately came
before the Assembly, where Dr. Chalmers, who had
drifted far from the views of his earlier days, took a
prominent part in supporting the decision of the
Presbytery. The Assembly confirmed the presenta-
tion ; but although defeated for the time, the Evan-
gelicals managed to show that their strength in the
Church was enormously increased.
That party was now led with great ability, and
almost superabundant energy, by Dr. Andrew Thom-
son, of St. George's Church, Edinburgh. He was
endowed with all the qualities most effective in
debate, with a strong flow of humour, amazing-
eloquence of a rough sort, great powers of sarcasm,
and a readiness in strategy which would have gained
for him undisputed eminence even on the larger
arena of St. Stephen's. Besides all this, he was a man
of undaunted courage, and unresting vigour, and his
high fame as a pulpit orator, added to the social
popularity which his genial wit and buoyant spirits
won for him, made him unquestionably a leader, not
in the Church only, but in every secular business of
the metropolis. Of the higher traits of Chalmers'
genius, of his imagination, his romance, his lofty
chivalry — Thomson possessed nothing. But the
partnership of the two was invincibly strong. None
of the Moderate leaders could be placed in comparison
with these two, and for the few years that remained
to Thomson the friendship between them was one of
intense and unabating warmth.
In 1825 the discussion on pluralities was renewed.
Chalmers was the chief spokesman for the Evangelical
opposition, and his speech marks, as clearly as any
336 LARGER AIMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
other circumstance, the contrast between his earlier
and his later attitude. An admirable opportunity for
a passage of most effective eloquence was given by
a maladroit debater, who quoted an early and anony-
mous pamphlet, known to be from Chalmers' pen,
in which he had asserted, in opposition to Playfair,
who sought, on grounds quite different from the
Evangelicals, to exclude the clergy from university
appointments, that his own experience proved to him
"that after the discharge of his parochial duties, a
minister could have five days in the week of un-
interrupted leisure for the prosecution of any science
in which his taste might dispose him to engage,"
Chalmers rose to the occasion. In well-chosen
language he admitted the authorship of the twenty-
years-old pamphlet. He had hoped " that it was
mouldering in silence, forgotten and disregarded."
He was deeply grateful to the gentleman who had
given him an opportunity for a public recantation.
He offered himself "a repentant culprit before the
bar of this venerable Assembly." He had written
the pamphlet, stung by what he thought a slight
on the clergy of the Church, and he had maintained
that devoted attention to the study of mathematics
was not dissonant to the proper habits of a clergyman.
" Alas ! sir, so I thought in my ignorance and pride.
I have now no reserve in saying that the sentiment
was wrong, and that, in the utterance of it, I penned
what was most outrageously wrong. Strangely blinded
that I was ! What, sir, is the object of mathematical
science? Magnitude and the proportions of magni-
tude. But, then, sir, I had forgotten two magnitudes
— I thought not of the littleness of time — I recklessly
thought not of the greatness of eternity."
REVIVAL OF THE EVANGELICAL PAETY, 337
With these words, Chalmers marked not for himself
only, but for his Church, a vast change of attitude
which powerfully affected the whole country. The old
spirit which had prevailed in the last half of the
eighteenth century, and which extended far into the
present, was passing away. Stripped of some of their
exaggerations, without those absurdities which had
moved the sarcasm, not of the opponents of the Church
alone, but even of such of her clergy as Dr. Alexander
Carlyle — but not perhaps altogether without some of
the old fierceness of ecclesiastical rancour, the Evan-
gelicals were again coming to the front. It was not
given to all to blend the new spirit with the broad
genius and rich humanity of Chalmers, or with the
genial buoyancy of Thomson. But unquestionably the
future, for a time, was to lie with that new party,
which seemed also to be in sympathy with the new
spirit dominating English politics, and awakening an
echo also in the political aspirations of the best Scots-
men of the day.
During these years Chalmers continued to mingle in
other than ecclesiastical controversies. He still fought
with vigour against the proposals for extending an
assessment for the poor. He still resented all un-
necessary interference of the State. The socialism
he advocated was to be Christian. But his Christian
socialism was not to be a system by which, in accor-
dance with the theory fashionable in our own day,
Christianity is to be made the basis of a vast network
of legislative interference. It was to be a work of the
Church, not merely in its conception, but in its opera-
tion, and was to be enforced by religious — nay, by
ecclesiastical — sanction. It was essentially the same
motive that made him welcome the repeal, by Canning
VOL. II. Y
338 LARGER AIMS IN POLITICS AND IN THE CHURCH.
and Huskisson, of the laws against combinations of
workmen, while he protested with equal vehemence
against any extension of such combinations as would
limit in any way the freedom of the individual work-
man. From the strenuous assertion of individual free-
dom he never wavered, however much his position
changed in regard to other disputes.
In 1828 Chalmers quitted St. Andrews, where he
had resented the prevalence of the old Moderate spirit,
and where he had done his best to stir the embers
of a religious revival, for Edinburgh, where he was
appointed Professor of Divinity. In 1829 we find him
taking a prominent part in support of the Catholic
Relief Bill, which was then being promoted by the
Tory Government of Peel and Wellington.
In that year a great meeting was held in Edinburgh
in support of the Bill, and the most prominent members
of both political parties took part in it— an instance
of communication which was almost unexampled, and
which was all the more strange, when w^e recall what
had been the violence of opposition to any semblance
of such rehef on the part of the Evangehcal party or
their predecessors in 1780, when their advocacy of the
removal of disabilities had well-nigh cost the Moderates
their power in Scotland. Chalmers' advocacy of emanci-
pation was bold, and he brought to its service all his
eloquence. But it is permissible to doubt whether it
was based on altogether logical grounds, or whether it
embraced a conception of religious liberty which would
satisfy the more ardent supporters of that very indefinite
term. Chalmers avowedly supported Catholic Rehef, as
a means of injuring Catholicism., and with the hope that
it might sap the foundations of that creed. Such con-
fidence was based on a singular want of political fore-
THE CATHOLIC RELIEF BILL. 339
sight, and it involved a species of toleration which the
Catholics might not unreasonably resent. Doubtless
it was sincere ; but symptoms are not wanting which
show that Chalmers had in his later years some doubt
whether the secure confidence which he then expressed
was altogether justified by facts and results.^
But with 1830 a new epoch opens. The political
world saw a reversal of long-cherished theories, and a
transfer of influence from one party to another which
was paralleled by that in the Church. We have now
to see how these two streams advanced for a time
apart, and then gradually coalesced. In this sketch of
Chalmers' work, we have sought to show how, typified
by him and stirred by his surpassing influence, a new
spirit pervaded Scottish life, and helped to enlarge the
national view of social and political questions. It was
a spirit confined to no one party, and of which the
credit cannot be assumed by any political clique, how-
ever active and self-assertive.
1 See Life, by Dr. Hanna, voL iii. p. 2.39. " I Lave l^een candidly
informed," says liis biograi^lier and son-in-law, "that when spoken to
about the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill, not long before his death,
he said it was a historical blunder.'' The gloss which Dr. Hanna puts
upon this does not materially alter its purport or effect.
140
CHAPTER XXL
1830 TO 1834.
We have seen two influences which were gradually,
but profoundly, changing the course of politics in
Scotland. In place of the older and more narrow
Toryism of Castlereagh, built upon a fear of revolution
which old memories of national danger kept alive, and
stimulated by all the selfishness of privilege, there was
now a new spirit which aimed at reconstructing the
political machine to the new needs of the time, in-
spired by high hopes and guided by wise and thoughtful
statesmanship — a spirit to which Peel and Canning,
each in his different way, mainly contributed. That
spirit was no monopoly of a Whig faction ; for the
moment, indeed, many of those who represented it
with greatest distinction belonged to the Tory and
not to the Whig party. The same influence extended
to Scotland, which had her full share in the larger
motives of the age ; and far beyond the little clique
that clung round the Edinhurgh Review, and fancied
itself the sole hope of political regeneration, it aroused
sympathy amongst Scotsmen of light and leading. In
its popular phase — because it had a popular phase —
that spirit received a powerful stimulus from the wave
of religious revival that was passing over Scotland,
REMAINS OF THE OLDER TORYISM. 341
and it is impossible to deny that even in the ecclesi-
astical disputes to which that revival soon gave rise,
and which we shall presently have to examine, the
new movement received some additional impetus. But
it does not follow that the older spirit of Scottish
Toryism, which did not rest upon privilege alone,
but was based largely on venerated traditions and on
keen national feeling ; which was honestly distrustful
of innovation, and which had no sympathy with the
religious revival, so alien to the older spirit of Modera-
tism ; which had something of romance in its composi-
tion, and felt an aversion to the modern maxims of the
economist and the doctrinaire — it does not follow that
this spirit was entirely dead. The great luminary,
whose magic hand had made the spell of Scottish
romance potent all over Europe, was wedded to the
older views. Scott was indeed no adept in political
science. His opinions were not those of any party,
but exclusively his own. They were coloured by the
poetry of his nature, and, while they had something
of the free-lance which it was his nature to be, their
very intensity of conviction, and their loyalty to old,
and above all to national, traditions, gave them a halo
of chivalry which puzzled and perplexed the lesser
men around him. The very tenacity of his friendships,
and his loyalty to the names of the past, made smaller
men criticise and carp at that which they did not
understand. His geniality and breadth of character
prevented him from feeling any very strong sympathy
with the enthusiasm of religious feeling that seemed
to swathe human morality in the swaddling bands of
a somewhat unctuous and obtrusive code of religious
ethics. We have heard, by oral tradition, a charac-
teristic saying of Scott's to a lady who confessed that,
342 1830 TO 1834.
in an age of increasing strictness, she sometimes in-
dulged in the more innocent social pleasures — " It is
refreshing, madam, nowadays to find a lady who is no
better than she ought to be." His political ideals —
and, after all, no ignoble ones — were Pitt and Henry
Dundas ; and he found no such men amongst his new
contemporaries. The Whigs were to him the de-
scendants of the old Jacobins ; and even where he
saw the necessity for change he was not disposed to
entrust the process of change to their unhallowed
hands and irreverent methods. He was still to make
a doughty fight for Scottish privilege, and to wield a
lance against principles which seemed likely to in-
crease the influence of his lifelong foes.
That fight was waged on the unlikely field of
currency reform. In such a field Scott had little
honour to gain, and it can hardly be maintained that
he was fitted either by nature or by training to be a
calm or dispassionate judge in such a dispute. But
he had many points on his side, and even less enthu-
siastic maintainers of Scottish privileges than Scott
might well have been stirred to combat in such a
cause. The Scottish bankers were able and on the
whole cautious men. We have seen the growth of the
Scottish system ; how admirably it had been adapted
to the needs of the country ; how free it was from
the unwholesome monopoly which had been the bane
of English banking ; and how few comparatively had
been the serious disasters which had marked its free
development. But however able in business Scottish
bankers might be, they were hardly possessed of those
gifts of sarcasm and of humour which could give
vogue and popular form to their contentions. It was
a godsend to them when Scott sharpened his sword
SCOTT S DKFENX'E OF SCOTTISH BANKIXG. 343
for the fight and descended into the controversial
arena in a mood that brooked no surrender. His
opponents had undoubtedly some strong arguments
to back their proposals. The reckless speculation
which was characteristic of the time gave only too
much ground for the economists to raise questions as
to the soundness of the financial position of the
country ; and a check upon the paper currency became
urgent. But the urgency was mainly a matter which
concerned England. It was pressed largely in the
interests of that monopoly, which had made of Eng-
lish banking an artificial system resting upon legis-
lative nostrums. Had the proposed restriction been
confined to England, no objection would have been
raised. But the newest reformers were wedded to
the notion of uniformity. They could not tolerate any
anomaly, on whatever historic basis, or whatever
national predilection, it might rest. Amongst their
proposed reforms they included the curtailing of the
power of Scottish banks to issue £1 notes. Unfor-
tunately, by habit, by motives of convenience, by all
the conditions under which its commercial operations
had grown out of the most unpromising beginnings,
Scotland clung to these notes with an almost passionate
attachment. The proposal to abolish them roused the
keenest resentment ; and the resentment required only
a powerful champion to give to it the importance of
a national dispute.
Scott was no uncompromising Tory. His sound
common-sense made him perfectly able to discern when
resistance to change might be exaggerated, and when
concession was wise. "Tory principles," we find him
saying in his Diary in 1825, after attending a festal
gathering of the adherents of the cause, " Avere rather
344 1830 TO 1834.
too violently upheld by some speakers." " There are
repairs in the structure of our constitution," he says
in the same Diary less than two years later, "which
ought to be made at this season, and without Avhicli
the people will not long be silent." These were not
the words of an uncompromising enemy of change.
But the threatened curtailment of Scottish privileges
roused him to resistance to what he deemed an un-
worthy concession to the doctrines of the economists
by the Tory Government ; and in a mood of passionate
anger which he seldom showed, he stood forth as the
whole-hearted defender of the existing state of
things. His own recent financial misfortunes seemed
to sting him into even greater bitterness of resentment,
and to confirm him in a determination to prove him-
self independent of all political parties. His fight for
Scottish privileges was carried on, not against a A¥hig
Government, but against Canning and his friend Lord
Melville, the son of his early patron, Henry Dundas.
In three letters which he issued under the signature of
" Malachi Malagrowther," he roused a storm of anger
against the proposal which stirred the national spirit
of his country, moved the animosity of the economists,
and effectually deterred the Ministry from the pro-
posal. The Scottish notes were preserved, and con-
tinued to form the main part of the currency. It
requires no long memory to recall the time when
sovereigns were taken in their place only with reluc-
tance and suspicion ; and even now, in many parts
of Scotland, while the suspicion of specie payments
has disappeared, inveterate and traditional habit still
makes the greasy and begrimed notes a more grateful
and congenial medium.
For the political aspect of the struggle Scott had
HIS APPEAL TO NATIONAL INSTINCTS. 345
little care. "From year's end to year's end I have
scarce a thought of politics," he says; but the "late
disposition to change everything in Scotland to an
English model " roused his patriotic zeal to the boiling-
point ; he "rejoiced to see the old red lion ramp a
little, and the thistle again claim its 7iemo me impune."
He was glad to find that " Malachi reads like the work
of an uncompromising right-forward Scot of the old
school." He knew that old friendships would be
risked ; but he regretted that the Scottish managers
were lukewarm to the fight, and despised the cautious
timidity of their subservience to English ideas. "Ah,
Hal Uundas," he writes, " there was no truckling in
thy day ! " He rejoiced to find that once more Scot-
land was ready to respond to an appeal made to her
national instincts ; and no thought of the consequences
held him back. He foresaw what it meant for him-
self; but his only regret was that those whom he
had counted as his friends did not share his own
enthusiasm.
The fight, hot and keen while it lasted, had some
serious consequences. It made of Scott a far more
confirmed opponent of concessions, and ranked him
far more decidedly, for the few years that remained of
his life, on the side of what seemed a party of stern
and uncompromising resistance to change. This atti-
tude of angry contempt for the new political nostrums
that were rife became part and parcel of his stern fight
against the misfortunes that clouded his later days.
The apparent compromise of principle that brought
Canning close to the Whigs in 1827 was viewed by
Scott with strong suspicion. He did not see — perhaps
did not wish to see — that a new spirit, powerfully
affecting Scotland, was creeping into politics. Mean-
346 • 1830 TO 1834.
while he distrusted the alliance, because he feared
that it might bring about a sweeping measure of
Parliamentary Keform, which he conceived as in-
evitably the precursor of revolution. This was no
proof of a narrow spirit on Scott's part ; it only showed
that in his last years he clung to the ideas that had
been accepted as part of the national creed in his
earlier days, and could not shake himself free from
the traditions of his life. There was much that was
singularly prophetic in his forecast of his own nation's
destinies. He did not deceive himself as to the
tendency of popular opinion. "The whole burgher
class of Scotland," he writes to Sir Robert Dundas in
1826, "are gradually preparing for radical reform — I
mean the middling and respectable classes ; and when
a burgh reform comes, which cannot perhaps be long
delayed, ministers will not return a member from
the towns. The gentry will abide longer by sound
principles : for they are needy, and desire advance-
ment for their sons, and appointments, and so on.
But this is a very hollow dependence, and those who
sincerely hold ancient opinions are waxing old." What-
ever Scott's opinions might be, there is no question but
that he held them sincerely. To one thing he clung
with all the tenacity of a romantic spirit : that was
the supreme value to Scotland of her own national
distinctiveness. He dreaded a constant series of legis-
lative changes, conceived, as he deemed them to be,
on artificial lines. " Scotland," he writes to Croker,
" completely liberalised, as she is in a fair way of
being, will be the most dangerous neighbour to Eng-
land that she has had since 1639. . . . If you imscotch
us, you will find us damned mischievous Englishmen.
The restless and yet laborious and constantly watchful
HIS SUSPICION OF COMPIIOMISE. 347
character of the people, their desire for speculation
in politics or anything else, only restrained by some
proud feelings about their own country, now become
antiquated, and which bald measures will tend much
to destroy, will make them, under a wrong direction,
the most formidable revolutionists who ever took the
field of innovation."
He distrusted the Whig tendencies of the Govern-
ment ; and when Canning died, only a few months
after he had become Prime Minister, Scott thought
that all his wit and eloquence, all his ambition and
his debating power, had been wasted in a hopeless
attempt to conciliate irreconcilable views. He saw
how^ helpless and evanescent was the figment of power
in the hands of that " transient and embarrassed
phantom " (as Disraeli describes him), Lord Goderich ;
and he hailed with equal respect, if not with equal
cordiality, as a relief from such feeble shuffling, the
leaders of the opposite parties, who knew their own
minds and stooped to no compromises — the Duke
of Wellington and Earl Grey. Meanwhile he con-
templated, if not with sympathy, at least with no
active misgiving, the movement towards Catholic
Emancipation in 1829 ; and although he w^as not
one of those who attended the great meeting in Edin-
burgh— where both sides were represented — in favour
of that measure, he yet was prepared to welcome it as
justified by the circumstances of the time.
Scott's dread of reform was, then, a feeling prompted
by ardent love of the past, and not by any unwillingness
to redress abuses. And for the bulk of the nation, a
new spirit of compromise had dawned. Parliamentary
Reform did not yet seem so near as it really was. Its
discussion did not yet produce the bitterness of feeling
348 1830 TO 1834.
which it was shortly to call forth : and so far as other
topics were concerned, the political parties seemed to
be coming closer together. The last twenty years had
seen great changes. It was no longer the fashion to
hush all talk of reform, and to treat it as the certain
precursor of revolution. New ideas were rife ; new
interests Avere making themselves felt : and the nation
was prepared to touch abuses with a bolder hand. A
new sense of social duty had asserted itself; and the
absorption of power by a privileged territorial class
was no longer possible. In 1829 Jeffrey was elected
Dean of Faculty, which proved that political feeling was
not strong enough to keep a prominent Whig out of
the position of first representative of a profession, the
majority of which held political opinions the very
reverse of his. It is true that, as a concession to
the generosity of his opponents, and as a becoming
recognition of the responsibilities of the position,
Jeffrey ceased to be editor of the Edinburgh Eevieiv.
But the election made it clear that the party he repre-
sented had attained to a position far different from
that which it held when he started the Review, seven
and twenty years before, as one of a hopeless and
hated minority. The question of Parliamentary Re-
form necessarily made a dividing mark between Whig
and Tory. But for the moment that question was a
speculative one, and the Tory party had lost its high
pretensions and modified the rigidity of its creed, and
many of its members were not unwilling to aid in the
work of social regeneration.
The new spirit found, as we have said, a powerful
ally in the Church. Under the guidance of such a
man as Chalmers — Conservative in his principles, but
none the less the friend of many of the Whigs, and
INFLUENCE OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITICS. 349
associated with them in many of their schemes — the
Church had been animated with a greater zeal, and
was roused to greater keenness in grappling with the
problems which with increasing urgency were demand-
ing solution in a society rendered more complicated
by the increase of wealth and the shifting of the old
landmarks. The old traditions were passing away ;
the old social order was becoming a memory of the
past ; and the old political distinctions were being
obliterated. The Tory and the Whig parties still kept
up their contest ; but it was largely personal, and
largely concerned with the tenure of office and of
power — things which touch only a few. The interest
of a large part of the most energetic and active in
Scottish life was occupied with her expanding com-
merce and her increasing wealth ; for the rest the
absorbing topic lay in ecclesiastical politics. Literature
and philosophy ceased to be, as for a large part of the
previous century they had been, the chief interests of
the educated classes. The fervid assertion of Scottish
nationality and the taste for Scottish antiquities, only
a short time before so fashionable, now engaged the
attention of none but a select few. The outburst of
poetry and romance which had been so rich in the
generation that had passed since 1790, lost its strength
and faded into secondary importance.
The one most distinctive symptom of the mood of
Scotland in the first quarter of the nineteenth century
was the recrudescence of a new type of religious re-
vivalism, coming to lay a chilling hand upon the
buoyancy that had made the last century so attractive,
to impose new maxims of conventional ethics upon
habits that were genial even to laxity, and to forge new
fetters upon the easy latitudinarianism that had long
350 1830 TO 1834.
been the dominant characteristic of Scottish thought.
Without due attention to that new symptom, we
cannot understand the phase which Scottish life now
assumed.
The Evangelical party had now become distinctly
the most powerful in the Scottish Church. It was a
party whose characteristics we may not all find to be
uniformly attractive, but it had gained much in attach-
ing to itself such a man as Chalmers, the strongest
personality in Scotland at this time. He was not
moulded very closely on the lines of the Evangelical
party, as these are ordinarily drawn. In early life he
had leant, as we have seen, to the Moderates ; and to
the last, more than perhaps he himself knew, his tem-
perament was not alien to Moderatism and to all that
it implied. His conception of the Church was that of
a great steadying force in society — vigorous, powerful,
lettered, and not without a dignified pride. The con-
servatism which he had inherited from his father, com-
bined with the strength and impatience of folly and of
cant w^hich were of the essence of his character, made
him unwilling that his Church should bend to mob-
rule or truckle to ignorant fanaticism. In this he
reflected the feelings of the Moderates. But Mode-
ratism had the defects of its qualities. It stood aloof
from popular religious movements. A certain cold-
ness, indifference, and want of earnestness — which
became all the more marked as its more able leaders
passed away, and only a few w^ere left to represent its
higher traditions — repelled a temperament so impul-
sive, so forcible, and so sincere as that of Chalmers.
As his sympathy with the Moderates waned, his con-
ception of the Church became modified, and he schooled
himself to look with less impatience on the more
CHALMERS AS EVANGELICAL LEADER. 351
strict tenets of Evangelicalism. To him the Church
was still to be dignified, lettered, independent ; but she
was to be a missionary Church, working mainly for the
poor, taking upon herself the burden and charge of
poor relief, dominating all political movements by
maintaining the supremacy of character and religious
conviction as the engines by which the lot of the poor
was to be bettered. The Church and the nation were
to be one and indivisible ; and this granted, he was
ready to accord a half- contemptuous toleration to
creeds that were outworn, and to extend a hand of
brotherhood to sects that were divided from the Church
only by small distinctions. In 1831 there had come a
curious doctrinal phase amongst one section in the
Scottish Church, which decried the stalwart rigour of
Calvinism and preached a sort of universalist creed ;
and which, more strangely still, even through the
teaching of educated, high-minded, and cultivated
men, attempted to bolster up that creed by a strange
faiTago of miraculous tales of the renewal of the gift
of tongues. It was a symptom — albeit in a feverish
and excited form — of the general wave of intensified
religious feeling that was passing over the country ;
but though viewed with compassion rather than anger
by such a man as Chalmers, it was summarily expelled
from the Church as an unsound and unhealthy mani-
festation. Its representative was Mr. Macleod Camp-
bell, minister of Row, a man whose character stood
high, whose religious convictions were of the purest
and most enthusiastic type, and who continued for
more than a generation later to command the affection
and veneration of a large number of his country-
men. He was now deposed from the ministry, and
harsh as the measure was by many deemed to be,
352 ' 1830 TO 1834.
it had the tacit sympathy of Chalmers. According
to his notions, however desirable it was to encourage
religious zeal, that zeal must be tempered by com-
mon sense and restrained by ecclesiastical discipline.
Chalmers had drifted before this date, far indeed
from the older Moderatism, but we must not overlook
the element which he inherited from the Moderates.
Like them, he never bated any of the Church's privi-
leges. Like them, he never looked upon her as the
mere tolerated protegee of the State. He never iden-
tified her with resistance to constituted authority, and
never sought to make her the ally of democratic aims.
She was to be a patriot Church, working for the
people, but independently of the people, building up
a higher tone of morality and a higher ideal of social
duty, but careful not to associate herself with the
political party who were claiming a monopoly of re-
forming zeal and of patriotic virtue. He viewed with
coldness, if not with positive dislike, the political
nostrums of the day, and if he was democratic in his
aims and in his missionary zeal, he had as yet cer-
tainly no wish to be democratic in his methods.
Chalmers thus invested, with more of religious zeal,
aims which lay at the root of much in the tenets of
the Moderates of the previous generation. They too
had preached the theory of an independent and a
powerful Church. They too had endeavoured to make
the Church an engine of social amelioration, and of
increased intelligence and education. Like Chalmers,
they had clung to Scottish traditions, and had looked
with pride to the part the Church had taken in winning
for Scotland a high place in literature. But they
had become too exclusive in their alliance with one
political party. In this they were false to their own
THE RELIGIOUS REVIVAL. 353
traditions, and sorely did they pay the penalty ; it
narrowed their range and led directly to their downfall.
Chalmers rescued much that was valuable in their
tenets, but he left their spirit behind him, when he
was caught by that religious revival which their cold-
ness and indifierence, amounting almost to sarcasm
and irony, had done much to provoke. The earnest-
ness of that religious revival, the repressive chill which
it cast on much that was most attractive in Scottish
social life, drew the two parties widely apart. Earnest-
ness led to enthusiasm, enthusiasm to fanaticism, and
fanaticism to something which its opponents might
not unfairly call Pharisaical pride. Those who clung
to the older party met the revival with sarcasm and
ridicule, looked askance on the perfervid outbursts
of religious zeal, and openly defied the strict rule
which was intruding itself again, with something of
Covenanting memories, into the code of minor social
ethics. They claimed to represent the literature, the
wit, the romance, and the poetry of Scotland ; and
the Evangelical school were thus driven into a mood
that viewed with suspicion all that was secular, and
identified religion with something that its enemies
called sanctimoniousness.
Chalmers, in his own eyes and those of his contem-
poraries, was now a devout adherent of the Evangelical
school. But by the deeply-rooted conservatism of his
nature, by the force of his historical imagination, by
that romantic impulse which was stronger in him
than any party creed or shibboleth, by the manly
vigour which could not be divorced from his utterances
and his acts, he held no small tincture of the better
phase in the spirit of the older party in the Church.
From that party he broke away because it had become
VOL. II. z
354 1830 TO 1834.
cold, apathetic, and indifferent. It had lost its old
fire and freedom ; it had lost something of its national
tradition. In its highest form it had achieved much
for Scotland, and had given to her a proud position
in the intellectual world. But it had lost its attraction
for many of the best Scottish spirits, and the reaction
brought a tide that swept Chalmers with it. His later
ecclesiastical fights and the associations into which
these led him carried him far indeed — and carried his
country still further — from the ideals that had once
been his. He became, in spite of himself, and he
did all he could to make his Church, democratic not
in aim only but in methods. That Church did not
pass through the dust and turmoil of the fray without
carrying away marks of the battle. It grew narrow
and cross-grained in the process of asserting, with un-
compromising rigidity, a position that became every
day more palpably illogical. Its unbending sternness
in denouncing all who questioned that position, in-
evitably impressed upon it a character of self-righteous
complacency, and almost compelled it to assume that
Pharisaical attitude which it often came to wear in
private life and morals, and which it only slowly
dropped as the bitterness of contention became less.
Chalmers did not himself become a political partisan,
but he bequeathed to that large section which, under
his guidance, broke away from the Scottish Church, a
spirit that for a generation at least was the mainstay of
Scottish Whiggism.
By 1830 Chalmers had taken an active part in
many ecclesiastical fights in the General Assembly.
By means of these fights the Evangelicals had gradu-
ally won back the supremacy which they had lost
so long. By the death of Dr. Andrew Thomson in
CHANGE IN THE WHIG PARTY. 355
1831 Chalmers became the recognised leader of that
party. But this made no alteration in his ostensible
attitude towards political parties in the State. He
still remained a steady Conservative in politics, op-
posed to Parliamentary Reform, distrustful of State
interference with the individual, viewing with pro-
found distrust the political nostrums of the day. How
was it that this gulf was bridged over, and that those
who stood in many respects so far apart — the Whigs
and the newer party in the Church — came to join
hands ?
For many years before 1830 the ^\'higs were hope-
lessly shut out from power. The very hopelessness of
their case made their tenets more extreme. They were
compelled to show toleration to those more daring
spirits who contemplated revolutionary methods. They
protested with all the vehemence of a powerless and
therefore irresponsible party against the efforts of ad-
ministration to preserve society against assaults. They
denounced these efforts as attempts to curb liberty and
to impose tyrannical rule. They had looked to very
little help from the national Church and its adherents,
and had been compelled to defend the utterances
of those who attacked established creeds as well
as established political authority. The Radicals had
often attacked religion as the submissive servant of
authority, and the Whigs could not safely repudiate
the Radical propaganda. But this cost them much in
the eyes of Scotsmen, who clung with inherited affec-
tion to their Church, and were jealous of any attempt
to undermine the purity of her doctrine. Nothing is
more striking than Chalmers' identification of political
agitation with irreligious propagandism during the
decade from 1820 to 1830; and so lono- as the two
356 1830 TO 1834.
were identified in his mind, he could show no sympathy
with either. But as time went on the Whigs came
within measurable distance of power, and, as it
approached, power created a sense of responsibility.
The organs of the Whigs began to speak with more
respect of religion. The changes which they advocated
became more definite and more restricted. Reform
became more and more distinguished from revolution.
The Whigs, by anticipation, began to look on them-
selves as likely soon to assume the responsibilities, the
anxieties, the burdens of administration. They drew
farther and farther away from the Radicals. They
began, perforce, to study those tactics by which a
position might be defended, as well as those by which
a stronghold might be assailed. As the crisis of the
struggle approached more closely, their policy became
more cautious and more deliberate, and they were
drawn into closer relations with the leaders of that
party in the Church which had fought the Moderates^
when the Moderates were identified with the Tories.
But the alliance did not come yet. The Whig party
was scarcely animated by a spirit likely to make it
feel any very strong sympathy with religious zeal or
enthusiasm. In the fight for Parliamentaij Reform
Chalmers maintained a firmly Conservative attitude.
When the windows in. Edinburgh were illuminated
on the passing of the Reform Bill, Chalmers refused
to join, and as a consequence had the windows of his
house broken by the mob. It is, indeed, odd to find
hira, after the Reform Act was passed, regretting it as
likely to throw legislative power into the hands of men
of business to the exclusion of men who have leisure
for study and reflection ; and quoting Ecclesiasticus
on the danger of entrusting with the arcana of govern-
CHALMERS DRIFTING FROM THE CONSERVATIVES. 357
ment men whose hearts and hands are full of the
common business of life.^ This was hardly the sort
of opinion to make a sound Whig. But it was chiefly
the affairs of the Church that were to change his
attitude, and to make him the leader of a movement
that broke down the chief bulwark of Conservatism in
Scotland. Other minor causes contributed to alienate
him from the Conservative party.
We have already seen the keen interest which
Chalmers took in the discussion of the problems of
political economy. To the title of a scientific economist
he had, indeed, no claim. But his views were distinct,
and they were not only held with all the ardour of his
nature, but w^ere advanced with all the power of his
enthralling eloquence. His chief treatise on the subject
was published in January 1832, It went counter to
many of the accepted doctrines of the dominant school.
It avowed distrust of the current nostrums, made light
of the effect of legislative changes, and based the hopes
of an improved economic state of the population on the
prevalence of religious and moral principles. In its
essence it was an attack upon the doctrines of the
Manchester School, and as such was a defence of
sound Conservatism. But with that singularly pur-
blind vision which, at certain phases of its history,
has characterised the Tory party, it was made the
object of ridicule and sarcasm in the pages of the
Qiia7^terly Review. There he was told that he was
" incompetent to reason on the subject," and that his
whole economical system was based on "a miserable
sophism." The folly of journalistic controversy could
scarcely have gone further than it did in this attack on
one who was maintaining the very principles by which
1 Life, by Hanna, vol. iii. p. 405.
358 1830 TO 1834.
Whig theories might be most successfully destroyed.
At the very moment that the attack was being delivered,
Chalmers was being courted by the Whig Government
with all the arts of flattery. His advice was sought,
appointments were filled on his recommendation, a
humble deference was paid to his opinion. He would
have been more than human had not this homage pro-
duced a modification in his attitude towards those who
had carried out Reform. But he still maintained his
rigid attitude of resistance to political dictation. When,
in the midst of the wild mob agitation, and of the
frenzy of revolutionary zeal that was passing over
Europe, a motion was made for a National Fast, he
refused to make the Church a handmaid in what
seemed a political move. In the next year (1832)
he desired that the Church should itself appoint such
a Fast, without waiting for Government dictation, on
the occasion of the outbreak of the cholera epidemic.
When in 1831 Government propounded a scheme
of national education in Ireland which was to separate
religious from secular teaching, Chalmers was alarmed
at what seemed an attack upon religion. He felt — as
many have felt since — that the scheme was funda-
mentally mistaken in its attempt to disregard the
elemental force of religious feeling. His opposition
was mitigated only by the fact that the problem in
Ireland seemed one of insoluble difficulty, and that
any settlement seemed desirable which would prevent
the recrudescence of religious disputes. Scotland, he
felt, was safe against the intrusion of any such prin-
ciple, and the solution of the question in Ireland he
was content to leave to politicians, so long as he had
reason to be satisfied with the general rectitude of
their aims. His mind was divided between the danger
THE NON-INTRUSION CONTROVERSY. 359
of advancing the influence of Koman Catholicism, and
the equal danger of minimising the essential necessity
of a religious element in education. In such a per-
plexity it was small wonder that he preferred to keep
such a controversy out of Scottish interests.
But a controversy of more direct interest for himself,
and of far greater import for his country, was now
entering upon a very critical phase. This was the
controversy that eventually broke the Established
Church in two, that raised the broad issue of the
limits of the civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and
that in its results affected the national character more
deeply than any other during the next generation. To
southern eyes this controversy appears, on the first
glance — and they have rarely given it more — a tangled
maze out of which it is vain for any but a Scottish
mind to find an intelligible issue, buried as it is in a
dense underwood of doctrinal subtleties. It is per-
fectly true that ecclesiastical controversy, in every age
and in every country, brings from its very complexity,
and from the singular intermixture of parties, per-
plexity to any one who would trace its logical sequence.
The Non-Intrusion controversy, as it was called — into
which the whole intellectual and moral vigour of Scot-
land, in the middle part of the century, was thrown
without stint or measure — certainly affords no exception
to this rule. But its main topics, the main features of
the discussion, the main steps by which one phase of
the controversy succeeded to another, are perfectly
clear. They may possibly be held to have something
more than alien and altruistic interest for England,
now that England is likely to become the arena of
a contest, as keenly and perhaps as bitterly waged,
on topics which are in essence precisely the same,
360 1830 TO 1834.
although their subject matter and their surrounding
circumstances are apparently very different.
The occasion of this struggle was the operation of
the rights of patronage, which had been restored by
the Act of Queen Anne in 1711. That Act unques-
tionably placed in the hands of lay patrons a power
which ever since the Reformation, except during the
brief period when Episcopalianism was able to crush
the national presbyterianism of the country, had been
exercised either by congregations or by those whose
powers belong to them as representatives of the con-
gregations. The Act had been bitterly resented by a
large body in the Church ; and from time to time it
had brought about secessions from the Church, on
the part of those who refused to admit this interference
with what they held to be essentially an ecclesiastical
function. For many years, the Assembly had annually
petitioned — although in a formal and perfunctory way
— for the abolition of patronage. But the actual pres-
sure of the Act had been all the less felt, because
patronage rights were for many years exercised with
great leniency, and in such a way as to provoke little
discussion. The annual protest was rather an assertion
of the rights of the Church than a remonstrance
against any tangible wrong; and these rights were
further safeguarded by a somewhat illogical procedure
which required a formal "call" from the congregation
to be a necessary adjunct of the patron's nomination
before the induction of any incumbent.
But as the Moderate party became stronger, they
did not hesitate to insist with greater firmness and
with stricter rigour upon the observance of the Act.
Without denying the necessity of a "call" from
the congregation, they distinctly minimised the ma-
PATRONAGE AS EXERCISED IN THE PAST. 361
terial importauce of that call by holding it as little
more than a formality which might be fulfilled by
a single signature. There was no desire to thrust
upon congregations persons unfit or distasteful to
them ; and none protested against the abuse of
patronage more strongly than did some of the lead-
ing Moderates. But they felt that even an occa-
sional abuse of the right was a course less dangerous
than the substitution for that right of a system
which would make the Church independent of the
civil power, but yet make her subject to the dictation
of a blind and ignorant crowd of electors. It must be
clearly remembered that the object of those who
opposed the abolition of patronage was not to defend
a privilege or power which happened to belong to
c'ertain lay patrons, but to maintain in the first place
what they conceived to be a sound subordination of
ecclesiastical to civil power, as the basis of real reli-
gious liberty ; and, in the second place, what they were
certain was likely to produce an educated and in-
dependent clergy, instead of one nominated by, and
therefore dependent on, the mob.
But as the Moderate party lost its power, and as
its members too often were distinguished only by
a cold and lukewarm indifference which aped philo-
sophy and latitudinarianism, the discordance betw^een
the nominee and the congregation became more and
more marked. This discordance vastly increased as
the new and more enthusiastic Evangelicalism once
more asserted its hold over the Scottish people. One
of the symptoms of their new religious spirit was a
certain exaltation which exacted a heavy call upon
the sympathies, and, perhaps, eluded any very clear
intellectual statement. Differences of temperament
362 1830 TO 1834.
led to objections to the presentees which might no
doubt be sincerely felt, but which admitted of no
logical explanation, and which lay patrons and their
nominees naturally refused to consider as valid grounds
for an interference with their unquestionable rights
under the law. The objections, however, were not less
tenaciously held, because they were based on inade-
quate grounds of logic or of argument ; to those who
held them, indeed, such minor defects appeared only
to prove that they had a deeper foundation in religion
and in conscience. The increasing irritation to which
disputed settlements gave rise, forced the opponents
of patronage to new and bolder theories. The rights
of lay patrons might be given them by the law of the
land, but those could be exercised only subject to
what was held to be an essential principle of the
Church, which affirmed that no minister could be
forced upon an unwilling congregation. This was
called the " Non-Intrusion " principle, and upon this
the battle between the Church and the State was to
be waged. The choice of a battlefield was determined
by circumstances which were Scottish only, and the
steps by which the irritation was stimulated into a
rancorous controversy belong to the history of Scot-
land. But the broad issue involved was one which
must necessarily be fought out wherever Church and
State find their powers so closely balanced that they
are forced to fight in order that one or other may
assert a mastery.
It was in 1832 that the patronage controversy
seemed to come to an acute stage. The Evangelical
party had now established its supremacy in the Church
Courts. It was reflected in the feelings of the people,
who were more than apt to doubt whether the patron's
RELATIONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL TO CIVIL POLITICS. 363
nominee was always imbued with a sufficient unction
of religious enthusiasm. But the political world had
also changed, and its temper was ready to affect the
mood in which ecclesiastical politics were judged.
The ecclesiastical fight, perhaps, touched the Scottish
national feeling more closely than the political ; but
we must, side by side with it, trace the course of poli-
tics within these two years.
Towards the close of the reign of George IV. the
Ministry of the Duke of Wellington had got into
serious difficulties, and had but a precarious tenure
of power. The Whigs had supported Wellington in
carrying the Catholic Emancipation Act, but they
were bent on measures of reform from which the duke
held back, and their further support could no longer
be counted on. The older Tory party were exasperated
at the passing of Catholic Emancipation, and were
ready in their anger to turn against the duke. Mean-
while the air was full of agitation. In August the
French Revolution came, and extorted the sympathy
even of the Tories.^ Thrones and crowns were
toppling, and revolutions seemed to be the order of
the day. The death of the king came in June
1830; the dissolution of Parliament in July; and
the ensuing election gave the Ministry a scanty and
precarious majority. Discontent and agitation pre-
vailed throughout the population, and the newspapers
w^ere full of accounts of riot and incendiarism. The
duke declared, in uncompromising words, against
any project of Parliamentary Reform, and in so doing
sealed the fate of his Government. In December
^ " Confound those French Ministers ! '' said Scott. " I can't forgive
them for making a Jacobin of an old Tory like me" (Cockburn's
"Memorials," p. 468).
364 1830 TO 1834.
1830 the Ministry of Lord Grey, pledged to Parlia-
mentary Reform, assumed office, and to many it seemed
as if the flood-gates of revolution were to be set open.
The prevailing opinion in Scotland was enthusiasti-
cally in favour of the new schemes ; and even those
who, like Chalmers, were opposed to that reform,
were moving in a course that gave it increased in-
fluence, and brought them nearer and nearer to the
Whigs, if they did not indeed go further even than
the somewhat timid counsels of those who were the
Scottish representatives of the Whig Ministry. Jeff'rey
was now Lord Advocate and Henry Cockburn Solicitor-
General. Their task was no easy one. After having
long belonged to a party which had for more than a
generation attacked the Administration, they found
themselves responsible for order, and pledged to carry
out reforms which it was easy to advocate in opposi-
tion, but much more difficult to carry out in legislative
form ; and they found it hard to steer a course which
would not shake society to its foundations, and yet
would satisfy the extreme wing of their Radical friends.
Jeff'rey had claims upon the party which could not be
ignored ; but he was unfitted for the Parliamentary
arena. He had come to it too late in life, and had
not the practical skill, nor the quick and decisive
judgment necessary for one who was to carry out
a great scheme of political change. He was tossed
about on the waves of a great controversy, which
he had not the true pilot skill to evade or to
surmount.
It was in Scotland, indeed, that the urgent need
of some Parliamentary change was most clearly neces-
sary. The abuses there scarcely admitted of a defence.
Li a population of 2,300,000 only some 3000 persons
THE REFORM BILLS. 365
had a vote. The burgh franchise was in the hands
of close and self-nominated corporations. The county
franchise was held by a few proprietors who increased
their power by the creation of fictitious votes, dis-
tributed amongst their dependents, and in most
counties these fictitious voters were the large majority
of the electors. The distribution of representatives
was equally absurd. Glasgow, with a population of
nearly 150,000, shared a single member with three
petty burghs. Many considerable towns had no re-
presentation whatever.
Lord John Russell's first Reform Bill was introduced
in March 1831. It was to give fifty members to Scot-
land instead of forty-five. In burghs the franchise of
the corporation was to be abolished, and the £10
householders were to be the voters. In the counties
all proprietors of £10 a year, and all occupiers of £50
a year, were to have a vote. It was estimated that
60,000 voters would thus be added to the register.
Petitions poured in from Scotland in favour of the
Bill. Some of the men of greatest weight, who could
not be identified with any revolutionary schemes,
declared that it was urgently called for by the united
voice of Scotland. The second reading of the English
Bill, however, was carried only by a single voice, and
only thirteen Scottish members voted in its favour.
The Government were defeated on a detail of the
English Bill, and a dissolution immediately took place.
The election that ensued turned solely upon the
question of Parliamentary Reform, and it was carried
out amidst scenes of riot and agitation. At Edin-
burgh in particular, the Corporation were not allowed
to carry out the election without threats of personal
violence from the mob, and when Dundas was chosen
366 1830 TO 1834.
instead of Jeffrey, who had been persuaded to seek
the seat, the magistrates could not return from the
Council Chambers without braving the excited violence
of a mob w^ho were prepared to lynch those who
had declared for the Tory candidate. The violence
of the day was succeeded by rioting at night, which
was quelled only by calling in the aid of the military.
The Ministry succeeded in so far changing the com-
plexion of Scottish representation, even on an un-
reformed register, as to obtain a majority of three ;
while in England they had a safe and secure majority.
When Parliament met, the second Reform Bill was
brought in, and its second reading was carried by
a majority of 136. The Scottish Bill followed, but,
greatly to the disappointment of the Whig party, it
was found that Jeffrey had consented to make the
franchise one of £15 instead of £10 as in England.
The stalwart insistence of the Government supporters
forced a change in this respect, and the number of
Scottish members was increased from fifty to fifty -
three. It was carried through the Commons, after
fierce debate, by easy majorities.
But in October the English Bill was thrown out
by the House of Lords, and this was the signal for
new and more fervent agitation throughout the
country. The Government were at their wits' end
to preserve the peace, and in Scotland above all
serious rioting was expected, and would, it was feared,
prove fatal to the scheme of Reform. The Govern-
ment strengthened themselves, and gave confidence
to their followers, by obtaining an easy vote of
confidence from the Commons before proroguing
Parliament.
In December the English Bill was again brought
PARLIAMENTARY REFORM ACCOMPLISHED. 367
in, and again pushed through its various stages by
large majorities and sometimes without any division.
In the Lords the second reading was carried by a
majority of nine.
The news was brought to Edinburgh on Sunday
the 15th of April 1832, by an express coach, decorated
with white ribbons and rosettes, which made the
journey from London in the unprecedentedly short time
of thirty-six hours. The tidings were received with
unbounded enthusiasm on the one side ; with despair,
that foretold the rapid downfall of all existing in-
stitutions, on the other. It seemed to the frenzied
imagination of men strung to the last pitch of
excitement, as if revolution were imminent, and as
if resistance were in vain.
But the Bill had still pitfalls to pass. In com-
mittee in the House of Lords, the Ministry were
defeated on one point, and they immediately resigned.
The danger of a popular outbreak was great. Each
side accused the other of a criminal profligacy in
their political conduct. The Scottish ministers were
chiefly anxious that no outbreak of violence should
occur. There were not wanting those who thought
they would find in such an outbreak the opportunity
for yet wilder schemes.
The Duke of Wellington attempted to form a
Ministry, but failed ; and after seven days the Whigs
were replaced in office. The duke now withdrew
his opposition, and on the 4th of June the Bill
became law. The Scottish Bill followed, and took
no long time. It passed the third reading in the
House of Lords on the 17th of July.
The triumph was celebrated by a great trades pro-
cession in Edinburgh, when banners and triumphal
368 1830 TO 1834.
arches proclaimed the dawn of a new epoch of political
liberty. For a time there was a frenzy of enthusiasm
for the new liberties extorted from a reluctant House
of Lords, and to the superficial observer it might
appear that the country was at one in its reception
of the new order of things. The election took place
in the late autumn, and it resulted in a sweeping
victory for the Whigs. The Ministry had forty-four
supporters in Scotland, and only nine Tories were
returned. Jeffrey and Abercromby were returned for
Edinburgh by sweeping majorities of 4028 and 3855,
against 1529 for the Tory candidate — where hitherto
the Parliamentary constitutency had consisted of
thirty-three self-chosen councillors. Their triumph
was celebrated by a procession in which the successful
candidates were carried through the city in triumphal
chairs " placed upon a flat car, and covered with blue
merino and ornamented with bufi' fringings and
tassels." "The whole equipage," we are told, "had
a very gorgeous and attractive appearance." To be
made ridiculous was perhaps not a higher price than
Jeffrey was ready to pay for his success. But the
election was not allowed to pass without disclosing
the fact that the Whig party was not at one, and
that the more moderate portion were not only sus-
pected but disliked by those who desired to proceed
further on the path in which they had made so pro-
mising a beginning. The Lord Advocate had now
to preach moderation to those who had tasted blood,
and he soon found himself stigmatised by many as
a reactionary.
So far we have Scotland at the work of Parliamen-
tary Reform in which she was closely associated with
England, and where her course was virtually directed
THE NEW SCOTTISH ADMINISTRATION. 369
by that which Parliament adopted in regard to Eng-
land. But we now have her employed, and to a large
extent absorbed, in purely Scottish questions. The
first of these was the question of Scottish adminis-
tration. Under the Tory rule, it had been the habit to
entrust Scottish affairs to one predominant hand — it
might be the Lord Advocate, it might be some other
minister whose Scottish connections were strong. This
habit had been bitterly denounced by the Whigs, who
had thought that the remedy was to be found in making
the Government of Scotland more closely bound up
with that of England, and minimising its essentially
Scottish features. They soon found the error of this
when responsibility became their own ; but they had no
very satisfactory alternative to propose. The fact was
that they had no statesman of sufficient weight to take
the place of Dundas, whose rule was still a living
memory in Scotland. There was not amongst the
Scottish Whigs any man who could at once make him-
self the representative of Scotland, and yet exercise a
supreme force in Imperial politics, such as fell naturally
to Dundas. Jeffrey was, and continued to be, an Edin-
burgh advocate who happened to be in the House of
Commons. He had none of the aptitudes of a states-
man, and he took to the work too late in life to acquire
them. He found himself burdened with a mass of
details which were irksome and distasteful to him.
He sought help by having part of the Scottish business
entrusted to a Scottish Lord of the Treasury; and
for half a century that system continued. The Whig
element in Parliament House ceased to decry the off.ce
of the Lord Advocate now that the office was in their
own hands ; they only lamented the variety of insig-
nificant details that fell to his charge. But they failed
VOL. II. 2 A
370 1830 TO 1834.
to observe that these details were chietly troublesome
because the Lord Advocate sank to the position of a
subordinate official — to whom Scottish affairs indeed
might be entrusted — but who could not shape, or even
materially affect, the general principles upon which the
Government of the day was based, and who -svas com-
pelled to subordinate his treatment of Scottish matters
to these principles which he was powerless to modify or
to shape. It was one of the evils of this system that
Scottish questions were relegated to a second place, as
matters which a subordinate official might settle, so
long as he disturbed no principle convenient for appli-
cation to England. The Lord Advocate could never
hold Cabinet office, and his Parliamentary position was
never strong enough to allow him an effective voice
in the settlement of Imperial politics. Scottish affairs
became inevitably under such a system a matter of
secondary interest to Parliament — something which
might be tolerated so long as it was not unduly trouble-
some.
Something of this was seen in the first purely Scottish
business— the Bill for liurgh Reform. On this question
the Lord Advocate — who could offer no opinion on his
own initiative — was careful to ascertain the views of
the Government, and expressed them to his constitu-
ents as the emissary of the Prime Minister. This was
scarcely a position to which Dundas would have sub-
mitted ; but it was the most that could now be claimed
by the minister who claimed to lead the Whig party
in his country. In March 1833 the Bill was intro-
duced, and after second reading it was submitted — by
a bad, if not an unconstitutional, precedent — to a com-
mittee of all the Scottish burgh representatives. To a
superficial observer this might appear to be a concession
SCOTTISH BURGH REFORM BILL. 371
to national independence ; in reality, it degraded Scot-
tish business to a provincial level. Fortunately the
plan worked very badly— and for no one worse than
the Lord Advocate, who was driven to his wits' end
by the contending inanities of every political quack
and visionary who had schemes of his own, and who
fancied that he was summoned to propound them.
"The Scotch Burgh Committee," says Jeffrey, "goes
on as ill as possible. . . . They chatter and wrangle
and contradict and grow angry, and read letters and
extracts from blockheads of town clerks and little
fierce agitators ; and forgetting that they are members
of a great Legislature, and (some of them) attached to
a fair Ministry, go on speculating and suggesting and
debating, more loosely, crudely, and interminably than
a parcel of college youths in the first noviciate of dis-
ceptation." It is a pleasant picture of a Eeformed
Parliament, and presents no flattering view of the
Scottish elements in that Parliament ! The Bill fared
more hardly at the hands of friends than even at those
of its enemies ; but after a rough-and-tumble struggle
it passed ; and a few weeks later, Jeffrey ceased to be
Lord Advocate, and was raised to the Bench in May
1834. Other Scottish questions were obtruding them-
selves, and all his old Whig zeal was required to cope
with the fertile crop which sprang up round him. Not
the least important that arose just as he was quitting
office was that of Church Patronage, on which a Parlia-
mentary Committee was appointed on the motion of
Sir George Sinclair. Let us see how that question
had ripened within the last two years.
In 1832, as we have seen, the controversy with re-
gard to patronage had assumed a critical phase in the
General Assembly. Dr. Chalmers was ]Moderator for
372 1830 TO 1834.
that year, and was consequently debarred from partici-
pating in the debates. But he soon turned with ardour
to the study of the question, and in 1833 he threw
himself into the fray. The course of politics, with its
increasing development of the popular element, no doubt
gave impulse to the claim of that element in the settle-
ment of ministers, and swelled the wave rising against
patronage. But Chalmers entered on the contest in no
such spirit. He was opposed to Parliamentary Reform.
He was Conservative in sympathy. The ultimate
results of the struggle he did not foresee ; and there
can be no doubt that what mainly determined Chalmers'
attitude in the struggle was his desire to adhere to the
traditions of Scotland (of which he thought the Evan-
gelical party to be most representative), and to strengthen
the hold which the Church had upon the affections of
the people. Adverse cries were rising from the Radi-
cal party. Some desired the total abolition of patron-
age ; for that Chalmers was not prepared. Others were
advocating the principles of Voluntaryism, and a society
had been formed which denounced the Establishment
principle as unscriptural and degrading ; for them
Chalmers had nothing but uncompromising opposition.
His aim at first was a simple and cautious one : to
preserve the forms established by law, but to prevent
their abuse.
The first point for decision — and it was a very vital
one — was whether the Church had in her armoury,
without resorting to the Civil Legislature, weapons by
which a solution of the difticulty might be reached.
At first Chalmers and those who thought with him
were inclined to the slow process of a series of judg-
ments in particular cases which might vindicate the
right of challenge in the congregation as opposed to
THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY S VETO ACT. 373
the nomination of the patron. This was thought too
slow, and it was resolved that an Act of the General
Assembly, giving directions as to the course to be
pursued by the inferior Church Courts, should be
attempted. Chalmers still thought that this should
be accompanied by an Act of the Legislature, which
seemed to him to be required in order to confirm the
decision of the Church. But this was opposed by the
Whig politicians, who dreaded the introduction of such
a topic into the debates of the Legislature, and who
found perhaps small encouragement from English col-
leagues, to whom the whole subject seemed both arid
and dangerous. Chalmers, in advising this course,
proposed what was at once bold and logical ; and he
had ample reason to repent of having yielded to the
Wews of the politicians in abandoning it.
The form which it was determined that the Act
of the Assembly should follow was that of securing
to a majority of the congregation an absolute right
of veto. Chalmers was selected as the protagonist,
and he defended the measure by an appeal to the
earlier traditions of the Church from the year 1578
onwards. He maintained that it would be unjust
to an unlettered — but possibly conscientious —
majorit}'', to ask them to assign reasons for their
opposition ; and while all his sympathies prompted
him to assert for the Church an " independence on
the conceits and follies, the wayward extravagance
or humours of the populace," he yet found it needful
to vindicate for the "cottage patriarch" the right to
object without stating the reason why. It is hard
to see the logic of this ; harder still w^as it for the
lay patron and his nominee to see a right which
was theirs by law annihilated by an unreasoning
374 1830 TO 1834.
opposition which they were not to be allowed to
combat, because it was not to base itself upon
reason, but claimed the sanction of religious con-
viction.
The proposal was defeated by a majority of twelve
in the Assembly of 1833. But its supporters were
powerful in the country, and they were restless and
determined. The ensuing year was spent in a diligent
organisation of their forces, and in 1834 the same
proposal was passed by a majority of forty-six.
In passing the Veto Act the Church undoubtedly
strained to the utmost its constitutional power. The
Church Courts were, indeed, possessed of high autho-
rity. They were established courts of the realm, and
within their own sphere they were independent. But
to maintain that they might, by their action, render
nugatory an Act of the Civil Legislature — and this
was really what the Veto Act implied— was to create
an imperiuni in imperio, and to court a collision with
the Civil Power. But for the time it looked as if this
bold exercise of its prerogative might not be chal-
lenged. It had the support of the law officers of
the day. It had the countenance of the Lord Chan-
cellor (Brougham). It coincided with the preponder-
ant feeling both in the country and in the Church.
It might easily be represented as not an interference
with the Patronage Act, but only a decision as to
the conditions under which that Act was to be ad-
ministered. A comparison of the whole series of
enactments on the subject did undoubtedly give
countenance to the view that there were two con-
ditions precedent to a settlement— nomination by a
patron and consent on the part of the congregation.
The Veto Act might be held only to define and to
OPPOSITION TO THE ANNUITY TAX. 375
give prominence to the recognised right of consent.
It remained to be seen how it would work, and
whether in practice it would bring about a collision
between the civil and the ecclesiastical authority.
The next episode which affected the Church was
one which showed that Chalmers had in no degree
abated the ardour of his support of the principle of
religious establishment. The incomes of the ministers
of Edinburgh had from the seventeenth century been
drawn from what was called the Annuity Tax, levied
upon the occupiers of all inhabited houses. From
this tax all members of the College of Justice — which
meant practically all who belonged to any section of
the legal profession — were exempt. This exemption,
and the fact that occupiers and not owners were
subject to the impost, rendered all the more unpopular
a tax which provoked of itself much opposition and
presented the most irritating form of Church endow-
ment. It became a favourite topic of denunciation
amongst those who were hostile to all ecclesiastical en-
dowments, a class whom the receut political upheaval
had made more restless and more bold. An attempt
in Parliament to abolish the exemption and to mitigate
the pressure of the tax was made by Jeffrey in 1833,
but it met with the most strenuous opposition as a
temporising and timid measure for perpetuating a tax
odious in any form. The agitation against it pro-
ceeded apace, and descended to the worst devices.
The tax had been enforced with leniency, and both
its amount and the number of those who paid it were
suffered to fall below the scale permitted by the law.
But refusal of payment came from those who had no
excuse of poverty, and whose sole object was to attack
the Church. To have condoned their contumacy would
fe
376 1830 TO -1834.
have been a confession of weakness. Undeterred by
the odium it excited, the Church was obliged to have
recourse to the exaction of its rights by legal process ;
and Chalmers in particular denounced the conduct of
those who refused to permit a modification of the law,
and yet disgraced themselves by resistance to a tax
which was one of the recognised conditions of the
occupancy of their houses. He did not mince his
words. "There is not," he said, speaking of those
who sought to escape from their obligation to pay a
legal tax, " an honourable man who, if once made to
view the matter in the light which I think to be the
true one, -would not spurn from him the burning
infamy of such a transaction, and refuse all share
in it."
In the year 1833, so strong was the opposition that
no fewer than 84G persons submitted to prosecution
rather than pay. Imprisonment had to be resorted to,
and when the defaulters were liberated processions of
thousands accompanied these self-made martyrs to
their homes. On the part of the Town Council it was
proposed that a fixed payment should be accepted in
lieu of the tax, and that the number of city ministers
should be reduced from eighteen to thirteen. Against
the proposal Chalmers protested with characteristic
fervour. It -was to clip the Avings of the Church when
her task was heaviest ; to rob the nation of her best
agency for diminishing pauperism and crime, and to
steal from the poor man the best part of his in-
heritance. "I have already professed myself," he said,
" and will profess myself again, an unflinching, an
out-and-out — and I maintain it, the only consistent
Radical. The dearest object of my earthly existence
A is the elevation of the common people, humanised by
DEFENCE OF THE ACT BY CHALMERS. 377
Christianity. ... I trust the day is coming when
the people will find out who are their best friends,
and when the mock patriotism of the present day shall
be unmasked by an act of robbery and spoliation on
the part of those who would deprive the poor of their
best and highest patrimony. ... I will resist even
to the death that alienation which goes but to swell
the luxury of the higher ranks at the expense of the
Christianity of the lower orders." These were the
words of the man who Avas to be the main agent in
founding a Church the majority of which, only a gene-
ration after his death, and under the shadow of his
great reputation, have been found ready to join in a
crusade to sweep away all ecclesiastical endowments.
There was something of chivalrous boldness in the
Scheme to which Chalmers and those most closely asso-
ciated with him turned all their efforts in 1834, at the
very time when the existing revenues of the Church
were so bitterly attacked. The spread of Church
accommodation had not kept pace with the growth of
population, and in spite of the fragmentary efforts of
the Dissenting sects there was in Scotland, especially
in the larger cities, a great dearth of spiritual provision.
Such a state of things could not satisfy a Church that
was determined to play a leading part in social ameli-
oration. Careless of the attacks of their opponents,
Chalmers and his friends had set on foot a scheme for
providing Glasgow with twenty additional churches — a
scheme which their unresting efforts accomplished in
the course of seven years. They procured from Parlia-
ment an Act which freed these new Churches from the
chance of falling into the patronage of those who had
the right of presenting to the mother charge, and
vested the right of appointment in the congregation. »>
^
378 1830 TO 1834.
Chalmers now turned, when the Glasgow scheme was
set on foot, to a similar scheme for Edinburgh ; and
far from shaping his policy in obedience to the tactics
of his opponents, he carried the war into the enemy's
camp by approaching the Government for a new grant.
The request was favourably received ; and whether it
would have been ultimately successful or not, it was
fed by hopes until the fall of the Whig Ministry
in November 1834. The accession of Peel to power
in no way dispelled these hopes. But alas ! they
were doomed to disappointment. The virulence of
the Voluntaries increased apace. The Parliamentary
opposition became too strong for a Ministry whose
tenure of power was weak, and whose period of office
lasted only a few months. The Whig ministers who
succeeded definitely abandoned the plan, and Chalmers'
trust in political aid received a rebuff from which it
never recovered. Henceforward he felt that the Church
must rely on its own unaided efforts, and such a con-
viction necessarily lessened in his eyes the value of a
submission to the Civil Power as the protecting ally of
the Church. It deepened his distrust of the Whigs,
which he had long felt, and which the nomination by
Lord John Russell of an unsympathetic Commission to
inquire into the affairs of the Church confirmed in the
minds of all her friends. He was stirred to a fury of
indignation and impatience at the excuses which were
pleaded against what he held to be a clamant need,
urged on behalf of the helpless and the poor. "A
restless, locomotive, clamorous minority " — this is the
verdict with which he dismisses the question in a letter
to Lord Melbourne — " by the noise they have raised,
and by the help of men irreligious themselves, and
therefore taking no interest, but the contrary, in the
HIS DISTRUST OF POLITICAL PARTY. 379
religious education of the people, had attained in the
eyes of our rulers a magnitude and an importance
which do not belong to them — while the bulk of the
population, quiet because satisfied, are, by an over-
whelming preponderance, on the side of the Establish-
ment." The appointment of the Commission was looked
upon, not only as a scouting of their claims, but as a
menace to the independence of the Church, and as such
it was characterised by the Dean of Faculty Hope — the
former Tory law officer. The visitation of the Church
by the Crown or by Parliament was, in his opinion,
utterly destructive of the principle and independence
of Presbytery. It was from the Tory party, where it was
least to be expected, that the Church received encour-
agement in the battle which she was about to wage
for her independence. Such a principle might have
involved consequences which probably the Tory lawyer
did not quite foresee, in establishing the independent
authority of the Church. But it is odd that Chalmers,
who was soon to assert that independence with more
dogged insistence, hesitated to accept to the full the
battle-cry with which Hope would fain have supplied
him. The episode was one, however, of transient and
minor importance compared with the larger contest
that was noAv taking shape.
;80
CHAPTER XXII.
THE DISRUPTION.
We have now to trace the course of a struggle, in
some respects the most remarkable of the whole period
which we have had under review. It shows the latest
phase of a strife, the elements of which had been
present for centuries in the life of Scotland, but the
ultimate bearing of which had not been seen only
because her history had exhibited so many striking
and dramatic contrasts that nothing approaching a
logical or constitutional settlement had been possible.
Before the close of the seventeenth century, the ex-
treme section of the Presbyterian party had obtained
a complete triumph — and one in which the dominant
political party had been ready for its own reasons
to acquiesce, without careful consideration of the
principles of ecclesiastical independence which it in-
volved. That had been secured, apparently for all time,
by the legislative enactments which dealt with the
new settlement. We are not accustomed nowadays
to consider that pledges, however solemn, which are
given by the legislation of one age with respect to the
immutability of certain rights, can fetter the discretion
of future generations. But of the intention there is no
doubt ; nor can there be any question of the solemnity
THE OBJECTS OF THE PATRONAGE ACT. 381
of the words by which the independence of the Scottish
Church was secured, both by the Act of Settlement
in 1689, and by the Act of Union. The constitu-
tion of the Church, so preserved by all the sanction
which Parliamentary pledges could give, did certainly
secure to it a very far-reaching independence of the
Civil Courts and of the State ; and the traditions of
Scottish history gave the most abundant countenance
and support to the most extensive interpretation of
that independence. Time soon proved, however, how
flimsy such pledges were, as by their very nature they
are bound to be. Only four years after the Act of
Union, the statute restoring patronage was passed in
1711 ; and a far-reaching change was introduced into
the order of the Scottish Church by the authority of a
British Parliament. We may support the principles
of that Act, and believe that it did good and not harm
to the country. But it would be the merest perversity
to deny that it was contrary to the whole theory of
ecclesiastical independence which had been apparently
secured by the most binding pledges. It is only too
evident that the promoters of the Act had very little
thought of the interests and wishes of Scotland in
regard to the matter. Such interests and wishes
would have weighed for very little with them ; but
Harley and St. John, when they restored patronage in
Scotland, undoubtedly showed that they were well-
advised as to the interests of their own party there.
It would be absurd to pretend that they had any other
object in view.
The passing of the Act provoked no very wide-felt
discontent. An active and able party in the Scottish
Church were strongly in its favour. The excess of
ecclesiastical zeal which would, a few years before,
382 THE DISRUPTION.
have made it the ground of rebellion, had no\v waxed
faint. For at least half a century it was administered
cautiously, and only on rare and isolated occasions did
it lead to acute difficulty. A formal protest was, no
doubt, annually renewed in the Assembly ; but even
that was abandoned when the Moderate party gained
complete ascendency.
The general feeling of the country, which was much
more absorbed in other matters than in ecclesiastical
disputes, or religious wrangling, contributed to the
same end. The national taste for topics such as these
was for the time lulled to rest. A spirit very strangely
in contrast with the old virulence of theological dis-
putation was abroad in Scotland during the eighteenth
century ; and so long as the rights of patronage were
leniently exercised, or not flagrantly abused, the country
seemed to acquiesce. The limits of civil and ecclesi-
astical authority were matters of occasional contest,
but only in comparatively small circles. The country,
as a whole, found no need to formulate them with any
more specific accuracy. The disputes on the subject
led, from time to time, from the days of the Erskines
onwards, to the formation of new sects, each of which
claimed to be the sole repository of pure and undefiled
ecclesiastical orthodoxy. But the country at large was
little stirred by them.
It was only when the rights of patronage began to
be exercised with something more of what opponents
called callousness, and what the owners called in-
dependence, that the withers of ecclesiastical fervour
began to be wrung. Towards the close of the eighteenth
century, and in the opening years of the nineteenth,
there was not a little ground for the irritation aroused in
the breasts of the devout Presbyterians by the mental
GROWING DISCONTENT AGAINST IT. 383
and theological attitude of the average patron's nominee.
A certain modish aftectation of worldliness became the
fashion amongst many of the younger clergy. Their
obtrusive latitudinarianism, and their aping of philo-
sophical rationahsm, were redeemed by none of the
intellectual vigour which belonged to the party which
they pretended to represent, and whose traditions they
meant to carry on. Occasionally the nominee was, it
is to be feared, guilty of some laxity of conduct which
the fervour of the more zealous religionists was not
likely to extenuate. The Moderate party, who were
the main defenders of patronage, lost their personal
sway and their vigour in defence at the very time
when the Evangelicals made those advances in zeal
and self-assertiveness which we have already described.
Patronage became more and more irksome ; and the
opposition which it aroused soon revived, in the most
acute and virulent form, that struggle between the
civil and the ecclesiastical authorities which is as old
as government itself, and which again and again had
found in Scotland a chosen battle-ground.
The struggle, which may be said to close the epoch
of which the narrative is here presented, is one which
belongs chiefly to ecclesiastical history. It is only
touched here because it forms the most powerful factor
in Scottish history in the middle decades of the nine-
teenth century. We can, of course, dwell only on its
main features, and on these, not as they are seen in the
Church Courts, or in the personal contests of difi'erent
parties in the Church, but as they affect the general
history of the country, and the broad current of national
opinion. The struggle has some aspects of singular
interest. It shows how an old strife, of which the
main issues were rooted in the Scottish mind by the
384 THE DISRUPTION.
history of centuries, could resuscitate, under the forms
of party debate and political faction peculiar to the
nineteenth century, the undying obstinacy which had
marked the old and rougher contests of a former age.
Its more vivid episodes seem to awaken the echoes
that were slumbering amidst the valleys and the hill-
sides where the Covenanters had prayed, and fought,
and suffered — echoes that resounded at times with all
the dignity and dramatic fervour of biblical denuncia-
tion. The martyrdom of the nineteenth century seems,
no doubt, to have about it a considerable element of
financial calculation ; a good deal of fiscal strategy
enters into the fight ; and the fury of the contest seems
often tempered by a shrewd regard for political tactics
and for the finesse of party management. But when
all is said in regard to the more humorous elements in
the struggle, it remains a notable instance of a nation
fighting a battle of old and essential principles which
had left an indelible impress on its past history, and
bringing that battle to a conclusion with no lack of
spirit and of dignity. One thing at least may be
said without hesitation. The importance of the issue
as regards the political as well as the ecclesiastical
position admitted of no doubt. But the battle was
fought with singularly little effective assistance from
either party in the State. When we look to their
treatment of it, we can find very little of principle, and
we search in vain for any display of real statesmanship.
Of its ultimate effect upon the political position of
Scotland it is difficult to speak decidedly ; but this at
least was an inevitable consequence, that Scotland was
largely thrown back upon herself, and acquired, in
regard to a vast body of religious and political opinion,
a tradition of separation from, and even of opposl-
THE PLACE OF CHALMERS IN THE STRUGGLE. 385
tion to, England. The question at issue was too often
treated by English politicians with an impatient and
contemptuous arrogance, which both parties to the
fight resented, but which helped the course of the
Extremists much more than that of those who stood
for the law of the realm.
The struggle is interesting in another aspect. It
shows us the predominant and magnetic influence of
one man of great genius upon his nation ; but it also
shows us how he was himself led, in the heat of the
battle and under the strain of strategical necessity,
to adopt an attitude, and to take a share in measures,
from which in the earlier stages he would have re-
coiled with horror.
We have already seen how, in his efforts to obtain
aid for Church extension. Chalmers had found that
the support of either political party was a feeble reed
on which to rest. But of the two he resented far
most the treatment his Church had met with from the
Whigs ; and he increased rather than lessened the
closeness of his connection with the opposite party.
Peel had not been unwilling to help, although his
tenure of office in 1834 had been too short to allow
him to fulfil his promise. The Whigs had shown less
of sympathy ; and they had recently appointed an
adverse Commission to inquire into the affairs of the
Church. When at length that Commission's report
showed the need for an increase of the resources of
the Church, the Government had no effective mea-
sures to propose. The Government of Lord Melbourne
from 1835 to 1841 was a singularly weak one; and
Chalmers did not hesitate to throw all the weight of
his authority against it in Scotland. Their policy in
regard to the Irish Church roused his fiercest opposi-
VOL. IL ■ 2 B
386 THE DISRUPTION.
tion, as an attack upon the sacredness of religions
endowments. Their connection with O'Connell was
not likely to gain them support either from Chalmers
or his countrymen ; and from every aspect of the
case his hopes were avowedly placed on the return of
the Conservatives to power. In 1837 the death of
William the Fourth led to a new election, and Chal-
mers had no hesitation as to the part he should play.
The question of Church or no Church was, to use the
words of the Duke of Wellington in 1838, the ques-
tion of the hour ; and on such a question Chalmers
could not speak with an uncertain voice. It deepened
his hatred for reform when he saw the robbery of
religious endowments threatened as a likely result of
that Reform. The whole attitude of the Whig party
and its leaders — more especially as the Radical ele-
ment in that party became more pronounced — not
only offended Chalmers in his religious feelings, but
grated on all that was deepest in his nature. After
the Queen's accession Chalmers went to court as one
of a deputation to present an Address on behalf of the
Church. The scene and all it involved stirred all his
chivalry and his romance ; the only thing that offended
him was the Whig surroundings of the throne. The
"hard utilitarian face"' of Joseph Hume irritated him;
yet so much was this " the general aspect and physiog-
nomy of the people round me, that I felt the atmos-
phere most uncongenial to all that is chivalrous and
sentimental in loyalty." His Conservatism was not
an opinion merely ; it was with him as it was with
iScott, an impulse and a passion. The relations be-
tween him and Peel became more and more cordial ;
and the flowing tide of Conservatism, that was soon
to submerge the feeble administration of Melbourne,
LECTURES IN LONDON ON CHURCH ESTABLISHAIENTS. 387
seemed to him likely to bring new strength and
prosperity to the Scottish Church.
Such was the position when Chalmers consented to
deliver in the spring of 1838, for a London society, a
course of lectures on Church Establishments. The
lectures were begun in xlpril, in the Hanover Square
Rooms in London ; and partly owing to the interest
which the question excited at the moment, partly to
the established fame of the lecturer, they had enormous
vogue. They gathered together an audience of un-
exampled influence, were followed with rapt admira-
tion, and fixed, perhaps, the high-water mark of
Chalmers' eloquence. The language used of them
reads at the present day as that of exaggeration and
hyperbole ; but when all reasonable deductions are
ma-de, there can be no question that they kindled and
intensified in a marked degree the ardour of loyalty
to the Church. Day after day his words were followed
by a crowd of the leading politicians of the day ; and
many of the bishops of the Anglican Establishment
welcomed the defence of their Church by one who
spoke only as a minister of an alien Communion,
and who was soon to be the chief founder of a sect
that felt itself obliged to disown any connection with
the State. When printed, the lectures were received
with the same unbounded admiration by a still wider
audience.
But it is necessary to observe what was the exact
position which he claimed for the Church. It is
sufiiciently curious, because it reveals an odd incon-
sistency which was bound sooner or later to embarrass
and encumber his position. The lectures were spoken
on the invitation of, and were addressed to, the Evan-
gelical or Low Church party. He reconciled his own
388 THE DISRUPTION.
position, as a Presbyterian clergyman defending an
Episcopal Establishment, by making light of what
he held to be smaller differences. He would have a
comprehensive Church; he would have "the Church
of England to come down from all that is transcen-
dental or mysterious in her pretension " ; she is to
" quit the plea of her exclusive apostolical derivation " ;
she is to be " the rallying post of Protestantism,"
and so on. We can imagine how such opinions would
be received by the High Church party, who already
formed the most active and most energetic, and w^ho
were soon to be the most influential, section of the
Church of England. He struck at the very root of
their theory of the Church — at those features of their
creed for which they were ready, if need be, to sacrifice
even establishment and endowment. But when he
came to discuss the nature of the connection between
Church and State, his position is essentially different.
In fact, all he contended for was an organised pro-
vision for the Church and the clergy ; any semblance
of authority by the civil magistrate in ecclesiastical
matters he expressly repudiated. He cited the ex-
ample of the Scottish Church ; and claimed for that
Church an ecclesiastical authority absolutely illimit-
able. An Established Church it was the bounden duty
of the State to maintain ; but the doctrine and the
laws of that Church were to be settled by none but
an ecclesiastical authority ; nor was the power of the
State to advance one step beyond that of giving or
withholding her tribute of maintenance. Both the
making and the interpretation of her own laws were
to belong to the Church alone ; and this, he proudly
asserted, was indubitably the case with his own
Church. "The magistrate might withdraw his pro-
CHALMERS AND THE LOW CHURCH ANGLICANS. 389
tection and she cease to be an Establishment any
longer; but in all the high matters of sacred and
spiritual jurisdiction, she would be the same as before."
No champion of spiritual supremacy could assert claims
more sweeping or more bold.
The position is an odd and even a humorous one.
The most orthodox and Conservative party of the
Chuich of England, those who conceived that the
divine mission of that Church was to maintain a sort of
intermediate territoiy between Roman Catholicism on
the one hand and the Protestant Dissenters on the
other, invite a Presbyterian minister to discourse to
them in support of their Establishment. If they
felt any qualms about the inconsistency of doctrine
between the lecturer and themselves, they probably
soothed these by the recollection that he hailed from a
country which held Koman Catholicism in abhorrence,
and that as member of an Established Church he could
not support Dissent. They listened without misgiving
to his high claim of ecclesiastical prerogative. It did
not occur to them that, in the case of their own Church
at least, no such claim could have any historical foun-
dation, unless the Peformation settlement were repudi-
ated, however fairly such a claim might be made for
the Church of Scotland, and might be based upon the
clear wording of Acts of Parliament. But still less did
it strike them that such a claim, on whatever ground it
rested, involved consequences from which they would
themselves have shrunk, and that it in essence coin-
cided with the views of the High Church party, whose
aim and attitude they regarded with even more horror
than that of the Dissenters. They seem even to have
failed to perceive that this claim involved a legislative
power in convocation, and placed a veto on the decision
390 THE DISRUPTION.
of any Civil Court in ecclesiastical affairs. Had they
been told that in the foundation of this claim the
whole edifice of lay patronage might virtually be over-
thrown, they would have recoiled in horror from such
a prospect.
The situation proved, if proof were necessary, the
slender understanding of Scottish affairs that was pos-
sible to an English audience. If the magnates who
gathered in the Hanover Square Rooms to listen to a
series of eloquent addresses in defence of their Church
found that the defence was rested upon grounds which
involved consequences the very opposite of what they
aimed at, they had only their own short-sighted and
purblind vision to thank for it. The claims put
forward by Chalmers might be impossible ; but he was
not inconsistent in making them. In the colour of his
Evangelicalism, and in the tenor of his religious views,
he had a certain affinity with the Evangelical or Low
Church party in the Church of England ; and this was
enough to induce them to call him to their aid. But
in his ecclesiastical principles he was not only divided
from them : they could not even perceive the bearing
of his views. According to these views there was no
inconsistency in Chalmers' quoting with the highest
approbation, as he did in the next General Assembly,
the words of Bishop Phillpotts of Exeter. The incon-
sistency was only in those who accepted a certain
similarity of religious tone and sentiment as a basis for
an alliance which had no foundation in principle or in
logic. The logic of religious partisanship is never very
apparent to the lay mind ; it becomes worse than ever
when principles are pounded together in a confused
medley in obedience to a supposed concurrence in
religious sentiment.
LEGALITY OF THE VETO ACT TESTED. 391
Before these lectures were delivered, the Church of
Scotland was launched upon the fight. We have seen
that in 1834 the Church had passed a Veto Act, which
asserted in its fullest form — in a form, indeed, so full
as almost to nullify the rights of patrons — the claim
of congregations to object to a presentee. The law
officers of the Whig Government of the day approved
of the Act, and no collision between the Church and
the State seemed likely to result from it.
But the matter soon came to the test of law. The
Earl of Kinnoul presented a Mr. Young to the parish
of Auchterarder in Perthshire. With his personal
qualifications — as with those of the other persons
who figure in this and succeeding suits — we need not
trouble ourselves, as they in no way afl'ect the principle
at stake. When the Presbytery proceeded to take
steps for his settlement, it found that only two persons
" signed the call," and that five-sixths of the communi-
cants dissented from his appointment, as adverse to the
spiritual interests of the parish. The Presbytery up-
held the objections under the Veto Act, and the
presentee not only appealed against the Presbytery to
the Synod, or immediately superior Ecclesiastical Court,
but — what was of far more serious import — to the Court
of Session. The decision of that Court must obviously
turn upon the legality of the Veto Act, and as a con-
sequence involved the whole question of the limits of
the legislative power vested in the General Assembly.
The case was heard before the whole Court, and in
February 1838 a majority of the judges pronounced
the opinion that in rejecting Mr. Young on the sole
ground that a majority of the communicants have dis-
sented tvithout any reason assigned, the Presbytery had
acted illegally and in violation of their duty.
392 THE DISRUPTION.
This position was alarming enough. At the ensuing
General Assembly a declaratory resolution was passed,
upholding the spiritual independence of the Church,
while it admitted " the exclusive jurisdiction of the
Civil Courts with regard to the civil rights and emolu-
ments secured by law to the Church and the ministers
thereof." This seemed to guard the position, and an
appeal against the decision was carried to the House of
Lords. That appeal was decided in May 1839, and the
House of Lords not only upheld the decision, but most
unequivocally disposed of any claim on the part of the
Church Court to reject a presentee except on the
ground of his lack of personal qualification, as to which
the Church Court might judge. The question whether
the absence of consent on the part of the majority of
the communicants was a disqualification, was answered
unequivocally in the negative.
This decision placed the Church in a difficult posi-
tion, for which, however, she had only herself to
thank. There can be no question that the objection
of a majority of the inhabitants had frequently exer-
cised weight on the judgment of the Church Courts,
and that the principle had been adopted that "fitness
for the situation to which they were appointed "—as
attested by substantial acceptance on the part of the
communicants — was a necessary "qualification." The
change in the political atmosphere, and the increasing
assertion of popular rights, might tend to make this
element intrude itself more frequently and with more
capricious motive. So far Chalmers, at least, was not
in sympathy with any subserviency to popular caprice,
however much his association with the Evangelical
party might dispose him to attach weight to the
element of unreasoning religious conviction, under
THE CHURCH AND THE CIVIL COURTS AT ISSUE. 393
the cloak of which personal animosity was not un-
likely to shelter itself. The Church might have
trusted itself to hold the balance, to do what was
adequate to prevent unsuitable settlements, and so
to avoid, as it had so long avoided, bringing to the
hard arbitrament of the law-courts the old struggle
between the limits of the ecclesiastical and civil juris-
diction. But by passing the Veto Act she distinctly
threw down the gauntlet, and prescribed a certain
rule by which such matters were to be judged, care-
less whether that method conformed to the civil
statutes or not. The highest court of the realm had
now virtually pronounced that the Veto Act did not
so conform, and it ignored altogether, as it was bound
to ignore, the idea that the Veto Act could introduce
a change into the statute law of the country.
In the Assembly of 1839, immediately after the
decision of the House of Lords, a motion proposed
by the Moderates for the repeal of the Veto Act was
rejected; the principle of "Non-Intrusion" was again
asserted ; and it was resolved to appeal to the Govern-
ment for the help of the Legislature in order to prevent
collision between the civil and the ecclesiastical juris-
diction. The appeal was a bold, and, indeed, in some
aspects, almost an unconstitutional one, but the Church
had in her favour the circumstance that the Veto Act,
which gave the occasion for the collision, had been
passed with the full assent of the Whig Government
in 1834, a government which was practically repre-
sented by that of 1839.
As might be expected from a government so weak
as that of I^ord Melbourne, they temporised with the
question. " They felt its urgency ; " they " would give
it their best consideration." Meanwhile they would
394 THE DISRUPTION.
exercise the Church patronage of the Crown in accord-
ance with the law of the Church. Such feeble devices
were least of all helpful to those whom they were
meant to serve.
MeauAvhile other cases arose which made the
matter month by month more urgent. In the case
of Lethendy, the nominee of the Crown (to whom
the patronage belonged) was vetoed by the congre-
gation, and therefore rejected by the Presbytery. The
Crown thereupon made a new presentation, but an
interdict was served by the Court of Session, at the
instance of the first nominee, upon the ordination of
the second. On the orders of the Assembly, and in
spite of the protests of the original presentee, the
Presbytery ordained the second, and they were forth-
with summoned to the bar of the Court of Session,
and subjected to the censure of the Court, with a
distinct threat that the sentence upon a similar action
in future would be one of imprisonment.
The issue was now fully joined, and it was hardly
possible that any terms of settlement could now be
arranged. Virtually the non-intrusionist party in the
Church claimed a jurisdiction co-ordinate with that of
the Civil Courts — a claim which was inconsistent with
the principles upon which the law of the country rests.
The attitude of the combatants on each side became
more and more clearly defined. The Moderates main-
tained that the Veto Act, condemned as it virtually
was by the decision of the Courts, must be treated as
non-existent. They denounced the pact by which the
Government agreed to administer Crown patronage
in terms of an xict of Assembly which was condemned
by the Civil Courts. They refused to admit that the col-
lision between the Church and the State was one which
ACTION OF THE PRESBYTERY OF STRATHBOGIE. 395
could be avoided by legislation until the constitutional
supremacy of the Civil Courts was fully vindicated. To
that vindication they looked for the maintenance both
of civil and religious liberty, and they appealed to the
constitutional sense of Englishmen to protect their
country and their Church against what they held to
be the dangerous policy of those Avho had acquired for
the time the upper hand in the Ecclesiastical Courts,
It is no wonder that in such an issue the combat
waxed hot and fierce.
A new and an even more dramatic incident now
gave an even graver aspect to the conflict, and showed
how far the leaders of the non-intrusionist party were
prepared to carry their assertion of independence.
A certain Mr. Edwards had been presented to the
parish of Marnock in 1837. He was distasteful to
the congregation, and only one signature was ob-
tained to his call. On the instructions of the General
Assembly the Presbytery of Strathbogie — a name that
lent itself readily enough to the uses of a popular
cry, and obtained a half jocular currency for the next
generation in consequence — rejected the presentee,
and a new nomination was made by the patron. But
before the Presbytery proceeded to act upon the new
nomination an interdict was served upon them by the
Court of Session, and in obedience thereto they re-
solved to stay proceedings. The matter was brought
up at the General Assembly of 1 839, and the Presby-
tery was instructed to suspend all proceedings until
the Assembly of the following year. But immediately
afterwards the original presentee obtained a judgment
in his favour from the Court of Session, which declared
that the Presbytery was bound to take him on trial.
This edict the Presbytery of Strathbogie, like law-
396 THE DISRUPTION.
abiding- citizens, proceeded to obey, but the Com-
mission of the Assembly, in the following December,
commanded them to desist, and on their refusal passed
sentence of suspension from their functions as minis-
ters. It is almost amusing to find that the Commission
accompanied this high-handed assertion of a jurisdic-
tion, not only co-ordinate with, but superior to, that
of the High Court, with much self-congratulation upon
the forbearance which made the sentence one of sus-
pension only and not of deposition.
That any large section of the Established Church
could have supposed that such action would be tole-
rated by the supreme Civil Court is hardly conceivable,
if w^e do not recall the fact that the issue now being
fought was one which roused feelings deeply rooted
in the hearts of a large body of Scotsmen. The old
assertion of ecclesiastical supremacy was buried be-
neath more than a century of altogether different
feelings, during which it seemed to be little but a
memory of the past, which no new generation would
see revived. But the seed lay deep in the soil, and it
was a proof of the tenacity of the Scottish character
that the crop sprang up once more, with a vigour and
force that took no account of constitutional considera-
tions, or of the fact that its aspirations were incon-
sistent with the ideas of the day. We may condemn
action so high-handed, which visited with the severest
ecclesiastical penalties those whose guilt consisted in
obeying the law of the land ; but we cannot help re-
specting the boldness of the leaders, and the clear-
sighted vigour with which they recognised the real
issue. Even the question of patronage as against
popular assent was seen to be of lesser account. " It
is not the Veto Law we are now considering," said
BOLD STATEMENT OF THE CHURCH's CLAIM. 397
Dr. Candlish, who moved the sentence of suspension ;
'■ it is a thing greatly more radical, vital, and elemen-
tary, and of far more permanent and pervading im-
portance to the Church than any single law on its
statute-book. The veto is a bagatelle, and but dust
in the balance, when compared with the proper in-
dependence of our Church in things ecclesiastical."
It is impossible to refuse a certain meed of admiration
to so bold and unflinching a statement of the question
at stake, and it might serve as a more instructive
lesson to the Englishman who studies the great eccle-
siastical light of Scotland, and who may turn that
lesson to account in a fight that may soon engage his
own more immediate attention, if he grasped clearly the
fact that the issue was only accidentally one regarding
the settlement of ministers, and that its essence lay
in the incompatible claims of civil and ecclesiastical
jurisdiction. It was well that it should be thus fear-
lessly set forth. We may doubt whether civil or
religious liberty would have been of long endurance
had the full measure of the claim of the dominant
party in the Church been admitted ; but we cannot
refuse to its leaders the credit of conscientious con-
viction, and of a bold statement of the authority they
claimed.
The sentence of suspension was followed by arrange-
ments under which the functions of the ministry were
to be performed by others in place of the suspended
ministers. The Court of Session protected these
ministers in the use of the parish churches, and
interdicted any interference with these. But it did
not yet proceed to interdict the holding of services
in the district by other ministers. The occasion was
used to arouse the feelings of the Highland popula-
398 THE DISRUPTION.
tion by a series of those open-air services, which
stirred their deepest memories, called forth their
highest enthusiasm, and pledged them to a whole-
hearted adherence to the cause. The appeal to re-
ligious enthusiasm met with a ready response, and
it was only natural that those who believed them-
selves to be the representatives of the martyrs of a
former generation should assume, as a part of their
creed, a not altogether amiable aspect of superior
fervour and loftier morality — an assumption which
may easily be accompanied by something of Pharisai-
cal hypocrisy. Their opponents, at least, did not
hesitate to ascribe to them such traits, and not the
least provocative element in the strife, to those who
were maintaining the supremacy of the law, was that
the average Englishman, so far as he attended to the
dispute at all, took the party of resistance at their
own valuation, and conceived that they, and they
alone, were animated by motives of conscience and
religious duty, and were ready to sacrifice all for their
sake. It was only too easily overlooked or forgotten
that adherence to constitutional principle had its
martyrs also, although the sacrifices were less noisily
proclaimed.
But the incidents of the fight developed rapidly.
Early in 1840 the Court of Session strengthened the
terms of their interdict, and forbade altogether the
ministration of the Assembly's representatives in the
districts of the suspended ministers. The result was
an absolute refusal to obey. " Let no ambiguity rest
upon our conduct," said Dr. Chalmers, when this
second interdict had been issued. " If the Church
command, and the Court countermand, a spiritual ser-
vice from any of our office-bearers, then it is the duty
THE COURT OF SESSION DEFIED. 399
of all the ministers and all the members of the Church
of Scotland to do precisely as they should have done
though no interdict had come across their path." It
was suggested that, as a preliminary to asking any
alteration of the law from the Legislature, the Church
should make submission to the Court. The reply was
one of absolute defiance. To do so would be " degrad-
ing dereliction of principle." "Be it known to all
men," said Chalmers in the Commission of Assembly,
" that we shall not retrace one single footstep — we
shall make no submission to the Court of Session —
and that, not because of the disgrace, but because of
the gross and grievous dereliction of principle that we
should incur thereby. They may force the ejection of
us from our places ; they shall never, never force us to
the surrender of our principles ; and if that honourable
Court shall again so far mistake their functions as to
repeat or renew the inroads they have already made,
we trust they will ever meet with the same reception
they have already gotten — to whom we shall give place
by subjection, no, not for an hour — no, not by a hair's
breadth."
The last interdict remained — as indeed it was inevit-
able that it should— a dead letter. The issue had now
been cleaiiy defined ; to throw oil on the flames by the
prosecution of many of the leading clergymen because
they held services in the proscribed districts would have
been little short of madness. The interdict served
only to show that by so doing, in the opinion of the
Court, they were guilty of acting against the good order
of the Church as established. But to visit them with
the penalties due for such an offence did not belong to
the function of a Civil Court, which would only have
made itself ridiculous by trying to enforce them.
400 THE DISRUPTION.
The only hope of a settlement lay in some legislative
proposal which might reconcile the reasonable claims
of the Church with the prerogatives of the Civil Courts.
The leaders of the non-intrusion party believed that
they might dictate their own terms, and were ready to
open negotiations with either party in the State. But
it soon appeared that the Whig ministers, although
they had encouraged the Veto Act as a plausible con-
cession to popular rights, were unable or unwilling to
propose any alteration of the law. The Dissenting
influence, as was perhaps not altogether unnatural,
were opposed to a concession which would give com-
plete independence to a Church enjoying the material
advantages of endowment and establishment. What-
ever the reason, the answer of Lord John Russell was
explicit : that in the present disagreement of opinion
the Government declined to make itself responsible for
any measure of relief.
It was to the Conservatives — to whom the changed
current of political feeling was fast bringing the cer-
tainty of power and office — that Chalmers and his
friends now turned. The member of that party
through whom the negotiations were chiefly conducted
was Lord Aberdeen, and for a time it seemed as if the
terms of a Bill might be arranged. The negotiations
present an aspect of the crisis less dignified, perhaps
we may add, less creditable to all concerned than the
more dramatic incidents of the open fight. It would
be tedious to discuss in detail the parleyings and the
correspondence, by means of which the non-intrusionist
party in the Church sought some formula which would
retain for them an independent power, and while
prescribing a stated course of procedure, should leave
one step therein so undefined as to allow them to be
NEGOTIATIONS WITH THP: GOVERNMENT. 401
absolutely free ; while the Conservative leaders sought
to preserve in name the supremacy of the law, while
conceding as much as possible to the claims of the
Church. Neither side could afford to be very candid ;
least of all, perhaps, the Conservative politicians, who
were not only attempting a task essentially opposed to
the main principles of their political creed, and who,
from party motives, were perhaps inclined to sacrifice
the best interests of the Church, and to betray that
party in the Church which might command compara-
tively little popular support, but were nevertheless bound
by the principles upon which alone an Established
Church can safely rest. The letters and conferences
between both sides became more and more compli-
cated. Charges of bad faith were inevitably made.
It could hardly be otherwise when the subtleties of
ecclesiastical distinctions were the matter of discussion
between those, on the one hand, to whom each varia-
tion of expression meant a vital dijfference of principle,
and those, on the other, to whom the whole seemed a
sophistical and unmeaning controversy. Step by step
it became plain that the liberum arhitrium or un-
fettered discretion w^hich the Church claimed would
not be satisfied by anything which demanded that
their rejection of a presentee should be based on
reasons stated on behalf of the congregation. The
Church must not only be free in its judgment : it
must be free to suspend or abrogate its judgment if a
majority of the congregation announced its dissent.
The Presbytery must be free to reject merely on the
dissent of the congregation ; that is to say, the right of
the patron was to be at the mercy of any caprice that
claimed to be founded on conscience, even if it failed
to adduce a single reason for its existence. Between
VOL. II. 2 V
402 THE DISRUPTION.
such a claim and any proposal which a responsible
minister could propose there was an insurmountable
barrier. The negotiations were fruitless, and they did
not end without provoking feelings of distrust and
irritation on both sides. Lord Aberdeen introduced a
r)ill which would certainly have given to the Presbytery
ample power to give effect to any reasonable objection of
the congregation. Beyond that he would not go, and
when he withdrew the Bill in July 1840, it was with
expressions of sympathy for the suspended ministers
of Strathbogie, and of severe condemnation of those
leaders who seemed to be perverting the mind and
hazarding the whole position of the Church. These
words were echoed by Sir Robert Peel. Pie regretted
that the Bill had not passed ; he was willing to concede
more of the principle of popular election in the choice
of ministers ; but any further concession to the inde-
pendence of ecclesiastical authority he would not give.
" The spiritual authority now claimed by the Church of
Scotland he believed to be illegal, and he would not
for the purpose of conciliation give his support to it."
It might have been well had this declaration been
made earlier ; perhaps not less well, even for the
Church itself, had a lingering attachment to the policy
of conciliation at the price of surrender of principle
not remained as part of the stock-in-trade of the Con-
servative party.
The negotiations being thus broken off, the fight
was renewed with all the greater bitterness, as each
party recognised that it was to be war to the bitter
end. The contest as to which section was to be domi-
nant— because it became more evident day by day
that the Extremists were only one section of the
Church — waxed more bold. It had been suggested
THE ISSUES BECOME MORE CLEAR. 40 3
that they should give way. We have seen how the
suggestion was received. They did not scruple now to
claim that the surrender should be made by the law-
courts. " It would be no impossible thing, surely,"
said Chalmers, in his heated reply to the calm words
of Peeh "'that law has for once in 150 years gone
beyond its sphere. Which of the two rival elements,
we ask, in all conscience and equity, ought to give
way ? " So frenzied had he become in the assertion
of an impossible claim that, with no thought of the
danger to the whole structure of society, he does not
hesitate to suggest that the law-courts should sur-
render the very principle on which they rest, and come
in the humble attitude of repentant sinners to crave
the pardon of an authority greater than that of law !
The offending Presbytery of Strathbogie, or the
seven suspended ministers who constituted the ma-
jority, now proceeded to carry out the order of the
Court, to admit Mr. Edwards to the charge which was
legally his. The scene was one striking and pic-
turesque enough. The enthusiastic mood of the
Highland population of the lonely Banffshire village
had been raised to the highest state of tension. On
the 21st of January 1841, after a severe snowstorm
had laid the roads far and near under impassable
snow-drifts, the ceremony which they had been taught
to believe a sacrilegious profanation of the sacred
office was performed. In spite of the difficulties, a
crowd of some thousands had gathered, and densely
filled the church. The legal agents on each side had
a preliminary skirmish as to the manner of procedure.
Formal protests were put in, and the ministers who
were obeying the orders of the Supreme Court were
plainly told that they could claim no spiritual alle-
404 THE DISRUPTION.
giance from their people, and that they were about to
perform an act involving "the most heinous guilt and
fearful responsibility." Having made this protest, the
congregation, with a dramatic effect all the more
striking because it was unstudied, trooped in a body
from the church w^hich they were never to enter
again.
The scene was changed when the Assembly met
in May of the same year. Then the outraged con-
gregation were to have their revenge, and a dominant
majority, who were now careless of the lengths to
which rebellion miglit lead them, were determined to
pass upon the offending ministers the severest eccle-
siastical penalty. There was no hesitation as to the
course to be pursued. The appeal that the ministers
had acted according to their conscientious sense of
duty was summarily brushed aside. Conscience was
no excuse for stubborn contumacy or for proud and
rebellious defiance. So spoke Chalmers on the eve
of the most marked insult that could have been per-
petrated on the first principles of the law. But for
either side in such a contest to throw overboard the
plea of conscience is a dangerous abandonment of
what both may sometimes need as their excuse. The
sitting was excited and prolonged, and only at three
o'clock in the morning, after a dignified protest from
the ministers accused, was sentence of deposition pro-
nounced. It was, no doubt, a solemn and effective
episode in the drama, and one which might well mark
the stern issues of the contest ; but the offending
ministers in no Avay lost their status. Like the issue
of another well-known curse, " nobody was one penny
the worse."
The minority in the Church — or at least those who,
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PARTY IN THE CHURCH. 405
in the heated eagerness of men Avho knew no measure
in their resistance to the law, appeared to be the
minority — were now fully determined to reassert what
they believed to be the constitutional order of their
Church. They had felt no sympathy with the strained
assertion of popular interference in the settlement of
ministers. They believed that such interference was
often mischievous, and not rarely capricious and ill-
grounded. But they had declined the contest on the
special point, which admitted of difference of opinion,
and was, after all, a matter of degree. Now a larger
question was at stake. The freedom and independ-
ence of every member of the Church could be main-
tained only so long as the majesty of the law was
supreme above the fierce and unruly elements that
intrude into ecclesiastical debates, A contest might
have arisen at the moment, had a protest been lodged
which the majority were prepared to refuse. To have
provoked battle on that issue might not only have led
to disruption, it might have forced the hands of the
State, and led it to treat the whole Church as irre-
claimably rebellious.
At the moment when the fight was at its fiercest, a
counter- stroke was dealt by the Court of Session. The
Moderator announced that a messenger-at-arms was at
the door to present an interdict against the deposition.
The position was critical. To have refused to receive
it would have brought every member of the Assembly
within the reach of the law. The interdict was ordered
to lie on the table, and a series of resolutions declared
it to be a breach of the privileges of the Church.
The Whig Government had now to deal with an un-
exampled state of matters. The Prime Minister was
questioned on the subject, and while declining to pro-
406 THE DISRUPTION.
pose any alteration of the law, he declared that steps
would be taken to enforce the law and to protect those
who obeyed it. But no such steps were taken. The
loudest and boldest party in the Church were likely to
have the most influence at an election, and a tottering
Government could not afford to alienate their support.
Such temporising, however, won them no respect. The
assertors of the Church's claims could with reason com-
plain " that the Government had neither the candour
to concede these claims nor the boldness to repudiate
them."
An attempt — which found some favour in the eyes of
the Whigs — had again been made in the way of legis-
lation. The Duke of Argyle had introduced a Bill in
May, which conceded the veto, but fenced it only by
providing that it could be set aside if it were proved to
have been set in motion from factious or capricious
motives. That Bill conceded so much that the extreme
party in the Church were ready to give it their support.
But it met with keen opposition in the House of Lords,
and before it proceeded further Sir Robert Peel had
become Minister, and, in the election which ensued,
became the head of a powerful majority. The opposite
party in the Church now found their hopes raised, and
appealed to the Government, with no uncertain voice, to
restore her discipline. "They are fully persuaded" —
so their memorial ran — •" that because sufficient care
has not been taken to guard against the cherishing of
delusive and unconstitutional expectations, matters
have reached in Scotland the fearful crisis to which
they have now attained." They demanded from the
Government a declaration which should admit of no
dispute, which party in the Church was to be held by
the legislature as constituting the Established Church.
DISRUPTION CONTEMPLATED. 407
The lists were now clearly marked out. " The war of
argument is now over," said Dr. Chalmers at the Com-
mission in August : " the strife of words must give
place to the strife of opposing deeds and opposing pur-
poses." " Be it known unto all men," he proceeded,
"that we have no wish for a disruption, but neither
stand we in overwhelming dread of it. We have no
ambition, as has pleasantly been said of us, for martyr-
doms of any sort, but neither will we shrink from the
hour or the day of trial."
It is plain that, long before these words could have
been uttered, a " disruption " was contemplated as the
probable issue of the fight. Already measures were in
operation for covering the march to a separate camp.
Much in the circumstances favoured the plans of the
seceders. The resources of the country had greatly
increased. They were chiefly in the hands of the
captains of commerce in the large cities, and the great
majority of these were strongly under the influence of
the leaders of the more restless and active party in the
Church. Relatively to the wealth of the country, the
endowments assigned to the Church had become more
and more meagre. Of the landed classes, not a few,
estranged by the attacks on their powers as patrons,
and weary of continual strife, were showing sympathies
with the Episcopalian Church. The standard of living
traditional in the Scottish Church was not extravagant,
and no unmeasured liberality was required to provide
the scanty competence that w^ould suffice to secure the
out-going ministers against actual starvation. None
the less the determination to face the risk commands
admiration and respect. It was not made without some
hesitation. For a moment it seemed as if before the final
plunge a settlement might still be reached, and negotia-
r'
408 THE DISRUPTION.
tions were opened witli the Government through the
niedinm of Sir George Sinchiir. They proved abortive,
as the Government could not concede the terms that
were demanded. The final scenes were hastening on.
In the beginning of 1842 a new movement was
begun. If no settlement between Church and State
were possible, it might still be hoped that an actual
change of the law, for the abolition of patronage, might
sweep out of tlie way the whole foundation of the
strife. This proposal was now put forward with the
support of Chalmers in the Presbytery of Edinburgh.
It could hardly have been supposed that a Conservative
Government could agree to such a proposal. To do so
would have been to betray the party in the Church who
had stood by the constitutional relation between Church
and State, and would have delivered them over to a
system against which they had striven in obedience to
the law, and which they believed to be fraught with
evil to the Church. The advocacy of the proposal
involved a change of front on the part of those who had
passed the Veto Act, and Chalmers himself could not
escape the accusation of inconsistency. It unmasked —
so opponents might well allege — the real object of those
who had insisted upon a veto power in the congrega-
tion which was to be a check upon the evils of patron-
age, but not a substitution of popular election in its
place. It was in marked opposition to the whole
attitude which he had assumed as regards the limits of
popular power, and shows how far he had departed
from the spirit that made him the decided opponent of
the Reform Bill. It was one thing to ask that patron-
age should not override religious scruples : it was quite
another thing to say that the initiative in nominating
' Ih. ministers should pass entirely into the hands of an un-
d %
THE CLAIM OF RIGHT. 409
educated crowd. But ecclesiastical battling is a pro-
cess through which few men pass without giving ground
for a charge of inconsistency. No one would advance
against Chalmers the accusation of conscious tergiver-
sation ; but it is impossible not to admit that his pro-
gress along the dangerous path of resistance to the law
had made him the supporter of much from w^hich in
earlier days he would have shrunk.
Tt is not the business of a secular history to trace
in minute detail each incident of the ecclesiastical
struggle. The history of Strathbogie had its counter-
part elsewhere ; but the new instances added nothing
material to the issues at stake. The Government held
firmly — and wisely — to the position that the law must
be maintained, and declined to introduce any legis-
lative proposal. The time for concession w-as gone,
and so clearly was the ultimate result foreseen that
some of those wdio had adhered to the extreme party
now separated themselves from it, and w'ere willing
to accept a measure on the lines of Lord Aberdeen's
rejected Bill. To this the Government were not un-
willing to listen, but the fear that defection from
their party might increase only precipitated the action
of the extreme advocates of spiritual independence.
They now determined to put forward a Claim of Eight,
which it was clear that neither the Government would
for one moment consent, nor respect for the law
admit, and to adopt this as the charter of their new
Church.
The Claim of Eight was drawn up in anticipation
of the Assembly of 1842, which was destined to be —
and which it was indeed foreseen must be — the last
of the unbroken Church. Never were the assertions ^^^ ^^
of the supreme authority of the Church, within its J^f^§.i *«
i
410 THE DISRUPTION.
own domain, put forward with more unhesitating-
boldness. It was soon evident that all half measures
were discarded, and that the only aim was to add
decision to the declarations of the Church, and to
obtain for them the support of sweeping majorities.
The exclusion of the deposed ministers of Strathbogie
was upheld — in spite of an interdict from the Court
of Session — by an overwhelming number of voices.
The resolution for the abolition of patronage passed
with as full assent. The Assembly took pride —
perhaps those who contemplated the abandonment
of their benefices found special satisfaction — in the
proofs that could be adduced that the liberality of
her adherents was never more generous than it had
been in these years of excitement and strain. The
chief topic, however, which threw all others into the
shade, was the Claim of Rights. This asserted, in no
dubious terms, the co-ordinate jurisdiction of the
Church Courts, and traced it as founded upon her
history, and as confirmed by her contract with the
State. It was defended by Chalmers in words that
left no ambiguity as to the position which was claimed
— a position which might well rouse the enthusiasm
of those who could disregard the paramount supre-
macy of the law as the fundamental basis of society,
and who could see no danger to civil and religious
liberty, of which that paramountcy is the sole effectual
guarantee. It was carried by a majority of more than
two to one, and it was transmitted to the Crown as
the final offer of an independent jurisdiction, deigning
to treat with a usurping power, rather than as the
appeal of subjects of the State to its sovereign autho-
rity. We may recognise its boldness, and the earnest
enthusiasm of its supporters, even while we are con-
THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN. 411
vinced that its concession Avould have involved the
confusion of every constitutional principle.
Before the close of the year, and before the Claim
of Right came to the arbitrament of Parliament, the
party which now held itself to be the only true re-
presentative of the principles of the Church, met in
Convocation at Edinburgh to arrange for the final
steps in its plan of campaign. It was an occasion
of great solemnity, and they did not fall below the
dignity of the occasion. A spirit of stern resolution
as well as of earnest devotion pervaded all their
proceedings, and none knew better than Chalmers
how to grace the solemn gathering with all the power
of a convincing eloquence. But it was apparent also
that the spirit of organisation was not lacking, and
that abundant preparation had been made for arrang-
ing the material resources by which the campaign
was to be maintained. The completeness of the
scheme for a provision which was to take the place
of the surrendered benefices was well fitted to reassure
the faint-hearted or the hesitating. The Convocation
parted secure of adequate support, not only from a
large body of the clergy, but from at least a fair, if
not a preponderating, proportion of the wealthier
laymen of the country.
It remained only that the Claim of Right should
be subjected to the judgment of Parliament. It had
already been dealt with in a letter from Sir James
Graham as Home Secretary, in which he exposed
the incompatibility of the Claim with the supremacy
of the Civil Courts, and declined on the part of the
Government to intervene. On the 7th of March
1843 Mr. Fox Maule proposed the appointment of
a committee to inquire into the grievances of the
412 THE DISRUPTION.
Church. Many Scottish members supported the
motion, and found nothing to object to in the
claims put forward. But such was not the deter-
mination of Parliament. From both sides of the
House — from Lord John Russell no less than from
Sir Robert Peel — the demands were denounced as
unconstitutional and incapable of being entertained.
"My belief is/' said Sir Robert Peel, "that such
claims, if you were to concede them, would be un-
limited in their extent. They could not be limited
to the Church of Scotland. . . . My belief is that
there is abroad, both in this country and in Scotland,
and in other countries, after a long series of religious
contentions and neglect of the duties of religion, a
spirit founded upon just views in connection with
the subject. But I hope that, in effecting this object,
an attempt will not be made to establish a spiritual
or ecclesiastical supremacy above the other tribunals
of the country, and that in conjunction with in-
creased attention to the duties of religion the laws
of the country will be maintained. If the House
of Commons is prepared to depart from those prin-
ciples on which the Reformation was founded, and
which principles are essential to the maintenance of
the civil and religious liberties of the country, nothing
but evil would result, the greatest evil of which would
be the establishment of religious domination, which
would alike endanger the religion of the country and
the civil rights of man." The motion was defeated
by 241 votes to 7& ; but the Scottish members voted
as two to one in its favour.
The Church had now received that answer that
she demanded ; and it was of a character for which
those who had recently commanded the majority in
SECESSION DETERMINED. 413
her Courts were fully prepared. Their course was now
clear. A piecemeal resignation, or one which would
not have enabled them to assume the formal aspect
of a deliberate separation of the great body of the
Church from a State which had broken its side of
the contract, would not have suited their purpose.
But an opportunity was soon to be given them for
an exodus of another kind, and it was prepared with
ample deliberation, and in a manner calculated to
give it the most striking and dramatic effect.
The Creneral Assembly met in May 1843. Men's
minds were in the keenest state of excitement; and
however solemn the occasion, excitement kept alive
by a carefully studied scene, of which the incidents
were planned beforehand, cannot fail to have its
ludicrous side. The leaders were well aware of their
power. They had secured pledges which could not
be broken without sinking irrevocably the characters
of those who had given them. In many parts of
the country the pressure of the seceding party was
irresistibly strong, and the ministers had often to
choose between leaving their benefices, and thus
securing a right to a share in the sustentation which
private liberality had promised, and holding their
benefices against an overwhelming opinion in the
district which held that to do so would amount to a
surrender of all religious principle — with the prospect,
also, of ministering in churches without a congregation.
AYithout lessening the credit due to conscientious
conviction, w-e may w'ell suppose that such pressure
w^as not without its eflect. The outgoing party was
also sustained by Avide sympathy from those beyond
the pale of the Church, and even beyond the limits
of Scotland, who not unnaturally looked only at the
414 THE DISRUPTION.
obvious sacrifices that were faced, and gave generous
credit to an heroic act of independence. There were
others who took a less flattering view, and who were
inclined to see as much of melodrama as of tragedy
in the scene that was about to be enacted. There
were many who saw in it a presage of great evil for
Scotland, when a middle-class Puritanism, and a
covenanting spirit adapted to the conditions of the
nineteenth century, might kill out the blither and
freer mood that had reigned when the century was
young, and might alienate much that linked Scotland
with the highest intellectual efforts of the time, and
made her for a generation at least the centre of poetry
and romance. Some calmed their fears by proclaiming
that the exodus would be small ; and their falsified
prophecies were afterwards recalled as influences which
misled the Government. The last allegation may
safely be dismissed. No Government could have
satisfied claims which in their very essence were
inconsistent with the supremacy of civil law.
According to the usual custom, the meeting of the
General Assembly was preceded by the levee at Holy-
rood Palace of the Lord High Commissioner, who
attended the meetings as the representative of Her
IMajesty. The Marquis of Bute was the Lord High
Commissioner for the year, and in anticipation of the
coming scene, which was to make of this an historic
occasion, the levee was unusually crowded. It was
afterwards recalled as an odd and ominous incident,
that while the levee proceeded, the portrait of
William III. fell heavily to the floor, and caused a
bystander to cry out, " There goes the Revolution
Settlement." With his usual military escort, and all
the pomp and display that made the day an annual
THE EXODUS. 415
holiday, the Commissioner proceeded to the High
Church, where the preliminary service was held, and
there listened, with such edification as was in the
circumstances possible, to a discourse from the retiring
Moderator — a keen partisan of the seceding party,
who djd not fail to improve the opportunity which
his occupation of the pulpit gave him. Meanwhile
a vast crowd had packed the Assembly Hall since
dawn, and had patiently awaited the scene which
was about to be enacted, and the parts for which
were cast with the same care as for a theatrical per-
formance. After the usual opening prayer, and in
an atmosphere charged with an electric current of
curiosity, of anxiety, and of enthusiasm, the retiring-
Moderator, instead of "constituting" the Court and
proceeding to the election of his successor, read a
protest resisting the invasion of the Church's rights,
and summoning all who were faithful to her cause
to withdraw and meet elsewhere. Having finished,
he left the hall, followed by more than four hundred
ministers, w^ho then severed their connection with
the National Church. Falling into line, they formed
a long procession through the crowded street to
another hall that had been prepared for their recep-
tion. The scene was one that could hardly have
been witnessed without emotion, even by those who
knew that it was carefully rehearsed, and who might
suspect the perfect sincerity of the martyrdom, and
might still more confidently condemn the principles
upon which it rested. The seceding ministers left
amidst the cheers of the enthusiastic, amidst the tears
of those who mourned the breach in the National
Church, and amidst the smiles, it must be admitted,
of not a few, whose laughter was, perhaps, stirred
416 thp: disruption.
not by mere derision, but by the solemn guise of
enthusiastic heroism which religious contentions, con-
scientiously no doubt, but sometimes mistakenly,
assume.
In a hall at Canonmills which had been prepared
for the occasion, another vast crowd was gathered to
welcome the seceding ministers. A Moderator of the
new Assembly had to be chosen, and for the office
the new body had a splendid nomination open to
them. By acclamation Dr. Chalmers, whose genius
had illustrated the whole progress of the controversy,
whose unconquerable energy had given organisation
to the new Church, and whose brilliant eloquence had
impressed the cause upon the heart of the nation, was
called to the chair. He opened the proceedings by
prayer, and by selecting for praise one of those Psalms
which in the metrical version have for ages moved
the Scottish people :—
" 0 send Thy Lii;ht forth and Thy Truth,
Let them be guides to me :
And bring me to Thine holy hill,
Even where Thy dwellings be."
INot even those who most doubted the wisdom of the
Secession; not even those who condemned most severely
the methods by which it had been brought about ;
nay, not even those who might sneer at what they
deemed to be the mock heroics of its martyrdom, could
deny to the new Church the credit of a solemn, an
enthusiastic, and a dignified opening scene.
The exodus was indeed a great and memorable one,
and under its shock the Church might well reel and
stagger. Let it be remembered what her position was,
before we admit that all the honour of courajjfeous
THE PROSPECT FOR THE CHURCH. 417
adherence to conscience lay on the side of those who
now shook her dust from off their shoes. She had
no imposing political influence. She had often ex-
perienced the deception born of trust in the landed
aristocracy of Scotland, many of whom had grown
rich upon her ancient possessions, and yet grudged
her ministers a scanty pittance. Amidst the conten-
tions of political factions her position as an Establish-
ment might easily disappear, while the great and
wealthy Anglican Establishment might look with in-
difference on the fate of a Church alien to herself in
many points both of government and doctrine. She
could not count upon anything but opposition from
at least one great party in the State, and only feeble
support from the other ; and to many Englishmen it
seemed as if, in an obscure and entangled ecclesias-
tical contest, into the merits of which they disdained
to enter, the Church of Scotland had played the less
heroic part. The stream of private liberality was
flowino- in the direction of the new Church ; and those
who remained within the pale of the Establishment
might think they had done all that could be expected
of them in adhering to her, and that a Church which
had clung to its endowments required no liberal aid
from voluntary resources. Their position had nothing
to rouse popular sympathy or to kindle popular enthu-
siasm— indeed the topic on which the battle of civil
and ecclesiastical jurisdiction had been fought, was
one in which they had distinctly chosen the unpopular
side. Yet we must be forgiven for believing that the
courage and the steadfastness which kept the remnant
faithful to the principle of Establishment, and accepted
the only terms upon which Establishment was consti-
tutionally possible, were qualities which deserved well
VOL. II. 2 D
418 THE DISRUPTION.
of their country, and which proved in the result of
inestimable advantage to her. Without that courage,
Scotland must necessarily have become much more
distinctly and widely separated from England than
was actually the case. Had disestablishment come,
not as the result of political changes, but as the result
of an obstinate and perverse resistance to the only
possible terms on which the State could suffer an
Establishment to continue — then, without question,
after the first burst of admiration for a stalwart re-
sistance had spent itself, Scotland would have been
regarded as divided by a wide gulf from the dominant
constitutional views of the sister country. As it was,
the Church had to see herself politically in a minority
within her own borders. She had to see the rapid
growth of a certain stern and repressive code of
manners and of religious doctrine, v/hich swayed a
large part of her population, judged severely those
who fell short of a standard which they believed
narrow, bigoted, and discouraging to some of the best
instincts of the people, and which, combined with
the tendency of concentration at the English metro-
polis, helped to destroy the high position which
Scotland had won for herself as a literary centre. In
the eyes of these more enthusiastic opponents, the
adherents of the Church were deemed to be latitudi-
narian in doctrine, unduly lax in their conduct, over-
occupied with secular pursuits, and too inclined to
cultivate sympathy Avith the Anglican Establishment.
On the morrow of a great religious ** trek " such things
are very naturally suspected by those who are moved
by the absorbing enthusiasm of the moment. Those
against whom the accusations were brought might
endure them, in the consciousness that they were
HARD LOT OF THOSE WHO REMAINED. 419
maintaining an attitude which did in the end redound
to the good of Scotland.
About four hundred and fifty out of twelve hundred
of her ministers had left the Church. It would be
wrong to deny that to many this involved a severing
of ties that were part of their lives, and that suffering
and privation were the lot of some. As a solace to
these afflictions they indulged to the full in the most
bitter denunciation, and the most contemptuous ridi-
cule of those who remained. The position of an
Established Church minister was one which for years
called for the exercise of much patience and much
fortitude. To attend the parish church was, in many
places, held to be a sign of lax conduct, and of open
irreligion. On the other hand, the outgoers had the
sympathy of many in all parts of the world. From
America and from Ireland there came material help.
The newly enriched commercial classes found their
contributions repaid by a rich tribute of admiration,
influence, and respect, which did not improve their
moral tone, and which gave to the ensuing generation
a large and powerful body in whose character attention
to worldly prosperity and obtrusive religious pro-
fessions were oddly blended. The Protestant Churches
abroad, readily and without any very careful investi-
gation, accepted the view that in the Free Church
alone were to be found the representatives of Scot-
tish independence and of Scottish religious feeling.
"Apart from Christianity altogether," said Chalmers
in his opening address, in words that, to a calm re-
trospect, appear to savour a little too much of self-
congratulation, " there has been realised a joyfulness
of heart, a proud swelling of conscious integrity, when
a conquest has been effected by the higher over the
420 THE DISRUPTION.
inferior powers of our nature, and so amongst Chris-
tians, too, there is a legitimate glorying, as when the
disciples of old gloried in the midst of their tribula-
tion, and when the spirit of glory and of God rested
on them, they were made partakers of the Divine
nature, and escaped the corruption that is in the
world." Whatever might be the lot of the humbler
followers, the leaders of the new Church might add
to this consciousness of self-righteousness, the fact that
they at least were no losers, even in a worldly point
of view, by the change.
But, on the other hand, one point in the declaration
which was most emphatically insisted on by the Free
Church was that they supported the principle of an
Established Church as against that of voluntaryism.
"The Voluntaries mistake us if they conceive us to
be Voluntaries," said Dr. Chalmers in his opening
address in the Canonmills Hall. " Though we quit
the Establishment, we go out on the Establishment
principle ; w-e quit a vitiated Establishment, we would
rejoice in returning to a pure one. To express it
otherwise — we are the advocates for a national re-
cognition, and national support of religion — and we
are not Voluntaries."
No declaration could be more emphatic, more care-
ful, or more distinct. It indicated, indeed, the great
error of which those had been guilty who had brought
about the breach. None had spoken words of more
unreserved praise of Establishment than had Dr.
Chalmers, and his most eloquent pleas in its favour
had been urged before an English audience, and in
defence of the x'inglican Establishment, from which
this element of popular election was far more com-
pletely banished, and where the principle of the civil
THE FREE CHURCH NOT VOLUNTARIES. 421
supremacy was far more thoroughly recognised than
would have tallied with the views of any party in
the Church of Scotland. But step by step, he and
others with him had advanced to a position from
which they could not retreat, and in which they were
almost forced to the extreme measure of secession.
With all the success that attended the Sustentation
Scheme, of which he was himself the chief organiser,
Chalmers, during the four years that ensued before
his death, continued to feel the same distrust of the
voluntary principle. He did not cease to lament that
the breach between his Church and the State had
become inevitable ; he did not cease to feel that
voluntaryism, however necessary to those who could
not conscientiously accept the terms of the State,
was but a poor substitute for the great benefit which
a State Church might confer. The only terms on
which he could accept that bond were those which
pledged the State— not as a matter of expediency,
but as a matter of publicly-avowed faith — to support
the Church, not because it was the Church of the
majority, or because it was the Church of history and
tradition, but because it was implicitly believed to be
the only true Church — to which it was ready to
commit supreme power in all ecclesiastical matters.
These terms were refused, but Chalmers nevertheless
fell back upon voluntaryism as a sorry substitute.
After all the triumphant success of the new Church,
he could only say: "My hopes of an extended Chris-
tianity from the efforts of voluntaryism alone have
not been brightened by my experience since the Dis-
ruption." But the logic of facts was too strong for
Chalmers and his followers. They were forced, as a
means of strengthening their own position, to seek
422 THE DISRUPTION.
alliance with the dissenting bodies beyond the borders
of Scotland, whose principles were volnntary. They
found there a sympathy with the spirit in which they
regarded religion, and they found there also a social
stratum more akin to their own. Bit by bit they
moved into closer connection with the dissenting
spirit, and a generation had scarcely passed before a
large portion, and what soon became an overwhelm-
ing majority, of their number were to be found in
the ranks of the Liberationists, Only last year the
emphatic words of Chalmers were deprecated as a
mere chance utterance, not worthy of attention, in-
stead of the distinct enunciation of a principle, in
support of which the main efforts of his life had been
given. Such dereliction of tenets, once ardently held,
can hardly escape condemnation, even under the
pressure of a motive so strong as that presented by
the hope of out-numbering the Establishment by union
with the third great Presbyterian body in Scotland,
whose principles had always been avowedly those of
voluntaryism.
The Church herself was destined to undergo a
similar change. In the year 1874, when the heat
of the struggle had passed away, when the spirit of
animosity had largely died out, and when the sternness
of the religious spirit which had at first characterised
the Free Church had faded before the influences born
in a new generation, an attempt was made to bring
about a reconciliation by conceding the principle of
popular election. The Free Church had found that
the supremacy of the Ci\il Courts could assert itself
even within the pale of a disestablished Church, and
a lawsuit which stirred the bitterest feelings, and had
seemed to involve an invasion of her dearly-purchased
LATER ATTEMPTS AT CONCILIATION. 423
liberties, had proved that her contracts were subject
to interpretation by the Civil Courts, and that her
ministers could appeal to these Courts for redress of
what they held to be wrongs, however much these
wrongs were founded upon supposed religious sanction.
Thus baffled in a new attempt to create an ecclesi-
astical independence, it was fancied that she might be
willing to be brought, by a large concession, back to
the pale of the Church. A Conservative- Government
did that for which in the earlier stages of the struggle
even the Extreme party had not been prepared, and
abolished patronage in the Church. Not only so, but
by making disputed settlements matters to be deter-
mined only by the Courts of the Church, the statute
seemed to bar the way against any collision between
these and the Civil Courts. Whether a statute, so
violently opposed to all the principles which the Con-
servative party in the Church had advocated for more
than a century and a half, has been for the advantage
of the Church, is a matter on which doubts are not
only legitimate, but perhaps well-founded. Many may
deem that the arts that please a popular electorate are
scarcely those that dignify religion, or contribute to
raise her ministers in popular esteem ; and some may
even deem that an extension of the powers of Ecclesi-
astical Courts may place an undue and unwholesome
power in the hands of the leaders of ecclesiastical
parties. However that may be, there can be no ques-
tion that this surrender on the part of the Conservative
party absolutely failed to bring about any healing of
the breach, if it did not, indeed, lead to some recru-
descence of animosity. It may be boldly asserted that
if such a sun-ender had taken place at an earlier stage,
it would have made of the Established Church, not that
424 THE DISRUPTION.
moderating influence which did so much for Scotland
during thirty very crucial years, but would have con-
verted it into a pale imitation of its rival. That it
was delayed until such a fate became impossible was
an advantage, not a loss. The framers of that measure
congratulated themselves that by its help the Church
was saved. But the worth of that congratulation must
be measured by the nearness of the danger which they
deemed themselves to have averted ; and as to this it
is permissible to feel some doubts.
One other matter which powerfully aftected the
future of the Free Church came into prominence
before Chalmers' death in 1847. The Government of
Sir Robert Peel fell in June 1846, after the Con-
servative party had been rent by the repeal of the
Corn Laws. The Whig Government which succeeded
them at once made a step forward in the Education
question, by producing minutes which offered grants
for the maintenance of schools — those previously offered
being only for school building. The condition on which
grants were to be given was that the schools should
be in connection with some religious denomination.
Chalmers recoiled from a measure which he thought to
savour more of indifference than of toleration, and he
would even have preferred an avowedly secular system.
But he did not think it wise for the Free Church to
refuse participation in such grants ; and acting on
his advice the Free Church accepted these grants,
which approached very closely to a State endowment
of religion, and thus separated herself openly from the
action of the Voluntaries in Scotland. That position
she maintained down to the passing of tlie Education
Act in 1872.
425
CHAPTER XXIII.
CONCLUSION.
In the preceding chapter we have followed the main
phases of this great ecclesiastical contest, which ab-
sorbed so much of the attention of Scotland during
the second quarter of the century, and which, coin-
ciding, as it did, with social and political changes of
the most far-reaching kind, served so powerfully to
determine her future position. Its full significance is
seen only when we compute its influence as combined
with these social and political changes. The course
of politics in Scotland since the Reform Act of 1832
has been somewhat curious. That Act had not merely
been a large step forward in political development :
for good or for ill, it had revolutionised the country.
From a small privileged class, nursed in traditions and
encrusted with an impenetrable coating of prejudice,
political influence suddenly passed to the middle class,
the only class recognising its own importance in the
balance of forces that were to shape the nation's future.
As compared with its counterpart in England, that
middle class was fairly educated, fairly intelligent, with
more than competent appreciation of political principle.
But it possessed, just as strongly as those who were
higher in the social scale, the national characteristics
426 CONCLUSION.
of pertinacious adherence to its opinions, and of that
inherent conservatism which refuses to be shaken from
the mood and attitude of mind to which it has become
accustomed. For more than a generation a conviction
of the necessity for drastic reform had been firmly
maintained by a large body of opinion in Scotland,
and that opinion had gradually spread until it obtained
a firm hold upon the vast majority of middle-class
Scotsmen. For at least two generations Scotsmen
had inherited from their fathers a dogged determination
to fight for that reform ; and they had become so im-
bued with it as the main object of national effort that
they were not likely to be shaken out of it by any
sudden gust of reactionary opinion. The doctrines of
Whiggism came, to the great mass of the nation, to
wear the strength of a religious conviction inherited
from their fathers, any dereliction of which would be
a sort of national apostasy ; and it has required more
than two generations to break this deeply rooted
impression.
But the profound alteration in all existing traditions
did not end with this deep and enduring conviction
on the part of the great majority of the nation. It
opened the flood of a much more revolutionary feeling
that for the moment terrified the Whig party, and
took away the breath of the small clique that had
fancied itself the sole representative of the reforming
spirit, and the chosen repository of political wisdom
and political morality. A large part of the stock-in-
trade of that clique had consisted of denunciation of
those who had so long held it in subjection, and who
had certainly laid themselves open to a fair charge of
narrow-minded and bigoted Toryism. But the little
party of the Whigs was hardly prepared to ride upon
MISTAKES OF THE WHIGS. 427
the crest of the popular wave. Jefirey was an active,
versatile, and sprightly controversialist. Long years
of opposition — to all appearance hopeless — had not
inured him or his party to the responsibilities of
power, and had not taught them to measure the
strength of the contending currents. In some re-
spects they had acted with singular tactlessness.
They had fancied themselves superior to the more
marked peculiarities of the national temperament.
They had affected a thin veneer of English senti-
ment, had sought to break down the barriers of
Scottish idiosyncrasies, and had, even in the minor
matters of dialect and of manner, striven to efface
what they thought to be marks of provincialism, only
because these marks had been rigorously maintained
by their political opponents. Jeffrey, according to the
caustic critic already quoted, had " lost his broad Scotch
and acquired narrow English," and the same affectation
was found in more than one of his associates — -very
distinctly in Andrew Rutherford, who became the
Whig Lord xldvocate a few years later, and whose
solid abilities were somewhat disguised by this little
peculiarity. An even more serious error was com-
mitted by that party when they fought against any
distinct Scottish administration, and did their best
to make it a mere branch of English official manage-
ment. This error, it is true, they soon repented, and
strove to undo ; but it was no easy task to recover
that independence which had been surrendered, and
they never succeeded in undoing the work of which,
in blind opposition to political antagonists, they had
made themselves the agents. If they ever hoped that,
as a Whig party, they would gather into their hands
such power and influence as had once been wielded
428 • CONCLUSION.
by Henry Dundas, they were doomed to condign and
well-deserved disappointment.
But whatever M'as their influence or their power of
becoming permanent leaders of a new and larger poli-
tical party, it was to Jeffrey and his immediate associates
that the task fell of carrying out the work of change
which was the immediate and necessary result of the
great shifting of political power in 1832. These im-
mediate changes followed, as they were bound to
follow, the course of English legislation. Parliamen-
tary reform and burgh reform in Scotland were mere
incidents in tlie changes wrought both in England
and in Scotland by the downfall of the Tory supre-
macy, and no great credit was gained by the Whigs
for the manner in M^hich they were carried out. Jef-
frey had not the talents which would have enabled
him to acquire a great Parliamentary position, even
had he not entered Parliament at a period of life too
late to let him learn the tactics of a Parliamentary
1-eader. When he retired from the arena, the guidance
of the AVhig party was left to Parliamentary hench-
men such as Kennedy of Dunure, whose pragmatic
reiteration of a few threadbare political principles —
unillumined by eloquence, unenlivened by imagina-
tion, unenlightened by any width of sympathy or any
largeness of grasp — might have fitted them in the
English arena to fill at most the position of Parlia-
mentary under- secretaries with respectable industry,
and with unswerving devotion to routine.
Such men accepted with submission the inferior
part they had to play as the nominees of English
ministers. They had no overweening ambitions, and
it did not suggest itself to them that a bold line of
Scottish policy might shape to Scottish needs and
STRENGTH OF THEIR HOLD ON THE MIDDLE CLASS. 429
Scottish peculiarities the wave of advancing politics
T\-hich was passing over the country. Great schemes
of social amelioration had no meaning for them.
Certain well -ascertained anomalies were to be de-
nounced, largely because they were relics of the past,
but chiefly because they afforded palpable proofs of Tory
abuses. The chief article in their political creed was
that which recognised no possible evil greater than
that which could be covered by the name of Tory,
but a scarcely less fundamental article was that
which repudiated the dangerous and fantastic dream-
ing which was connoted by the name of Radical. It
was not an inspiring, but it was a compact and com-
fortable compendium of political philosophy. All the
rugged picturesqueness of national character, all that
was romantic in the national genius, all the storm and
pressure of the national spirit seemed to have vanished
from the scene under the domination of the little pro-
fessional clique that managed to capture the spirit of
Scottish middle-class ascendency, and that bequeathed
to it a dogged adherence to Whiggism that was to
last to the end of the century.
But with all their limitations this little clique showed
marked skill in their business. They had no strong
sympathy with the national spirit ; but they found
the obstinate tenacity of the Scottish disposition an
admirable safeguard against any sudden reversal of
the political tendency of the day. They were separated
by a great gulf from the old spirit of Scottish ecclesi-
asticism, but they were able to use for their own
purposes the revival of the Covenanting spirit, in a
middle - class dress, which preached a theory of
ecclesiastical domination impossible in the nine-
teenth century, and which created out of that spirit
430 CONCLUSION,
a new sect in which the new electorate found
its safest anchorage. In spirit and in tone it was
absolutely estranged from the austere and repressive
code of social ethics which that sect inculcated ; but
yet the convivial habits of the Parliament House
formed no bar to a satisfactory alliance between the
Whig politicians and the fervid ecclesiasticism of the
Free Church. Sarcasm will spare, if only because of
the amusement it excites, the edifying faith which
found a stoup of Free Church orthodoxy in Fox Maule,
the force of whose expletives and the freedom of whose
life from the restraints of asceticism remain as lively
traditions amongst the older memories of Scotsmen who
can still recall these days. The Whigs of the Parlia-
ment House found useful allies in the Free Church
circles, from whose distinctive tenets they were widely
divided ; and the Free Church leaders found useful
patrons amongst men whose laxer code they could
condone in return for their common opposition to the
Church. If the pact suited both parties the outsider
need not visit it with any severity of condemnation.
A large class of laymen, enriched by the new commer
cial prosperity, and glad to find any counterpoise to
the old aristocratic domination, found in the new
Church a congenial field for the exercise of their
patronage, and in the new^ political conditions a safe
buttress of their freshly acquired influence.
But it Avas only a natural result that under such a
regime the wheel of legislative change did not move
with any great celerity. After the Act for Burgh
Reforms Scottish politics showed little advance,
except in the direction of securing for the Whig
clique the material advantages of political supremacy.
When the swing of the pendulum brought back a
THE POOR LAW. 431
majority of Conservatives to the Imperial Parliament
the Scottish Liberal majority was affected in its size
by the reaction, but it did not disappear ; and the
action of the Conservative Government in relation to
the Disruption completed the severance between that
party and the middle class of Scotland. It is curious
that the most important piece of legislation about the
middle of the century — the Scottish Poor Law of 1845
— was accomplished by the Conservatives, and marked
a break with traditional Scottish usage. That break
was resented by none more than by Chalmers, who
had all his life striven against a compulsory poor rate.
It was in 1840 that the question began to assume a
new aspect in Scotland. Hitherto the absence of a
compulsory and universal assessment for the poor had
been the pride of Scotland and the envy of England.
Even now strong arguments could be adduced in its
favour. The compulsory assessment had been adopted
only in the most populous parishes. There were 236
assessed against 643 non-assessed parishes, but the
population of the first was 1,178,280, that of the
second only 1,137,646. But though the amount of
population in each group was thus nearly balanced,
the expenditure in the assessed parishes was £91,000,
against £48,000 in the non-assessed. Chalmers still
hoped, and hoped to the end, that by moral influences,
by reviving the spirit of brotherhood, by stimulating
Christian liberality through the Church, above all by
so dividing districts as to create a new and more
vigorous personal interest in the work, the necessity
for the vast machinery of a statutory support of the
poor might be avoided, and the proud independence
of the Scottish spirit be maintained. He preached,
he lectured, he wrote in its favour ; he sought for
432 CONCLUSION.
sympathy and aid ; he strove to stem the wave of
advancing opinion. Amongst others he addressed
Carlyle, and received from him a cordial but a
doubting letter, in which he hinted that the scheme
was " a noble hoping against hope, a noble, strenuous
determination to gather from the dry deciduous tree
what the green alone could yield." " With a Chalmers
in every parish much might be possible ! But alas ! — "
Facts were too strong for him : a crowded population,
an eager race for wealth, the pent-up miseries of towns
crushed by the Juggernaut of keen competition, im-
periously demanded remedies of a drastic kind, even
if they tampered with old traditions and undermined
old independence. The change was rendered necessary,
very much in consequence of the ecclesiastical severance
in which he had been the predominant agent. Had
the Church remained united she might have retained
the command of that Christian liberality which was so
abundant at this time, and this might have helped her
to cope with the greatest of social problems, and might
have postponed for another generation the compulsory
assessment from which he shrank, and which he
deemed likely to sap the spirit of independence in
the nation. But that the measure should have been
forced upon the Conservative party shows how deeply
the social change had worked. The powers of the
Church were crippled, and the liberality which might
have aided her in the task found other more immediate
outlets for its exercise. Scotland was compelled to
follow in the wake of England, and to admit a uni-
versal system of assessment which it had been her
boast to have escaped when its abuses were most
evident in England. The old days were gone, in
which Chalmers less than twenty years before had
THE LAW OF ENTAIL FURTHER MODIFIED. 433
been able single-handed to cope with the pauperism
of a vast parish in Glasgow, where the conditions of
life were at their hardest.
But other influences told in the same direction
besides the accident of the ecclesiastical breach. The
social conditions of Scotland were undergoing a vast
change, which worked altogether independently of
the little political parties that seemed to themselves
to guide the course of events. The population was
beginning to increase by leaps and bounds. Manu-
factures and the wealth that they produced were
advancing as they had never advanced before. The
balance of influence was passing into the hands of
the commercial class. Parliament House might still
appear to rule, but only because the now influential
class was occupied with other things. The next im-
portant piece of legislation — which lies beyond the
period with which we are now dealing — the Rutherford
Act of 1848, so called from the Lord Advocate of the
day, marks a much more decided change in the system
of land tenure, so far as hereditary rights were con-
cerned, than any that had yet been made. We have
already seen how entailed estates, upon which so
much of the permanence of a landed aristocracy must
depend, had first been recognised in Scottish law only
in 1685 ; and how subsequent legislation in 1770 and
again in 1824 had limited the restrictions upon en-
tailed proprietors, and enabled them to burden the
estate with debt for necessary improvements. But
the restrictions which remained were felt to be a
check upon the growth of agriculture, and to fetter
unduly the exchange of the largest and most stable
commodity. That commodity must now be made to
conform more closely to the laws which regulated
VOL. IL 2 E
434 CONCLUSION.
other sources of wealth. The principal provision of
the Ilutherford Act was that which enabled the en-
tailed proprietor to disentail his land with the consent
of one or more of the next heirs of entail. Subsequent
legislation, in 1875 and 1882, has further extended
this principle ; and an entailed proprietor may now
disentail upon paying to the next heirs the estimated
value of their expectancies. Whatever the intention
of the Act, there can' be no doubt as to its inevitable
effect in preventing the permanent identification of
landed property with an hereditary aristocracy.
But however important might be the effect of
political and legislative changes in the shifting of
influence, far greater was that which came from the
actual growth of commerce and manufactures about
the middle of the century. It was then that the
foundations were laid upon which the solid wealth of
the country has been built. A century and a half
before, Scotland had been a miserably poor country.
Her currency did not in all amount to a million
pounds sterling. Her population scarcely exceeded
a million. Her manufactures were insignificant ; and
she had almost no share in the commerce of the world.
Prices were low ; but even when we make full allow-
ance for low prices, it is plain that the general standard
of living was simple even to the extent of penury.
The name of Scotsman was synonymous with that of
a needy adventurer, under-fed, starving, and ground
down to the mere necessities of life. Step by step
the ideas of life advanced ; but the growth of luxury
was seen only in a few chosen and favoured spots,
and the general standard was such as would have been
considered mean and sordid by the humblest artisan
of the present day. The incomes, not of the minister
PASSING FROM POVERTY TO WEALTH. 435
and schoolmaster only, but of every grade of profes-
sional life, would not have satisfied, at their lowest
scale, the humbler clerk of our own day, and even
at their highest would not have satisfied the ambition
even of the mediocre member of their class according
to present ideas. A landlord was rich with £500 a
year ; a lawyer in the highest practice, after a large
part of the eighteenth century had run its course, would
have been fully satisfied if his income occasionally
touched four figures. Even in the first quarter of the
century thrift was so much a necessity that it pervaded
all classes ; and beyond the aristocratic circle — and
that a very small one — which annually gathered in the
Scottish metropolis, the general standard of life was
cast on a humble scale. It was only as the century
ran into its third and fourth decade that commerce on
an extended scale began to pervade the larger towns.
A century before Glasgow had been a neat and pic-
turesque little town, nestling about the banks of a
humble stream navigable only by boats of small draft
and scanty tonnage. An attempt had been made to
find a port for her growing commerce near the estuary
of the Clyde, some twenty miles away. But now the
ideas of her citizens took a bolder and a wider scope.
They began the dredging of their river, and on either
bank the first manufacturing establishments, far dif-
ferent from their present gigantic scale, were gradually
gathering. Her shipbuilding yards were beginning
to send forth ocean-going steamers — the successors
of the first tiny craft which had essayed only a few
years before to navigate her waters by steam power.
In 1800 the whole shipping of Scotland had amounted
to 2415 ships; in 1840 she had 3479. But the dif-
ference in the number of ships offers a poor idea of
436 CONCLUSION.
the growth of her commercial fleet. In the first year
the tonnage amounted only to 171,000 tons; in 1840,
to 429,000. Already the start had been taken in that
race of vigorous energy, which at the close of the
century has multiplied that tonnage by six times.
Between 1840 and 1850 she took her full share in
the vast enterprise of railroad extension, and the
shriek of the locomotive was heard in tracts of country
which almost within the memory of living men had
been the home of an alien race, and had been the
scene of wild escapades, read of in old ballads, or
told as the half-credited tales of adventurous travellers.
The glamour, the romance, the pristine habits that
had seemed to carry the imagination back to the
Middle Ages had been rudely scattered. The railways
in England broke up many a rustic scene, and brought
the noise and smoke and bustle of the factory into
regions given up to rural quiet ; in Scotland they
brought the spirit of modern times by one quick bound
into the midst of medisevalism. During that decade
the great railway companies of the northern country
all took their start. It was on a limited scale. The
capital that is now more than a hundred millions, could
then be counted by the score of millions. But the
contrast between 1800 and 1850 was nevertheless far
greater than that between 1850 and the closing years
of the century. Carry the view backwards for half
a century more, and the contrast between 1750 and
1850 is not that between small beginnings and a lair
advance ; it is that between modern life and all the
antique picturesqueness of a primitive community.
So it was with the development of her natural
wealth. A century and a half before coal had scarcely
been known, and was regarded with a horror and
THE COAL AND IRON INDUSTRIES. 437
dislike to which perhaps those who have suffered by its
modern devastation may accord a heartfelt, although a
resigned, sympathy. In the eighteenth century it had
become something of a staple of merchandise, as such
staples were then counted. It employed as its servants
a great army of human beings who were slaves in the
fullest sense, and who lived under conditions which pub-
lic feeling would not now tolerate in the case of animals.
In 1775, as we have already seen, that hereditary
bondage had been broken; but down to 1845 a vast
system of degraded toil, which crushed the life out of
women and young children, was still permitted to stain
that civilisation which cloaked its hideousness by the
boast of expanding wealth. It was only then that
the public conscience was aroused, and aroused far
more by English example, and by the perseverance
of English philanthropists, than by any purely Scottish
impulse. But while it crushed and degraded a large
part of the population in its advance, that vast in-
dustry, which now takes its place as one of the chief
sources of Scottish wealth, was steadily assuming its
huge importance. The possibilities were fully realised ;
it remained to the last half century only to develop
these on the lines which the pioneers had discerned.
So it was with the iron industry which now defaces
some of what were once the wildest and most picturesque
tracts of Scottish scenery, but which has built up in
large part the fabric of Scottish wealth. The Carron
Works — for long the only important enterprise of the
kind — were begun only in 1760. In 1788 they turned
out about 1500 tons a year. Step by step the output
advanced, until in 1845 it amounted to half a million
tons. From that safe platform to the development
of the last half century, when the output counts by
438 CONCLUSION.
millions, was the work only of deliberate endeavour.
To make the industry as great as it became in 1845,
required enterprise and discernment ; to ripen it to the
fulness of 1900 required no more than discipline and
perseverance.
But these treasures of the soil were not the only mines
of wealth which Scotland, once she awakened to the
need of taking her place amongst the advancing races
of the world in the pursuits which now absorbed all
energies, was to work with profit and success. The
woollen trade had grown slowly in Scotland — checked
for long by the conviction that her interest lay rather
in the linen manufacture, and that she could never
take her place as the rival of England in the more
highly developed woollen manufacture. But before the
eighteenth century was half run it had already got a
secure footing. The speculations and schemes of one
man — David Loch — ^had done much for the trade by
pertinaciously urging improvement in the breed of sheep,
chiefly as a means of raising the Highlands from the
slough of poverty and starvation to which nature
seemed to have condemned them. Here and there in
the northern counties his schemes had some success ;
but it was in the lowlands chiefly that the manufacture
advanced with a steady progress. The great Tweed
manufactures secured a position and a name for a
purely Scottish industry in all the markets of the
world ; and it is a curious circumstance, as associating
the romance and the growing wealth of Scotland, that
the technical name of " Tweel," which properly be-
longed to the cloth, was transformed by a careless clerk
to Tweed, and then by a happy thought permanently
adopted from the fame which the genius of Scott had
brought to a comparatively obscure border stream.
DISAPPEARANCE OF OLDER TYPES. 439
It was thought much when the turnover in 1830
amounted to £26,000 in the year. The enterprise that
brought that measure of success was a more powerful
agent in national development than the perseverance
that carried it to a value of millions annually. It was
only another phase of that national vigour that was
working to such good purpose in the middle of the
century.
The foundations of her wealth, and the lines on
which it was to advance, were thus being laid on sure
lines. What had been petty boroughs grew into vast
emporiums. In the eager race for wealth, Scotland lost
something that is attractive to history, and that im-
parted romance and interest to the story of her past.
Nothing is more denationalising than wealth, and it
was inevitable that some distinctive features of the
national character should, with its accumulation, and
the monotony of work which it engendered, fade into
the past. It was only the indomitable perseverance of
the race that seemed to remain as the chief sign of its
individuality. But while the century was no more
than half run there still lingered some traits of the
former generation. Within the memory of those yet
living the vernacular still held its own, and the broad
Scotch dialect was still to be heard, not in the blurred
and degraded form in which it lingers in the streets
and amongst the vulgar, but with all its racy and
expressive idioms, repeating the pristine forms of the
Anglo-Saxon tongue. Its retention was most char-
acteristic perhaps of the landed aristocracy ; and
amongst them some of the strongest and most pervad-
ing personalities gave to it the prestige and the dignity
of their own habitual practice. In 1845, too, although
the standard of comfort was greatly raised, the habit of
440 CONCLUSION.
thrift still remained, and even amongst the wealthy —
if they did not count their wealth by years but by
generations — the custom of lavish display was rigor-
ously eschewed. The newly-enriched Midas of the
commercial type was not a character who found the
mid-century air of Scotland a congenial or sympathetic
one. Much comfort, much easy hospitality, abundant
dignity of life, and much employment of life's chief
external ornaments there were. But they were accom-
panied by a certain staid and disciplined moderation.
They aimed much more at the substantial than the
florid accompaniments of wealth. A certain spirit of
asceticism curtailed even the harmless graces which
good taste might permit to luxury. The character and
disposition of the people, the temper and tradition
of their religious feeling — even the pride which bade
them pitch the measure of display below that of their
resources — all these preserved this tendency. To what
extent it has since passed away, and how far Scotland
is to be congratulated on its disappearance, must be
matter for the illustration and comment of any one
who may essay the history of the last half of the
nineteenth century.
These later years have shown us a curious and
as some think, not altogether a very wholesome
symptom. A fashion has arisen, and has been carried
to what we may be forgiven for thinking a rather
absurd extent, of depicting phases of Scottish manners
with an exaggeration of what professes to be in-
digenous sentiment, and with a lavish use of what is
supposed to be Scottish vernacular. The affectation
of antiquity is always a little ridiculous, and like the
lumber stored in the saleroom of the dealer in antiques
is apt to provoke suspicions of its genuineness. The
THE EPOCH OF THE MIDDLE CLASS. 441
language in which such depictors of Scottish charac-
teristics drape their narrative may doubtless find its
counterpart in one or another corner of a Scottish
town, or in some little village clique. But it is certain
that it shows no affinity to the classic dialect to which
the pages of Burns and Scott have accustomed us,
and which greeted our ears as spoken by some master
of the pure vernacular, in years that are not so long
gone by. It may even be open to doubt whether
the patchiness of the language does not infect to
some extent the sincerity of that overlaboured senti-
ment which it has pleased the last decade to identify
with all that is most characteristic of the Scottish
temperament. But much may be forgiven to the desire
to cherish the memory of types which have faded into
tho past.
Whatever the loss of romance and of interest, there
is no gainsaying the advances made by Scotland,
at the period when this narrative closes, in material
prosperity and in wealth. The middle class bene-
fited enormously by the political changes of the day,
and by the new fiscal regulations which gave a
new opening to commerce. They acted their part
with enterprise and energy, and Ave must admit that
in the tenacity of their adherence to certain opinions,
and in the stubborn force with which they defended
them, they repeated worthy traditions of a time when
Scotland had been represented by a smaller, a more
exclusive, and a more privileged class. The lower
population increased enormously in number ; they had
vast opportunities of employment before unknown ;
and they had their share in the new prosperity, even
though we may doubt whether that prosperity added
to their substantial comfort, and whether it was not
442 CONCLUSION.
dearly bought at the price of the strain and pressure
of overcrowded cities and of fluctuating trade ; and
whether the intellectual calibre of the poorer Scotsman
had not degenerated to some extent, and was not des-
tined to degenerate still more, from that of his cove-
nanting forebears. However that may be, there can
be no doubt that the social transformation did produce
one serious loss to Scotland. Edinburgh ceased to be
a literary capital. To some extent this was the in-
evitable consequence of the migration of intellect to
the southern metropolis, of which the causes were not
far to seek. But the loss was more far-reaching than
this. The distinctively Scottish strain almost com-
pletely disappeared from literature. Scottish philo-
sophy, in the sense in which it had flourished in the
previous century, ceased to be. Her universities con-
tinued to be notable and distinguished institutions,
but their teachers were drawn to a very large extent
from the English universities. Her most eminent pro-
fessors of philosophy introduced a strain of thought
which had far more affinity with the German than
with the Scottish type. Her scientific and medical
schools were famous and respected, but their repre-
sentatives no longer stood out as distinctively national
products, and the more cosmopolitan spirit drew them
more and more across the Scottish border, or supplied
their places by those w^ho had received an English
training. The dignity of her Court remained, and
the exponents of her law occupied no mean position
amongst the jurists of the empire ; but they no longer
swayed the nation as they did only a century before,
and the quick growth of statute law inevitably tended
to obliterate some of the distinctive marks of Scottish
procedure.
SCOTTISH NATIONAL EDUCATION. 443
One of the most important elements in the making
of the Scottish nation had been her parish schools.
They represented a national and statutory system
which had existed for centuries before such a thing-
had been thought of in England. The Act which
consolidated rather than established the system was
that of 1696, which required the heritors of each
parish to pay a salary of at least one hundred merks
Scots (£5, lis. Id.), or not more than two hundred
merks, for the schoolmaster. If the heritors failed
in this duty, they might be compelled to do so by
the Commissioners of Supply of the county, at the
instance of the Presbytery of the bounds. The pro-
vision was scanty enough, even when eked out by fees
(often paid in kind) and by some small parish offices.
But the position had its advantages. The teacher was
an institution of the country, and had the firm position
of a freeholder, buttressed by statute. During the
eighteenth century various attempts had been made
to raise the income, and a sum of £30 a year was
the maximum which it was hoped might be attained.
The teachers had a secure tenure, and the value of
their work was sufficiently well recognised to enable
them to push their claims with considerable force.
They remained an ill-paid but none the less a re-
spected class. It was one of the peculiarities of
Scottish life that no very wide barrier separated the
various grades of professional status. The school-
master was often a licentiate of the Church ; he was
not seldom the assistant of the parish minister, and
might himself hope to attain that position. Just in
the same way the parish minister might hope to end
his days in the much-envied seat of a Scottish pro-
fessor ; and thus each grade felt that it was divided bv
444 CONCLUSION.
no insuperable line from that above it. The school-
master entwined himself with the very heart of Scottish
life, and formed an inseparable part of it. His horizon
was not unduly circumscribed, and in all the concerns
of the country, in all its aims, in all the diversity of its
social interests, he had his recognised place, and had
associated himself even with its poetry and its romance.
Under his care the parish school achieved a work which
it is hard for any one not acquainted with Scottish life
to comprehend. It was a part of a wide-spreading
missionary effort, w-hich brought the various parts of
the country closer together, and did more than any
other agency to redeem from almost savage ignorance,
and to bring within the pale of civilisation and of
loyalty, the vast tracts of the Highlands, whose in-
habitants had for centuries lived an alien life, divided
by every diversity of law and custom. It was by the
influence of the parish school that the problem of
bringing these regions under the sway of the law was
far more successfully achieved than by the ruthless
cruelty which stamped out the rebellion, and strove to
plant southern sway by means of the terror inspired by
military despotism and by indiscriminate punishments.
It was the parish school that brought together all
classes, and accustomed the children of the laird to
receive their earliest instruction on the same benches
with the tenant's son. It was not confined to the bare
elements of education, for poverty did not prevent the
teacher from being often a man of culture and of
scholarship, and finding his solace and ambition in
training the aspirant to the university and professional
life. It was the parish school that fitted the young
Scotsman with that adaptable equipment that enabled
him to take his place with credit in foreign enterprise.
THE ACT OF 1803. 445
and gave him the rough inteUigence that marked him
as strongly as his national idiosyncrasies. Its atmos-
phere was one of independence and of equality, and
although its range might be narrower than that of the
richly-endowed grammar schools of the south, it was
a far better nurse of energy and self-confidence than
these sleepy corners which lethargy overspread like
mildew. It is hard to exaggerate the debt of Scotland
to her parish schools.
With the opening of the new century the need of
some increased liberality to a class of such national
importance was widely felt. The nation was quickened
not by its traditions only, but by the imperious neces-
sities of its situation, to recognise the advantages of
education, and to feel that better provision must be
made for it. It was in 1803 that a new Act was passed
which made three hundred merks Scots (about £16)
the minimum, and four hundred merks the maximum
salary of the schoolmaster, with a power of revision
after every five-and-twenty years, besides insisting
upon the provision of a house. But even here the
characteristic greed of the landed class was seen. The
scanty increase was sorely grudged by them, and it was
tliought to be an extravagant provision which required
that the house should consist of " not more than two
apartments including the kitchen," and that there should
be attached to it a garden of "at least one-fourth of a
Scots acre." But, paltry as the provision was, it gave
a new stimulus to the parish school. No investment
ever repaid a country better than did the money which
a conscience-stricken legislature extorted from the
pockets of heritors who were drawing greatly increased
rents from a soil which they had often acquired by very
questionable means. It preserved all the distinctive
446 CONCLUSION.
features of the old system — the settled status and the
independence which came from the teacher being an
established institution of the land.
On this footing the educational system of the country
achieved new successes. In the larger towns the
Grammar Schools formed centres, which maintained a
high standard of education, and which opened their
doors at a fee which scarcely debarred the poorest.^
However grudging to the teachers, the heritors must
be allowed the credit of often paying the fees for the
poor but promising boy. Education was valued : audit
may safely be said that it lay within the reach of every
class. No religious difficulty intervened to enhance the
difficulties of the work. The division of sects in Scotland
did not lead to any difference in the religious creed or
formula ; and except for the Roman Catholics (whose
consciences the General Assembly specially enjoined
the teachers to respect), and the scanty handful of
Episcopalians, all were content with the same religious
teaching. The Church was the close guardian and
protectress of the schools, and the school system was
part and parcel of the national establishment.
But as population increased the difficulties became
greater. The parish system worked ill in the larger
towns. The burden of education became too heavy for
the heritors, and if it were to cope with advancing
needs new resources were imperatively necessary.
Scotland had the right to claim, and had full necessity
for requiring, a share in that imperial aid for education
1 Far oil in the present century the school fee in the High School of
Glasgow, where the sons of the richest citizens received their education,
was only 15s. a quarter, or £3 a year. It is fortunate that her sources of
income now promise to make the cost almost as moderate for a far wider
and more varied cuiriculum.
IMPERIAL GRANTS. 447
which the absence of any national system rendered
imperative in England.
It was in 1832 that the first imperial grants were
given : scanty in amonnt, and restricted in their aim.
The whole amount entered in the estimates for England
and Scotland was only £20,000, and the share that
could fall to Scotland was but a trifling help in a great
national work. It was to be applied only in assisting
in the provision of schools : there was as yet no
thought of the co-operation of the State in testing the
efficiency of schools or in aiding to maintain that
efficiency. The supervision of the schools rested with
the Presbyteiy alone.
By slow steps this imperial aid was extended. In
1839 it had grown to £30,000, and in 1846 the first
minutes providing for aid in the maintenance of
schools was granted. The State had now intervened
at many points. It had helped to build schools ; it
trained teachers and granted to them certificates of
efficiency ; and it offered inspection as a condition
upon which annual grants might be made. Of the
vast consequences which have sprung from these be-
ginnings this is not the place to speak ; we have
only to trace the effect upon Scottish education to
the middle of the century. Only a few years before
that date the total annual expenditure upon popular
education — including the heritors' compulsory con-
tributions, as well as the scanty dole of the State —
was certainly considerably less than £50,000 a year.
When the State began its annual grants, the Free
Church had just started on its course, and after some
slight hesitation about entering into a new concordat
with the State, that Church resolved to accept the
grants now offered, and with their aid to establish
448 CONCLUSION.
schools of her own which would divide the ground
with the parish schools where the Established Church
reigned supreme. A large addition was thus made
to the nominal school provision of the country ; but
it may be questioned whether its supply was not
dictated rather by motives of ecclesiastical rivalry
than by strict attention to the necessities of each
locality. The chief difficulty lay in the wide-stretch-
ing tracts of the Highlands, where a single parish
school was often the only supply for a parish which might
be forty miles long. Even within the present century
it was calculated that in Argyleshire alone there were
26,000 children out of a total of 27,600 who were
beyond the reach of a parish school. Sectarian zeal
could find little to attract it in such a region ; and
indeed to cope with such a difficulty was beyond the
power of a sect that had to trust to the somewhat
doubtful resources of voluntary supply. The Church
made what efforts it could, and with something of
missionary zeal endeavoured to supplement the statutoiy
supply. By an Act of 1839 provision was made for side
schools where the parish school was manifestly below
the requirements of the district; but in spite of such
timid additions to the statutory duty the arrears of
the task of national education were not. overtaken.
In the larger towns also the parish school was obvi-
ously insufficient. The only additional provision came
from the sessional schools, established by the voluntary
effort of different congregations. AY here such effort
was stimulated by the vigour of an active incumbent,
and was wisely directed, it achieved much ; but the
requirements increased in much more rapid proportion
than the voluntary efforts. Had it not been for the
help of the State the work would have been well-nigh
THE ACTS OF 1861 AND 1872. 449
hopeless. But none the less Scotland clung to her
parish schools system, and for many years after the
grants for maintenance were introduced, her jealousy
of any interference with that system was proved by
the fact that grants were not claimed for many of
the parish schools. The parochial schoolmaster pre-
ferred his independence and grinding poverty rather
than an enhanced income, gained at the expense of
Government inspection and what appeared a harassing
and troublesome interference wdth his work. Fifteen
years after the grants in aid were established by the
Minutes of 1846, the Scottish parish school system
obtained a new extension by the Act of 1861 ; and
in 1862 Scotland successfully resisted what it held to
be the galling fetters of Mr. Lowe's Revised Code,
which weighed educational effort by an elaborately
adjusted scheme of payment upon individual results ;
and down to the Education Act of 1872, which swept
away the whole parish school system, much of Scottish
education, in spite of all pecuniary temptations, had
retained its independence of all State control. In
England State aid came first ; a statutoiy system only
followed a generation later, in order to force localities
to do their duty and to organise the system. In Scot-
land the statutory system was the inheritance of gene-
rations, and existed long before the State paid one
penny of the cost. The tempting bait of State assist-
ance did not suffice for a whole generation to bring
that statutory system within State control, or to induce
Scotland to relinquish her independence. It was only
w^hen the task became too great for local effort, and
when the supremacy of the C'hurch in the parish
school was assailed by the claims of rival sects, and
by the current of the prevailing political opinion,
VOL. II. 2 F
450 CONCLUSION.
that the parish school system was swept away. But
it did not pass until it had impressed itself power-
fully, not on history only, but on the national character
of Scotland ; and even a new educational system,
resting upon different foundations, guided by different
forces, kept alive by different resources, must hope
for much of its success by retaining some features
of the parish school system, and carefully adjusting
these as far as possible to the needs of a changed
society. The educational history of the last half
century is typical of the general progress of Scotland
during the same period in many other features. Before
the middle of the century the germs of national effort
were at work. But it was the day of small things.
In 1840 Scotland was still a poor country. The whole
of her educational expenditure must have been, as we
have said, well within £50,000 a year ; at the close of
the century that annual expenditure is considerably
above the capital sum of which £50,000 represents
the annual interest. During the intervening sixty
years there has been spent on education in Scotland
a sum of certainly not less than forty millions.
We have thus followed the history of Scotland
from the period when she was first joined by legislative
union with England, and when there still lay before
her the last struggle of a decayed system against the
forces of modern constitutionalism, down to a period
within the memory of those now living. We have seen
how, if much of the stress and strain which she had to
endure was the inheritance of her own stormy history,
it was also, in no small degree, the result of the heed-
less injustice, the careless apathy, and the purblind
neglect of successive English governments. We have
RECAPITULATION. 451
seen how, out of varied and often antagonistic elements,
she managed to form and to preserve a very strong
and vivid sense of nationality, which was not lessened,
but distinctly increased and fostered, by the Jacobite
movement — a movement which became stronger in
Scotland just as it faded away in England. We have
seen how she provoked the jealousy of, and met with
indifference and contempt an almost insane outburst
of abuse from, her southern neighbour. We have seen
how, preserving much that was most picturesque and
romantic in her national traditions, she shook herself
free from the trammels and bondage of mediaevalism,
and achieved notable results in thought and literature,
which gave her a proud place not only in the Empire,
but abroad. We have seen how she helped to con-
solidate and strengthen the Empire, and how she bore
her part in the most critical struggle which that
Empire has yet seen. We have seen how her enter-
prise developed and how she became absorbed in the
eager competition for wealth. We have watched how
the older and more exclusive forces gradually grew more
weak, and how Scotland took her part in the great
Reform movements which changed the face of society.
We have seen a new class gaining political supremacy,
and holding with a tenacity distinctive of the nation
to the new opinions which they had come to form,
and clinging to them as sternly as to a religion or an
ethical code. We have seen how these convictions
were clinched by the fierceness of a great ecclesiastical
struggle, the bitter memories of which very slowly
passed away. During that struggle a close alliance
was struck between religious opinions which were
opposed to the dominant latitudinarianism of the
previous century, and the middle class which had
452 CONCLUSION.
thriven on commercial prosperity, and had no sym-
pathy with the older social traditions. Only as the
century closes has the stubbornness of these convic-
tions relaxed, and a great change of political principle
taken place. Its weight and its meaning will be
differently explained by different men. To trace its
causes, and to estimate its results, must be the busi-
ness of another aeneration.
INDEX,
Aberdeen Act, ii. 19.
Aberdeen, population of, at time of
the Union, i. 127, 128— Sir John
Cope at, 202 — Duke of Cumberland
with Hanoverian army at, 277 —
Tiiomas Reid at University of, ii.
203 — Beattie made Professor of
Philosophy at University of, 218.
Act of Security, i. 29 — refused Queen
Anne's sanction, ib. — sanctioned,
30.
Agnew, Sir Andrew, English com-
mander, defeated at Bridge of
Bruar, i. 280, 281.
Alberoni, Cardinal, chief Minister of
Spain, i. 97 — equipped Spanish
force against England, ib. — fall of,
99.
Anne, Queen, accession of, i. 26 —
gave hopes to Jacobites, 27 — her
secret sympathies, 74 — her death,
79.
Argyle, Duke of, made Commissioner,
i. 30, 31 — on Queensberry's side,
36, 37— became a leader of Scottish
party, 66 — supported repeal of the
Union, 74 — commander of Hano-
verian forces in Scotland, 87 —
saved Edinburgh from Mar, ih. —
fought battle of Sheriffmuir, 88 —
exerted his influence to mitigate
the punishment of rebels, 89— main
guidance of Scottish affairs in
hands of the, 108 — alienated by
AValpole, 109 — stoutly opposed
Hardwicke's bill, 122 — allied to
Lord Lovat, 140 — character as
statesman, 159 — took office on
Walpole's fall and was nominated
VOL. II.
commander in Flanders, 162, 163
— threw up office and continued to
oppose Court, 163 — death of, 170.
Argyle, Duke of (previously Lord
Islay), at Rosneath when Prince
Charles Stuart landed, i. 189 —
government of Scotland placed in
the hands of, 369 — conducted on
lines laid down by Walpole, ib. —
not exponent of Scottish feeling,
372 — alliance with Moderate party
in the Church of Scotland, 398—
kept hold over Scottish affairs till
his death, 431 — on the side of inno-
vators in the Church of Scotland,
440 — character of his administra-
tion, 460, 462 — his opinion of Lord
Bute, 468— death of, 473.
Athole, Duke of, Jacobite leader in
Scotland, i. 28 — enemy of Lord
Lovat, 141.
Atterbury, Bishop, i. 79.
Auchterarder, test of the Veto Act
at, ii. 391.
Augustus, Fort, English garrison at, i.
133 — soldiers taken prisoners when
marching from, 190 — captured for
Pi'ince Charles Stuart, 276.
Aylmoor, Lord, Lord of Session,
allied to Moderates in Church of
Scotland, i. 398 — helped to pro-
mote right reading and speaking
of the English language, 478.
Baird, Thomas, trial and sentence
of, ii. 285, 288.
Balmerino, Lord, trial and execution
of, i. 312-317 — character of his
loyalty to Stuarts, 318.
2 G
454
INDEX.
Bankruptcy Law, improvement of, ii.
12, 13.
Banks, established in Scotland, i.
129; ii. 5-12— Bank of Scotland,
5-7 — Royal Bank, 7, 8— Ayr Com-
pany, 11, 12 — prosperity of Bank
of Scotland, 121 — bankruptcies and
suspension of payment by the, 168
— the struggle for currency reform,
342-345.
Bath, Lord, attempt to form Govern-
ment by, i. 266.
Beattie, ii. 34 — Professor of Phil-
osophy at Aberdeen University,
account of, 218-220 — 'Essay on
Truth,' 218 — success in England,
219 — poverty of reasoning, ih., 220.
'Blackwood's Magazine,' ii. 263 —
literary struggle brilliantly main-
tained with the ' Edinburgh Re-
view,' 270 — Tory rallying -point,
298.
Blair Castle, Jacobite siege of, i. 281.
Blair, Robert, Lord President, ii. 268
—death of, 269.
Board of Manufactures, i. 434.
Bolingbroke, Lord. See St John.
Braemar gathering, i. 83, 84.
Braxfield, Lord, adherent of Henry
Dundas, character of, ii. 64, 65 —
Lord Justice-Clerk in 1793, 147—
his judicial character, 148 — his
action in Muir's trial for sedition,
152, 153.
Brougham, Henry, member of young
Whig party, ii. 250, 251.
Bruar, Bridge of, Jacobite success at,
i. 280, 281.
Bruce, Lady Sarah, old Jacobite lady,
i. 365.
Bruce, Michael, ii. 34.
Buchanan, one of Prince Charles
Stuart's seven companions at his
landing, i. 187.
Burghers and Antiburghers, i. 414.
Burke, ii. 84 — in Rockingham's Min-
istry, 87, 88.
Burns, Robert, ii. 33— in Edinburgh,
123, 124 — influenced by Henry
Erskine, 245.
Bute, Earl of, George III. 's Minister,
English popular hatred of, i. 467-
469 — succeeded to Scottish admin-
istration on the death of Duke of
Argyle, 473 — took small shai'e in
it, 474.
Bute, the Marquis of, Lord High
Commissioner for General Assembly
of 1843, ii. 414 — crowded levee, ih.
Byng, Sir George, i. 57, 58.
Cameron, Donald, of Lochiel, account
of, i. 145, 146 — entered into
Jacobite association, 171 — joined
Prince Charles Stuart, 187, 188—
at Glenfinnan, 191 — his pipes at
Prestonpans, 222 — on the night-
march to Nairn, 287 — escape to
France with Prince Charles Stuart,
292.
Cameron, Ewan, grandfather of
Lochiel, i. 145.
Campbell, Daniel, of Shawfi.eld, at-
tacked by Glasgow rioters, i. 107.
Campbell, Sir Hay, of Succoth, Lord
President in 1793, ii. 147.
Campbell, Sir James, of Auchinbreck,
entered into Jacobite association,
i. 171.
Canal, the Forth and Clyde, ii. 3, 4.
Canning, in Lord Liverpool's Govern-
ment, ii. 303 — made administration
in Scotland possible, 306 — became
Prime Minister on Liverpool's
death, 309 — commanded support
of all that was best in Scotland,
310— his death, 347.
Canonmills Hall, where first Assemblj'
of the Free Church took place, ii.
416.
Carlisle, taken by Prince Charles
Stuart, i. 240 — re-entered and
garrisoned, 250, 251 — taken by
Cumberland, 253.
Carlyle, Alexander, as volunteer at
Cope's camp, i. 216 — has left
account, ib. — on morning of battle,
222 — comment on victory, 224 —
became one of the younger Mod-
erate leaders in Church of Scotland,
397 — his 'Reminiscences,' 412,
413 — in favour of theatrical per-
formances, 440 — libelled and mildly
rebuked, 441 — appointed Moderator
of Church of Scotland, 484 — helped
to establish the legal exemption of
the clergy from the window-tax,
485 — advocacy of Scottish militia
by, ii. 115, 116 — his remarks on
Professor Hutcheson and Professor
Stevenson, 183, 185.
Carmichael, Gerschom, Professor of
INDEX.
455
Moral Philosophy in Glasgow, ii.
175.
Caroline, Queen, as Regent, i. 119,
122-124 — character of, 156.
Carteret, Lord, denunciation of Scot-
tish riots, i. 120 — character as
statesman, 159 — made Secretary of
State, 162 — treated administration
as a jest, 167 — conduct of foreign
affairs in his hands, ih. — accom-
panied the king to Flanders on
new campaign, 168 — his triumph
after Dettingen, 169 — the king's
regard for, ih., 170 — Pitt's
hostility to, 170 — became Earl
Granville, 176 — struggle with foes
acute, ih. — his fall, ih., 177 — con-
tempt for rising of 1745, 261 —
failure of intrigue to overthrow
Newcastle, 266 — married to Lord
Tweeddale's daughter, 369.
Castlereagh, master-spirit of Liver-
pool's earlier Government, ii. 281 —
bad influence of, ib. 282 — improve-
ment after death of, 30.3.
Chalmers, Thomas, birth, family, and
character, ii. 315, 316 — love of
mathematics and teaching at St
Andrews, 316, 317 — suspicion of
Moderatism, 317 — clerical and
professional posts, ih. — attachment
to the Church of Scotland, 318 —
innate conservatism, ih., 319 — his
aim for the Church, 320 — his
eloquence, 321, 322 — his work in
the cause of poor relief, 322-329
— his aim in strengthening the
parochial system, 329, 330 — its
failure, 330, 331— his rupture
with the Moderates, 331 — his
political independence, 332, 333 —
as Professor of Moral Philosophy
at St Andrews, 333 — his sympathy
with the Evangelical party in the
Church, 334, 336-339 — as Pro-
fessor of Divinity in Edinburgh,
338 — supported Catholic Relief
Bill, ih. — brought new spirit into
national view, 339 — became leader
of Evangelical party, 354 — retained
his conservatism, 355, 356 — his
treatise on political economy, 356
— courted by the Whig Govern-
ment, 357 — his opposition to scheme
for secular education, ih., 358 —
non-intrusion controversy, 359-363
— Moderator of General Assembly
in 1832, 370, 371— the Veto Act,
372-375 — Chalmers its protagonist,
375 — his opposition to Lord John
Russell's Commission, 378, 379 — •
the Patronage Act, and growing
discontent against it, 381-385 —
Report of the Commission, 385 —
Chalmers in opposition to Mel-
bourne's Government, ih. — as a
member of the deputation sent to
Court by the Church of Scotland,
386 — his cordial relations with
Peel, ih. — his lectures in London
on Church Establishments, 387-390
— the Veto Act tested and found
illegal, 391, 392— Civil and Church
jurisdiction in conflict, 393 —
Lethendy case, 394 — Strathbogie
case, 395, 396 — the Church's
claim, 396, 397— Chalmers defied
the Court of Session, 398, 399—
no hope from Whigs, turned to
Conservatives, 400, 401 — negotia-
tions broken ofi", 402, 403 — pro-
test of the people at Strathbogie
Church, 403, 404 — the minister
deposed by General Assembly, 404
— Court of Session's interdict, 405
— declared breach of privilege of
the Cliurch, ih. — weakness of
Government, ih., 406 — Dr
Chalmers on Disruption, 407 — his
demand for abolition of Patronage,
408— the Claim of Right, 409-412
—General Assembly of 1843, 413-
416 — the Disruption, 415-420—
Canonmills Hall, 416 — Dr Chalmers
called to be Moderator, ih. — his
opening address, 420 — his attitude
up to death, 422, 424.
Charles VI., the Emperor, i. 97.
Charles XII. of Sweden, inclined to
support Stuarts, i. 96 — his death,
97.
Chesterfield, Lord, on the Hanover-
ians, i. 158 — as debater, 159.
Church of Scotland, the, loyalty to
Hanoverian line, i. 296 — its min-
isters refused to act as informers
against Jacobites, ih., 297 —
sarcastic reply to Cumberland, 297
— its courage after 1745, 376 —
doctrinal disputes in, 376-381 —
Marrow controversy, 379-381 —
secession from, 381-384 — the
456
INDEX.
Moderates in, 385 - 407 — older
leaders of Moderates, 393-395, 400
—younger leaders, 397, 403-406—
dominance of, 429, 430 — innova-
tions, 438 - 443 — struggle with
dissent, 481, 482 — Moderate su-
premacy in the, 483, 484 — claims
of, 485 — for schoolmasters, ib. —
Pennant's opinion of clergy of, ii.
39 — controversial spirit growing
less bitter, 49, 50 — Catholic Eman-
cipation struggle, 70-76 — Moder-
ates in favour of repeal, Highfliers
against, 69, 70, 72, 73— rancour
left, 76 — amendment to General
Assembly's Address to the Crown
against Lord North, 105 — Moder-
ates and Erastianism, 106-109 — ■
struggle with the Highfliers, 109-
111 — influence of the Church in the
Highlands, 111, 112— the Church
and dissent, 122 — question of
Church Patronage again, 130, 131
— religious revival begun in, 313,
314 — Highflying party under
Andrew Thomson, 314 — Thomas
Chalmers chief influence of the
new generation in the, ib. — account
of Thomas Chalmers and his work,
314-339— greater zeal in the, 349
— growing strength of Evangelical
party, 350, 351 ^ — Mr Macleod
Campbell of Row, representative
of Universalism, 351 — Dr Chalmers
and the Church, 352 — a devout
adherent of Evangelical party, 353
— effect on Church of struggle,
354 — non - intrusion controversy,
359-363— touched Scottish national
feeling, 363 — the Patronage con-
troversy, 371 — the General As-
sembly's Veto Act, 373-375— the
Annuity Tax, ib., 376, 377— Lord
John Russell's Commission to in-
quire into the affairs of, 378, 379
— its report, 385— the Veto Act
tested and found illegal by Court
of Session, 391, 392 — the Civil
and Church courts in conflict, 393
— Lethendy and Strathbogie cases,
394-396, 403, 404— no hope from
either Whig or Toi-y Government,
400-403, 405, 406 — demand for
abolition of Patronage, 408 — the
Claim of Right, 409-412— General
Assembly of 1843, 413-416— the
Disruption, 415-420 — position of
those who remained in the Church,
419 — Patronage abolished, 423.
Church, Scottish Episcopalian, fallen
on evil fortune, i. 297 — account of
its position in Scotland, 298-309
— its nominal supremacy at the
Restoration, 298 — blow dealt by
the Revolution, 299— its dislike of
the Union, 300 — identified with
Jacobitism, ib., 301 — Patronage
and Toleration Acts, 302 — proscrip-
tion of Episcopacy, 303 — the
"Usagers," 304, 305 — want of
prudence, 306 — the Oaths Act,
307 — further proscription, 308 —
vengeance taken on Episcopalians
after Culloden, 309 — gradual im-
provement of position, ii. 48, 49,
113 — pledged to use prayers for
King George, 114 — Toleration
Bill, ib.
Civil War of seventeenth century, i. 5.
Claverhouse, the leader of the oppo-
sition to the Revolution, i. 9, 10.
Clerk, John, counsel for Maclaren and
Baird, ii. 287.
Clerk, Sir John, of Penicuik, on the
success of Prince Charles Stuart, i.
227, 228— a type of the cultured
scholar, 363.
Cockburn, Henry, Solicitor-General in
Lord Grey's Ministry, ii. 364.
Colquhoun, Archibald, of Killermout,
Lord Advocate for eleven years, ii.
269.
Commission appointed to inquire into
Massacre of Glencoe, i. 21, 22.
Commission, the, to inquire into for-
feited estates, i. 100-102.
Cope, Sir John, English commander
in Scotland at time of Prince Charles
Stuart's landing, i. 196 — avoided
battle, ib. — hurried south from
Inverness, 202 — landed at Dunbar,
213 — placed his army in position
at Tranent, 215 — chose the worst
position, 216 — fought and lost the
battle of Prestonpans, 216-224—
fled to Berwick-on-Tweed, 222.
Court, influence of the English, on
Scottish nobles, i. 3 — held at Holy-
rood by Prince Charles Stuart,
230, 231.
Craigie, Robert, Lord Advocate, i.
369 — deprived of office, ib.
INDEX.
457
Cromarty, Earl of, in command of
part of Jacobite forces in 1745, i.
277 — seized Dunrobin Castle, ib. —
summoned to Inverness, 282- pri-
soner in Dunrobin Castle, ib. — trial
of, 3 12- 3 14 —pardon of, 314.
Culloden, battle of, i. 289, 290—
effects of, 291-296.
Cumberland, Duke of, defeated at
Fontenoy by Marshal Saxe, i. 178
— summoned home to take com-
mand of army at Lichfield, against
Prince Charles Stuart, 245, 246—
in pursuit of Prince, 250 — reduced
garrison at Carlisle, 253 — recalled
to London to command against
French invasion, ib. — sent north
after battle of Falkirk, 269— ad-
vanced on Stirling, ib. — after the
Prince's retreat, stopped at Perth,
272 — landing of Hessians, 276 —
council of war in Edinburgh, ib. —
slow advance determined, 277 — at
Aberdeen, ib. — posted on the Spey
to watch the Prince's force, 278 —
advanced to Nairn, 283 — English
forces, 283, 284— the Duke's birth-
day and Lord George Murray's
proposed attack, 285, 286 — battle
of Culloden, 289-292 — defeat of
Prince Charles Stuart, 290 — his
ruthless and savage revenge on
Jacobites, 294-296 — Lovat's letter
to, 322, 323 — his meeting with
Duncan Forbes of Culloden, 335,
336 — his unspeakable cruelty after
Culloden, 336.
Cumin, Dr Patrick, leader of iloderate
party in Church of Scotland, i. 400,
401 — opposition to theatrical per-
formances, 439 — lost leadership of
Moderates, 441.
Dalrymple, Master of Stair, i. 16, 17
— character of family, ib. — hatred
of Macdonalds, 17, 18 — treachery
and crime of, 17-21 — remission of,
22 — on Queensberry's side, 36.
Darien Scheme, the, i, 22-25 — ruin
of, 24, 25.
Derby reached by Prince Charles
Stuart, i. 245.
Derwentwater, Earl of, execution of
the, i. 89.
Disruption, the, ii. 380-420 — growing
discontent against Patronage Act,
382, 383— the predominant influ-
ence of Chalmers in the struggle,
385 — the Commission's report, ib.
— uselessness of political parties in
the matter, ib. — Chalmers' lectures
on Church Establishments, 387-390
— the Veto Act tested, 391 — found
illegal by Court of Session, 392 —
Civil and Church courts in conflict,
393— Lethendy case, 394— Strath-
bogie case, 395, 396, 403, 404—
Court of Session defied by Dr
Chalmers, 398, 399 — Whig and
Tory Governments alike hopeless,
400-403 — Ministers of Strathbogie
deposed by General Assembly, 404
— Court of Session's interdict, 405
—the Claim of Right, 409-412—
General Assembly of 1843, 413-416
— the Disruption, 415-420 — Canon-
mills Hall and the first Moderator,
416, 420.
Douglas lawsuit, the, ii. 36-38 —
popular fury at decision, 37 — re-
versal by Lords of decision, 38.
Douglas, the Rev. Neil, tried and
acquitted, ii. 288, 289.
Drummond, Lady Rachel, Jacobite
lady, i. 365, 366.
Drummond, Lord John, entered into
Jacobite association, i. 171 — at
battle of Falkirk, 256 — captured
Fort Augustus, 276 — besieged Fort
William, 278.
Drummore, Lord, allied to Moderate
party in Church of Scotland, i.
398.
Dumfries, anti- Jacobite in 1745, i.
251 — levies raised by Prince
Charles Stuart from, 252.
Dundas, Henry (Lord Melville),
brother of the President, made
Lord Advocate, ii. 59 — his power
in the Administration, ib. — appear-
ance, character, and influence of,
61-63 — his adherents, 63-65— his
necessary inconsistency during min-
isterial changes, 90, 91 — virtually
King of Scotland, 91 — loyal to
Pitt, 92-94 — secret of his influence,
95-101 — his love for Scotland and
popularity in Edinburgh, 101-103
— Acts of Conciliation for the
Highlands secured by, 112, 113
— early advocate of Parliamentary
reform, 118 — willing to listen to
458
INDEX.
reform of burgh administration,
127 — hindered by faction in oppo-
sition, 128 — his action with regard
to Warren Hastings, 131 — virulent
attack upon, 264, 265 — impeach-
ment of, 265 — acquittal, 266 — re-
stored to power in Scotland, 267 —
death of, 269.
Dundas, Robert, deprived of office,
i. 106 — joined opposition, 108 —
Lord Advocate, 439 — opposed to
theatrical performances, ib., 440
— President, ii. 97 — an upright
judge, ib.- — unpopular, ib. 98.
Dundas, Robert (the younger), made
Dean of Faculty, ii. 164.
Dundee, at the time of the Union,
i. 127, 128 — anti-Jacobite in 1745,
240.
Dunning, Mr, motion on the power
of the Crown by, ii. 51, 67.
Edinburgh, at the time of the Union,
i. 127 — state at the time of Prince
Charles Stuart's march from the
North, 199, 200— its fortification
and forces, 200-202 — enrolment of
citizens for defence, 202 — Provost
Stuart summoned to surrender the
city to Prince Charles, 207-209—
Edinburgh captured by Lochiel,
209— the Prince's entry, 210-212
— the Prince's residence in, 225-
239 — Edinburgh Castle held by
Hanoverians, 229, 230 — departure
of the Prince from, 239 — resumed
its submission to Hanoverian gov-
ernment, 240 — Duke of Cumber-
land and council of war at, 276 —
literary society after 1745 in, 407-
419 — character of that society,
418, 419 — 'Edinburgh Review'
started, 432 — Royal Society of,
433 — Infirmary, 434 — Board of
Manufactures, ib. — embellishment
of, ib., 435 — entertainments in,
437, 438 — production of John
Home's "Douglas," 439 — Mrs
Siddons in, 441 —the city during
the half-century after 1745, 452-
454 — extension and development
of, ii. 2, 3 — poor relief in, 16 —
rejection of proposed assessment
for relief of poor in, 16-18 —
Gaelic church opened in, 23 — the
Douglas lawsuit, 36-38 — a true
capital of Scotland in the days of
Dundas, 55, 56 — Society for the
Relief of the Honest and Indus-
trious Poor, 55, 56 — progress of
improvements in, 65, 66 — new
High School founded, 66 — struggle
between Trade Guilds and Town
Council, 67 — concentration of na-
tional life in, 81-84 — Jacobitism
an element of its social and liter-
ary romance, 82- — politics uninter-
esting to society in, 84 — its main
axioms, ib., 85 — great change in
building and population, 116 —
stage-coaches to London from, 117
— improved market and hotels, ib.
— growth of intellectual activity in,
123 — political economy and phil-
osophy, ib. — Burns in Edinburgh,
ib. , 124 — its inspiring social at-
mosphere, 124, 125 — "the Friends
of the People," 139-145— the riots,
144, 145 — Tom Pa-ine's 'Rights of
Man,' 145 — trials for sedition, 149-
156 — student riot in theatre, 157
— trials for treason, 159, 160 —
Comte d'Artois and family exiled
at Holyrood, 166 — combination of
shoemakers to raise wages, 167 —
commercial troubles, 168 — attach-
ment to older traditions in, 232 —
its central and dominant social
position, 233 - 235 — Shelley's im-
pressions of, 236, 237 — changes in
character of society, 237, 238 —
Lord Buchan in, 240, 241 — Henry
Erskine in, 241 et seq. — Whig and
Tory parties, 248 et seq. — ' The
Edinburgh Review,' 258 - 263 —
' Blackwood's Magazine,' 263 —
Alexander Maconochie, Lord Ad-
vocate, 282 — arrests and trials for
inciting to violence, 284-291 —
George IV. 's quarrel with the
Queen excited Whigs against Lord
Liverpool's Go%'ernment, 297, 298
— Whig public meeting, il). — 'The
Scotsman ' established, 299 — Tory
attacks on Mr Stuart of Dunearn,
ill. — Duel with Boswell of Auchin-
leck, 300 — Stuart's acquittal a
Whig triumph, ib. — feeble action
of Government, 301 — attacks upon
the Lord Advocate, 302 — great
change in per.^onnel of Govern-
ment, ib., 303 — bitterness be-
INDEX.
459
tween Whigs and Tories in Par-
liament House, 310, 311 — element
of professional jealousy in feeling,
311 — reaction, softening of (^ilfer-
ences, and movement towards re-
forms, 312, 313 — Tliomas Chalmers,
a great citizen of, 315-422, 424 —
the Patronage controversy in the
Church and the Disruption, 371
et seq. — The General Assembly of
1843, 413-416 — Canonmills Hall
and the first Moderator of the Free
Church, 416-420 — ceased to be a
distinct literary capital of Scottish
character, 442.
Edinburgh, the University of, ii. 173
— moral philosophy at, 184-186—
philosophy outside the University,
186-196— Adam Ferguson as Pro-
fessor of Moral Philosophy at, 213-
217 — Dugald Stewart as Professor
of Moral Philosophy at, 218,220-226
— John Wilson in Chair of Moral
Philosophy at, 226, 227 — Sir
William Hamilton in Chair of
Logic at, ill. — Dr Chalmers, Pro-
fessor of Divinity in, 338.
Education, Scottish national, i. 355 ;
ii. 443-450 — parish schools and
schoolmasters, 443-445 — increased
salaries for schoolmasters, 445,
446 — difficulties when population
increased, 446 — first imperial
grants, 447 — extension of State
grants, ib. — difficulties in the
Highlands, 448 — vitality of parish
schools, 449 - — resistance to Mr
Lowe's Revised Code, ib. — parish
schools swept away, ib., 450.
Edwards, Mr, presented to the parish
of Strathbogie, ii. 395 — the Court
of Session and the Presbytery, ib.,
403.
Eldon, great Scottish lawyer in Eng-
land, ii. 48.
Elliot, Sir Gilbert, left Whig party,
ii. 253.
Englishman's, the, conception of Scot-
land during George III.'s reign, ii.
42, 43 — hatred of Scottish nation,
45, 46 — attitude of Scotland to-
wards, 46.
Entail, law of, ii. 18, 19 — Mont-
gomery Act, 19 — Aberdeen Act,
ib. — further modified, 433 — sub-
sequent legislation, 434.
Episcopacy in Scotland, i. 8, 11 — pro-
scription of, 12.
Erskine, Dr, led " Highfliers " against
repeal of Catholic disabilities, ii.
70, 73.
Erskine, Ebenezer, with his brother,
raised the campaign against Patron-
age, i. 381, 382— led the Secession
from Church of Scotland, 382-384.
Erskine, great Scottish lawyer in
England, ii. 48.
Erskine, Henry, made Lord Advocate
instead of Dundas, ii. 105 — became
leader of the younger Whigs, 162
— his attainments and position, 163
— Dean of Faculty, ib. — his re-
election opposed, 164 — Robert
Dundas made Dean of Faculty, ib.
— defended journeymen shoemakers
while ignoring their right to com-
bine, 167 — leader of the party
opposed to Dundas, 241 — his char-
acter, influence, inconsistencies,
and political career, 242-245 — his
patronage of Mrs Siddons and of
Robert Burns, 245 — his client,
Deacon Brodie, ib., 246 — his
denunciation of the Acts against
sedition, 247 — the young Whig
party, 248-250— led by Erskine,
250 — the leading spirits of the
party, ib. et seq. — struggle with
Tories, 253 et seq. — ' The Edinburgh
Review,' 258-263— Lord Advocate
in " All the Talents Ministry," 266
— his brother Lord Chancellor, ib.,
267 — failed to gain Parliamentary
reputation, 267— treachery of Whig
party towards, 268.
Erskine, Solicitor-General for Scot-
land, opposed Hardwicke's Bill, i.
124— Lo vat's letter to, 324.
Eskgrove, Lord, Lord of Session, ii.
148 — his son. Sir William Rae,
made Lord Advocate, 292.
Falconer, Scottish poet, ii. 34.
Ferguson, Adam, account of, ii. 210-
217 — his love of the Highlands,
210 — chaplain to the Black Watch,
211 — at Fontenoy, ib. — resigned
chaplaincy, 212 — advocated repre-
sentation of Home's "Douglas,"
213 — appointed Professor of Na-
tural Philosophy in Edinburgh
University, ib. — exchanged for
460
INDEX.
Chair of Moral Philosophy, 214 —
"Essay on the History of Civil
Sooiet}'," lb. — his etliical teaching,
ib., 215 — tutor to Lord Chester-
field, 215 — in France and America,
ib., 216 — 'History of the Roman
Republic,' 216 — 'Principles of
Moral and Political Science,' ib. —
character and appearance, ib. 217 —
Burns and Scott at his house, 217.
Fergusson, Robert, Scottish poet, ii.
33.
Fife, the county of, character of
population in, ii. 21.
Fisher, Edward, author of ' The
Marrow of Modern Divinity,' i.
379 — cause of "Marrow Contro-
versy," 380, 381.
Fletcher, Andrew. See Milton.
Fletcher of Saltoun, i. 23 — his detes-
tation of English tyranny, 27 — his
proposal that £200 a-year should
be the highest income in Scotland,
359.
Forbes, Duncan, of Culloden, made
Lord Advocate, i. 106 — marched
Glasgow magistrates to Edinburgh
Tolbooth, 108 — great influence in
Scottish affairs, 109 — Walpole's
neglect of, 110 — opposed Hard-
wicke's bill, 124 — account of, 147-
150 — plan for employing fighting
power of Highlands made by, 161
— warned Sir John Cope of Prince
Charles Stuart's landing, 189 —
wrote to Pelham about the rum-
oured landing, ib. — Lovat corre-
sponding with, 195 — the mainstay
of the Government in Scotland
during the rising, 239, 240 — began
to suspect Lovat, 322 — his meeting
with the Duke of Cumberland, 335,
336 — death and character of, 345,
346.
Forbin, Comte de, i. 56.
Fox, ii. 84— in Rockingham's Minis-
try, 87, 88 — coalition with Lord
North, 88— Secretary of State, ib.
— his India Bill disliked in Scot-
land, 105.
Free Church, the, begun in May,
1843, ii. 415 — joined by large
numbers, 419 — the Sustentation
Fund organised by Dr Chalmers,
421 — grew into sympathy with
dissent, ib., 422 — not brought
back to the Established Church
by abolition of Patronage, 423 —
accepted education grants from
Whig Government, 421.
Gardenstone, Lord, zeal for reform of
burgh administration tainted by
his character, ii. 129, 148.
Gardiner, Colonel, at Prestonpans, i.
217, 218, 221.
George, Fort, English garrison at, i.
133 — captured for Prince Charles
Stuart, 276.
George II., King, character of, i. 155,
156 — vexation at Walpole's resigna-
tion, 162 — continued to consult
him, 163 — his personal courage at
Dettingen, 168, 169 — regard for
Carteret, 169, 170 — intrigue to
displace Duke of Newcastle, 266 —
received deputation of Scottish
clergy from the Assembly, 390.
George III., King, his accession, i.
463 — growth of Scottish loyalty
towards, 463-465 — troubles shortly
after accession, 467-471 — Scotland's
transition during first part of reign
of, ii. 24 et seg-.— Scottish loyalty
and attachment to, 52 — first cloud
of insanity, 134 — Pitt's courageous
defence of the king, ib., 135 —
recovery, 134.
George IV., quarrel with the Queen,
ii. 296 — estranged popular feeling.
ib., 297.
Gerald, Joseph, tried for sedition, ii.
156.
Gillespie, Mr, of Carnock, opponent
of Patronage, i. 397, 398— founder
of the Relief sect, 414.
Glasgow, malt- tax riots in, i. 106-108
— state of, at the time of the Union,
127— anti- Jacobite in 1745,240—
levies raised by Prince Charles
Stuart from, 252- — municipal ad-
ministration in. 454-457 — Defoe's
opinion of, 456 — Captain Burt's
opinion of, ib. — Pococke's opinion
of, ib. — scheme for the Forth and
Clyde Canal, ii. 3, 4 — dispute with
Edinburgh about fixing the price of
imported corn, 68 — Glasgow traders
opposed to American War, 70 — -
anti-Catholic riots in, 73 — growing
commercial importance of, 120 —
extraordinary increase in popula-
INDEX.
461
tion and wealth of, 277 — discontent
amongst artisans of, ib. — combina-
tion of weavers for demanding
higher wages, 283 — Habeas Corpus
Act suspended and arrests and
trials, 284-291 — secret Radical
societies in, 293, 294 — outbreak on
April 5, 1820, 294— troops called
out and ringleaders seized, 295 —
trials and severe sentences, 296 —
'The Sentinel' established, 299—
its attacks on prominent Whigs, ib.
— Dr Chalmers minister of the
Tron Church in, 317 — transferred
to St John's in, ib. — his work at
relief of the poor in, 322-329 — his
parochial sj'stem of poor relief, 329
— the growth of, 435 — the ship-
building of, ib.
Glasgow, University of, professors of
philosophy at the, ii. 175-184 —
Adam Smith, professor at the, 197,
198 — Thomas Reid, professor at
the, 205-209.
Glenfinnan, the Stuart standard raised
at, i. 190, 191.
Glenshiel, battle of, i. 99.
Godolphin, plans of, in Scotland, i.
27, 30— fall of, 63, 64.
Gordon, Lord George, riots in London
led by, ii. 77 — trial and verdict,
ib.
Gordon, Lord Lewis, joined Prince
Charles Stuart with body of adher-
ents, i. 228, 229.
Gortz, Baron, i. 96.
Graham, Sir James, as Home
Secretary, letter on the Claim of
Right from, ii. 411.
Granville, Lord. See Carteret.
Grey, Lord, Reform Parliament of, ii.
364.
Hailes, Lord, a member of the
"Select Society," i. 432; ii. 148.
Hamilton, of Bangor, i. 363.
Hamilton, Duke of, Jacobite leader
in Scotland, i. 28 — proposal for
federal Union, 38 — his betrayal of
Jacobites, 40 — Hooke's negotiations
with, 55 — influence with Whigs of,
57 — voted against Sacheverell's
conviction, 64 — death of, 67.
Hamilton, Lady, of Rosehall, old
Jacobite lady, i. 365.
Hamilton, Sir William, Professor of
Logic in the University of Edin-
burgh, ii. 226, 227.
Hanoverian line, accession of the, i.
79 — hatred in England and Scot-
land of the, 80 — patriotic suspicion
of the, 158 — loyalty of the Church
of Scotland to, 296— growth of
loyalty in Scotland to, 444.
Hardwicke, Lord, Lord Chancellor,
introduced bill to disable authority
of Edinburgh magistrates, &c., i.
121 — mutilated in discussion, 124
— passed, ib. — remained Lord
Chancellor after Walpole's resigna-
tion, 162 — held aloof from intrigue,
167 — constituted High Steward of
Great Britain to preside over trials
of Lords Kilmarnock, Cromart}-,
and Balmerino, 312 — his destruc-
tion of the clan system in the High-
lands, 336-345 — opposed by Duncan
Forbes, 343.
Harley, rise of, i. 63, 64 — his ministry,
64 — its character, 65, 66 et seq. —
bad faith towards Scottish party,
70-72 — his fear of repeal of the
Union, 73, 74 — made Earl of
Oxford, 73.
Hastings, Warren, trial of, ii. 131-
133— Pitt's attitude towards, 132,
133 — Scottish opinion of, 133.
Hawley, General, replaced Cumber-
land in command of forces pursuing
Prince Charles, i. 253— hectoring
bully, 254— at Falkirk, 255, 256—
outwitted and defeated by Lord
George Murray, 2o6-259^retreated
to Edinburgh, 259.
Hepburn, James, of Keith, at Holy-
rood, on Prince Charles Stuart's
entry, i. 212 — at Prestonpans, 218.
Hermand, Lord, judge in trial of
Maclaren and Baird, ii. 287.
Hervey, Lord, Walpole's confidante,
i. 159.
Highland clans after Revolution, i.
15, 16 — system abolished, 341,
342.
Highlands, the character of, i. 131-
138 — surrender of arms after 1815
in, 138 — restoration of the com-
panies in, ib., 139 — Government
folly and neglect in, 179, 182—
administration of General Wade in
the, 180-182 — Jacobite influence
and emissaries in, 182, 183 — Duncan
462
INDEX.
Porbes' influence in, 233 — disarma-
ment of, 336, 337 — use of Highland
dress forbidden, 337, 33S — contis-
cation of estates in, 389, 340 — Act
of Indemnity rather an Act of
Proscription, 340 — break up of the
clan system in, 341, 342 — Lord
Hardwicke's policy in, 342, 343 —
conciliation of, 435 — attachment
and traditions in, 457 — Poems of
Ossian, ib. — military roads in, ii.
4, 5 — efforts to improve, 21-24 —
agriculture in, 26 — sheep-farms
introduced, ib. — effect on popula-
tion, ib., 27 — influence of Church
of Scotland in, 112 — Acts of Con-
ciliation secured by Dundas for,
ib., 113 — sheep and cattle in, 120
— the commercial success of sheep-
farming in, 276 — social wisdom not
so certain, ib. — depopulation of, ib.
— heavy duties on salt and barilla,
278 — kelp industry, ib. — distress
in, ib. — partial rise from poverty
of, 43S — education difficult in, 448
—sessional schools in addition to
parish schools, ib.
Holyrood, entry of Prince Charles
Stuart into, i. 210-212— ball at,
213 — the Prince's Court and
Council at, 225-239 — after 1745,
452 — Comte d'Artois and family
in exile at, ii. 166 — the Lord High
Commissioner's levee in 1843 at,
413.
Home, John, author of "Douglas," a
member of the "Select Society," i.
432 — "Douglas" represented on
stage in Edinburgh, 439 — opposi-
tion from "Highflying" party in
Church, 439 - 442 — retired from
ministry, 442.
Hooke, agent of Louis XIV., King of
France, i. 52, 55, 56.
Hume, David, one of the literary
circle of Edinburgh after 1745,
i. 409 — his character and social
charm, 409-412— as a philosopher,
ii. 186-192— his 'Treatise on
Human Nature,' 188, 189 — his
historical work, 191 — Adam
Smith's opinion of him, 192, 202.
Huske, General, second in command
at Battle of Falkirk, i. 255, 256,
259.
Hutcheson, Francis, Professor of
Moral Philosophy in Glasgow,
account of, ii. 175, 176 — his early
books, 177 — his school of thought,
ib., 178 — its limitations and
advantages, ib., 179 — his work in
Glasgow, 179-183 — respect of both
parties in the Church for him, 183
—his death in 1746, 184.
Infirmary, the Edinburgh, started,
i. 434.
Inverness, James VIII. proclaimed at,
i. 84— Sir John Cope's retreat to,
196— Duncan Forbes at, 239, 240
— Prince Charles Stuart's retreat
to, 270, 271 — Loudoun's force
cooped up at, 274 — seized by
Jacobites, 276 — Jacobite leaders
summoned to, 282 — Lord Lovat a
prisoner at, 322.
Islay, Lord, his influence in Scottish
affairs, i. 108 — Newcastle's jealousy
of, 120 — attempt to cripple his
power, 120-122 — favoured Duncan
Forbes' plan for employing High-
land fighting power, 161 — became
Duke of Argyle on brother's death.
See Argyle, Duke of.
Jacobite opposition to the Act of
Union, i. 37, 38 — failure of opposi-
tion, 39-44, 46-50 — the narrow
margin on which failure turned,
48, 49.
Jacobites, the, their creed in Scotland
living long after its decay in Eng-
land, i. 49, 50 — armed resistance
their only resource, 51, 52 — ex-
pectations from King Louis of
France, 52 et seq. — disappointment,
58, 59 — support of Harley against
Godolphin, 64 — shifty treatment
received from Harley, 64-74 —
Queen Anne's secret sympathy
with, 74 — prospects darkened at
Queen's death, 79 — rebellion of
1715, 81-89 — their loyalty gradu-
ally strengthened by the changes
taking place in Scotland, 90-95 —
at the lowest ebb of fortune, 96 —
encouraged by errors of English
Government, 100-110 — hatred of
Walpole's administration, 166, 167
■ — hopes from the French after
Dettingen, 171 — Cardinal Tencin
their champion in France, ib., 172
INDEX.
463
— Prince Charles Stuart invited to
Paris, 17-4 — plans after his landing
at Moidart, 190 — at his court in
Holyrood, 231, 232— their hopes
of French support, 232— Duncan
Forbes' influence with Highland
chiefs, 233— ^veak points of, 234-
236 — few in England joined Prince
Charles Stuart, 245, 246 — his re-
treat from Derby destroyed effec-
tive force of Jacobitisni, 249—
collapse of their cause in Suther-
land, 282 — their defeat at Culloden,
290 — secret hopes, 292— reprisals
taken by Government on, 293-296
— trials of prominent Jacobites,
310-334 — their opposition to de-
struction of the clan system in the
Highlands, 344 — their memories
helped to preserve the national
individuality of Scotland, 347,
348 — helped to widen the gulf be-
tween England and Scotland, 352,
353 — Jacobite ladies in Scotland,
364-366 — survival of Jacobitisni in
society, 419, 429, 431, 444, 447,
449 — change in its character, 464,
465 — gradual disappearance of
active Jacobitism, ii. 47 — their
creed an element of social and
literary romance in Edinburgh, 82.
Jacobitism, rise of, in Scotland, i. 13
tt seq. — stimulus given by Glencoe
massacre to, 22 — by fanaticism
amongst the Presbyterians, 25, 26
—Act of Security gained by adher-
ents of, 29 — opposition to Act of
Union by, 37-44.
Jeffrey, Francis, account of, ii. 250-
252 — ' The Edinburgh Review,'
258-263 — his eloquent defence of
Maclaren and Baird, 287 — counsel
for the Rev. Neil Douglas, 289—
present at public meeting against
Ministry, 298 — elected Dean of
Faculty, 348 — ceased to edit
'Edinburgh Review,' ib. — made
Lord Advocate, 364 — unfitted for
Parliamentary arena, ib. — riots at
election, 366 — Jeffrey's victory,
368 — celebration, ib. — disliked
Parliamentary business, 369 — new
Scottish administration, ib. — his
picture of the reformed Parliament
debating the Scottish Burgh Reform
Bill, 371 — ceased to be Lord
Advocate, ib. — raised to the Bench,
ib. — his attempt in Parliament to
mitigate the pressure of the Annu-
ity Tax, 375 — his mistakes and
those of his party, 427 — Whig
supremacy left him to guide the
work of change after the Reform
Act, 428.
Johnson, Dr, on Scotland and Scots-
men, i. 470 — journal of ' Tour in
Scotland,' ii. 39-41 — its power and
insight, 40.
Jones, John Paul, Leith threatened
by, ii. 67, 68.
Judicial Bench of Scotland, ii. 146-
149.
Justice-Clerk, Lord, the office of, ii.
146-147 — presided over Second
Division of remodelled Court of
Session, 269.
Kames, Lord, a member of the "Select
Society," i. 432 — Lord of Session
and quasi-philosopher, ii. 192-196.
Kelly, one of Prince Charles Stuart's
seven companions at his landing, i.
187.
Kenmure, Viscount, execution of, i.
89.
Kilmarnock, Lord, joined Prince
Charles Stuart, i. 229— his wife
and Hawley, 256 — trial and execu-
tion of, 312-315.
Kinnoul, Earl of, presentation of Mr
Young to the parish of Auchter-
arder by, ii. 391.
Labour conditions, ii. 13-15.
Lansdowne, Lord, opponent of Pitt's
Government, ii. 144 — Home Sec-
retary in Canning's Government,
309 — Scottish business entrusted to
him. Lord Minto, &c., ib., 310.
Lauderdale, Earl of, opponent of
Government, his character and
treachery, ii. 143, 144.
Leechman, Professor, Moderate leader
in Church of Scotland after 1745, i.
393, 394 — biographer of Professor
Hutcheson, ii. 175, 182.
Leven, the Earl of, i. 57.
Literature, revival of, in Scotland, ii.
30-35— poets, 32-35— influence of
romance in, 35.
Liverpool, Lord, Government of, ii.
280-282, 298 — change of personvel
464
INDEX.
in the, 302, 303, 305, 306— best
minds in Scotland in sympathy
with new statesmanship, 307 —
death of, 309.
Loch, David, first to suggest stocking
Highland pastures with sheep, ii.
26, 27, 438.
Lockhart, Alexander, of Covington,
adherent of Henry Dundas, ii. 63,
64.
Lockhart, George, of Carnwath,
head of Scottish party in Parlia-
ment, i. 60-62 — his attempt to get
the Treaty of Union repealed, 73-
75 — his failure due to shifty con-
duct of Hai'ley and Bolingbroke, 76
— his plans wrecked by Mar's
sudden rising, 86 — on Walpole,
104-106.
Logan, ii. 34.
Loudoun, Lord, with Hanoverian
forces and Highlanders at Inver-
ness, i. 273 — cooped up by Jaco-
bite chiefs, 274 — defeated by Lord
Lewis Gordon earlier, ih. — failure
of attempt to capture the Prince,
275 — fled beyond Cromarty Firth,
276 — driven from northern shires
into the island of Skye, 277, 278.
Loughborough, great Scottish lawyer
in England, ii. 48.
Louis XIV., King of France, inquiry
into prospects of Jacobitism in
Scotland by, i. 52-56 — expedition
on behalf of James sent by, 56 —
its failure, 57 — death of, 85.
Lovat, Lord, Simon Eraser, used as
tool by Godolphin and Queensberry,
i. 29 — account of, 139-145 — joined
Jacobite association, 171 — sent
emissary to Prince Charles Stuart
at Auchnacarry, 195 — intrigued
with both sides at once, 233, 234—
sent help to Prince too late, 234 —
trial and execution of, 321-334 —
after Culloden, 322 — a prisoner,
323— in the Tower, 324— his trial,
325-329 — evidence of Murray of
Broughton,327 — his conduct before
execution, 329-331 — his execution,
331, 332— his character, 333, 334.
Lowlands, the, character of, i. 130,
131 — twofold influence after 1745
in, 457— Border social types in, ii.
19, 20 — increase of wealth in, 27,
28 — sale of land in, ih. — English
methods of farming in, 28-30 —
efl'ects of war in, 30 — woollen trade
and mineral discoveries in, 120.
Macdonald, ^Flneas, brother of Moi-
dart and one of Prince Charles
Stuart's seven companions at his
landing, i. 187.
Macdonald of Borodale, first chief to
pay homage to Prince Charles, at
Erisca, i. 185.
Macdonald of Keppoch at Culloden, i.
290.
Macdonald of Moidart joined Prince
Charles Stuart, i. 186.
Macdonald, Ranald, Moidart's brother,
first to swear allegiance to Prince
Charles Stuart's cause, i. 186.
Macdonald, Sir John, one of the seven
companions of Prince Charles Stuart
at his landing, i. 187.
Macdonalds of Glencoe, the, character
of the chief of, i. 17 — their feud
with the Campbells, ih. — accept-
ance of oath of loyalty by chief, 18,
19 — friendly reception of Campbells
by, 19, 20— massacre of, 20, 21.
Mackenzie, Stuart, nephew of Duke
of Argyle and successor in adminis-
tration of Scotland, i. 473, 474 —
his trouble with the absence of
discipline in Scotland, 485, 486.
M'Kinlay, Andrew, Glasgow weaver,
trial of, ii. 289-291— verdict of not
proven, 291.
Mackintosh of Borlum, i. 88, 89.
Maclaren, Alexander, trial of, ii. 284,
285— sentence mild, 288.
Maconochie, Alexander, made Lord
Advocate, ii. 282 — derision of
Whigs, 290 — made Lord of Session,
ih. — failure of crown trials, 291.
Manchester, opened to Prince Charles
Stuart, i. 245 — trials of officers of
Manchester regiment, 310, 311.
Mansfield, great Scottish lawyer in
England, ii. 48.
Mar, Earl of, on Queensberry's side,
i. 37 — changed towards Union, 64
— central spirit of Rebellion of 1715,
81 — his history, 81-83 — Braemar
gathering, 83, 84 — failure, 89 —
distrusted by Jacobites, 96 — at the
court of James Stuart, ih.
Margarot, Maurice, tried for sedition,
ii. 156.
INDEX.
465
Marischal, the Earl, i. 97 — in charge
of descent on Scotland, 1719, 97,
98— Glenshiel, 99.
Maule, Mr Eox, moved the appoint-
ment of a Commission to inquire
into the grievances of the Church
of Scotland, ii. 411 — defeated, 412
—odd ally of Free Church, 430.
Melbourne, Lord, weakness of Govern-
ment of, ii. 385, 386, 392.
Melville, Lord. See Dundas, Henry.
Military organisation of Scotland
prior to the Union, i. 2, 3.
Milton, Lord (Fletcher), favoured
Duncan Forbes' plan for employing
Highland fighting power, i. 161 —
with the Duke of Argyle at Ros-
neath when Prince Charles Stuart
landed, 189 — as Lord Justice-Clerk
at the Duke of Cumberland's Coun-
cil of War, 276, 277— the Duke of
Argyle's chief assistant in the ad-
ministration of Scotland after 1745,
369, 370— allied to Moderates in
Church of Scotland, 398— on the
side of innovators in the Church,
440.
Moderates in Church of Scotland, i.
385-407 — their attitude towards
repeal of Catholic disabilities, ii.
71, 72, 76 — their Erastianism, 106-
109 — their struggle with the Evan-
gelical party, 109 d seq. — the non-
intrusion struggle and the, 300,
301— as Tories, 311-313— unfitted
to deal with new generation, 318 —
Thomas Chalmers' rupture from,
320, 331 — renewal of struggle with
Evangelicals, 334-337 — and the
Veto Act, 394 — support of law by,
404, 405 — their position after the
Disruption, 419.
Monboddo, Lord, a member of the
"Select Society," i. 432; ii. 148.
Montgomery Act, ii. 19.
Muir, Thomas, account of, ii. 149,
150 — prosecution and trial of, 152-
154 — sentence, transportation,
rescue, and death in France, 154.
Murray, Lord George, joined Prince
Charles at Perth, i. 197 — masterful
character, 198 — at Prestonpans,
218 — chief military adviser in
Council at Holyrood, 239 — unable
to delay the Prince's march south,
ih. — detested by some of the Prince's
followers, 241 — dissensions and
resignation of, 242 — resumed com-
mand at Prince's request, ih. —
marched troops through Preston,
243 — advised retreat at Derby, 247
— successful in skirmish near Pen-
rith, 250 — outwitted and defeated
Hawley at Falkirk Moor, 256-259
— retreat to Inverness, 271, 272 —
effort to seize forts throughout
Athole, 279 - 282 — success over
Hanoverians at Bridge of Bruar,
280, 281— siege of Blair Castle, 281
— recalled to Inverness, 282 — his
plan of a night attack on Duke of
Cumberland at Nairn, 286, 287 —
its failure, 288.
Murray, John, of Broughton, Prince
Charles Stuart's trusted confidant,
i. 183, 184 — joined the Prince at
Lochaber, 189 — made Secretary,
and published manifestoes, ib. —
jealous of Lord George Murray,
198 — his wife in the cavalcade at
Prince Charles Stuart's entry, 212,
213 — his treacherous evidence
against Lord Lovat, 327 — stain
upon his memory, 447, 448.
Murray, William, made Solicitor-
General on Walpole's resignation,
i. 163 — held aloof from intrigue,
ib., 167 — at Lord Lovat's trial,
326.
Nairn, the Duke of Cumberland at,
283, 285— Lord George Murray's
plan for night attack on, 286,
287.
Newcastle, Duke of, made Minister
of State for Scotland as well as
England, i. 109 — wretched Min-
ister, 120-124 — scolded by Queen
Caroline, 123, 124 ; retained office
on Walpole's resignation, 162 — his
incompetence during 1745, 266 —
Court intrigue to overthrow him,
ih. — his administration in Scotland,
369, 398, 399 — too occupied to
interfere, 460, 461.
Newcastle, General Wade's force at,
i. 228, 242, 243.
North, Lord, Scottish support of the
ad ministration of, ii. 50 — approach-
ing fall of his Government, 78 —
continued support of Scottish
members, ib., 79 — disastrous close
466
INDEX.
of American War, leading to fall of
Ministry, 85 — coalition with Fox,
88 — Secretary of State, ib.
Ormond, Duke of, i. 97 — in charge
of force against England, 98 — fleet
shattered, ib.
Paisley, rise of the town of, ii. 121.
Palmer, Thomas Fyshe, tried for
sedition, ii. 155.
Parliament, the United, first meeting
of, i. 62, 63 — prorogation of, 63.
Parties in Scotland after Revolution,
i. 15.
Paterson, William, promoter of the
Darien Scheme, i. 22, 23.
Peel, Sir Robert, Home Secretary in
Lord Liverpool's Government, ii.
302, 303 — made administration in
Scotland possible, 306— Dr Chal-
mers in cordial relations with, 386
— declined to support claims of
Church of Scotland, 402 — Chal-
mers' reply to, 403 — became Prime
Minister, 406 — denounced Claim of
Right, 412 — fall of his Government,
424.
Pelham, Henry, made First Lord of
the Treasury on Carteret's fall, i.
177 — warned by President Forbes
of Prince Charles Stuart's landing,
189.
Pennant's Account of Scotland, ii.
38, 39.
Penrith, Prince Charles Stuart at,
i. 250.
Percy, Bishop, opinion of Pennant's
Account, ii. 39.
Perth, occupation by Mar of, i. 86 — at
the time of the Union, 128 — Prince
Cliarles Stuart at, 197, 198 — King
James VIII. proclaimed at, 199 —
strongly Hanoverian, 240 — Duke
of Cumberland at, 272.
Perth, Duke of, entered into Jacobite
association, i. 171 — daring escape
from arrest, to join Prince Charles
Stuart, 188 — character of, 197 —
rival to Lord George Murray, 241 —
on the night-march to Nairn, 287.
Philosophical school of Scotland, ii.
169-229— national character of all
who formed it, 169, 170 — their
ability and influence, 170, 171 —
inculcated points of contact rather
than divergences in the several
treatments of philosophy, 171 —
chief subject taught at Scottish
universities, 172 — became some-
what alien to sterner religious stan-
dard, 218 — avoidance of polemics,
ib. — Seattle's 'Essay on Truth,'
against philosophical school, 218-
220 — waning of Scottish philo-
sophical influence, 226.
Pitt, William (Lord Chatham), fore-
most of the young patriots in 1740,
i. 159 — hostility to Carteret, 170
— helped in Carteret's fall, 275—
objected to calling over Hessian
soldiers to aid in putting down
the rising of 1745, 265 — the idol
of England, 461 — his dislike of
the peace, 466.
Pitt, William (the younger). Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, ii. 88 —
Peace of Paris, ib. , 89 — friend-
ship for Henry Dundas (Lord Mel-
ville), 92-94 — his rise to power
favourable to Scotland, 106 — Acts
of Conciliation for the Highlands,
112, 113 — early advocate of Parlia-
mentary reform, 118 — first years of
his administration good for Scot-
land, 120 — anxious to help on re-
form of burgh administration, 127
— subject taken up bj' Sheridan
and Fox in Opposition, 128 — his
conduct towards Warren Hastings,
132, 133— feeling in Scotland, 133
— his courage in regard to the
Regencj', 134 — Scottish support,
135 — fierce debate on agitation for
reform by " Friends of the People,"
144 — sedition and treason trials
denounced by Fox, Sheridan, and
Lauderdale, 157, 158 — his resigna-
tion, 264 — restored to power, ib. —
grief at impeachment of Lord Mel-
ville, ib. — death, ib.
Poker Club, the, i. 432, 433.
Poor relief, ii. 15, 16 — proposed
assessment for, 16, 17, 18 — Dr
Chalmers and, 322 - 329 — the
Scottish Poor Law, 431, 432.
Pope, the poet, i. 158.
Porteous, Captain John, in command
of Edinburgh city force, i. 113 —
trial of, 116 — reprieve of, ib. —
mob in command, 117, 118 —
hanged, 118 — Scottish ministers
INDEX.
467
forced to read proclamation for the
discovery of murderers of, 125.
Porteous mob, the, i. 110-119.
Portland, Duke of, ii. 88.
Presbyterianism in Scotland estab-
lished by William III., i. 11, 12—
mischievous domination of strictest
sect, 25, 26.
President, Lord, the office of, ii. 146,
147 — presided over one division of
remodelled Court of Session, 269.
Preston opened gates to Prince
Charles Stuart, i. 243.
Prestonpans, battle of, i. 216-224.
Pulteney, leader of the Tories in 1740,
i. 159— created Earl of Bath, 162.
Queensberry, Duke of, Godolphin's
agent in Scotland, i. 28 — made
Commissioner, 31 — his difficulties
in pressing the Union of Parlia-
ments, 31-36 — his adherents, 36,
37 — his foes in the struggle, 37,
38 — his success, 38-45 — rage
against in Scotland, 42 — trium-
phal progress to London, 44, 45
— Lovat betrayed Jacobite plans
to, 141.
Rae, Sir William, made Lord Advo-
cate after Maconochie, ii. 292 —
his prerogatives, 301 — attacks upon
his powers, ih., 302 — continued to
hold office, 306-309— his powers
limited, 309.
Ramsay, Allan, the artist, introduced
dancing assemblies, i. 364 — the
"Select Society" formed by, 407-
409 — its members, 432.
Ramsay, Allan, the poet, account of,
ii. 32, 33—' The Gentle Shepherd '
by, 33.
Ratclilf'e, Charles, trial and execution
of, i. 320, 321.
Rebellion of 1715, i. 81-89.
Rebellion of 1719, i. 97-99.
Rebellion of 1745, English estimate
of the, i. 260-267.
Reid, Thomas, Professor of Moral
Philosophy in Glasgow, ii. 203-
209 — account of, 203 - 205 — his
philosophical method, 205 - 209 —
his writings, 205 — his death, 209.
Restoration, the, in England, i. 6, 7
— in Scotland, 6-8.
* Review, The Edinburgh,' started, i.
432 ; ii. 258-263— Whig rallying-
point, 298 — sarcastic articles on
power and prerogatives of the Lord
Advocate in, 302.
Revolution, the, i. 5 — in Scotland,
8-10.
Robertson, W'illiam, Principal of
Edinburgh University, made stand
against dissent, i. 397 — account of,
403-406 — his histories, 404 — Dr
Johnson's opinion of histories, 405
— his influence as a scholar and
man of letters in society, 407 — a
member of the "Select Society,"
409, 432 — helped to promote right
reading and speaking of the Eng-
lish language, 478 — led the Mod-
erates on behalf of repeal of
Catholic disabilities, ii. 69-73 —
threatened by rioters, 73 — money
received for a single book bj% 117
— his acknowledgment of Professor
Stevenson's power as a teacher, 185.
Rockingham, Ministry of, ii. 87 —
death of, 88.
Roxburghe, Duke of, dismissed from
office, i. 109.
Royal Society of Edinburgh started,
i. 433.
Russell, Lord John, Reform Bills of,
ii. 365-367 — his Commission to in-
quire into the affairs of the Church
of Scotland, 378, 379 — refused any
measure of relief to Church of
Scotland, 400.
Sacheverell, Dr, prosecution of, i. 64.
Scotland, hostility of, to England, i.
31 — this feeling returned by Eng-
land, 32 — state of, between Union
and Rebellion of 1745, 126-139—
population of towns in, at the time
of the Union, 127, 128— feeling to-
wards England in, after the Rebel-
lion, 349-353— after the Rebellion
Jacobitism ceased to be a bond of
union to English Tories, 352, 353 —
growth of national life in, 354, 355
— gradual increase of commercial
and industrial activity in, 356, 357
— poverty of all classes, 358, 359
— variety of religious feeling in,
360-363 — variety of social types
in, 363-366 — national development
in second half of eighteenth century,
366 - 368 — administration during
468
INDEX.
rest of George II. 's reign in, 369,
370 — landed aristocracy in, 370-372
— the Law Courts, 373-375 — the
Church, 375-407 — phases of society
after 1745, 407-427 — the lawyers,
425-427 — commercial leaders, 427,
428 — political opinions, 429-431 —
advance of art and literature in,
436, 437— entertainments, 437 —
resentment at suspicion of loyalty
shown by refusal of militia force,
445 — grumbling at the Union, 448-
450 — gradual fusion with England,
450 - 452 — general administration
of, 458-462 — growing loyalty of
Tory party to the Hanoverian king,
463-465— English abuse of, 470—
contemptuous indifference of, 471,
472 — occupied with her own affairs,
473 — the character of their manage-
ment after Argyle's death, 474-477
— liberality of feeling towards Eng-
land in, 477-480 — renewal of
militia dispute, 478, 479 — the
struggle with dissent in the Church
of, 481-483 — Moderates dominant
in the Church, 483, 484 — claims of
the Church of, 485 — types of society
and manners in, ii. 19-21 — revival
of literature in, 30-35 — her atti-
tude towards English hatred, 46
— her national character helped, 47
— tlie new, 47, 48 — gradual disap-
pearance of the two camps in, 47-
49 — in favour of Government and
American War, 50, 51 — the fran-
chise artificial, not representative,
51, 52 — elections fought on per-
sonal grounds, 52 — loyal to George
III., ib. — rise of new Tory party,
52, 53 — meal mobs, 53-56 — emigra-
tion from, 57, 58 — the linen trade,
58, 59 — discontent with Parlia-
mentary franchise, 59 — its absurdi-
ties, ib. , 60 — reform of franchise
proposed, 60, 61 — emancipation of
the colliers, 66, 67 — patriotic
vigour called out by American
War, 68, 69 — opposition to the war
from Glasgow traders and "High-
flying " party in the Church, 69, 70
— struggle about Catholic emanci-
pation, 70-76 — Catholic disabilities,
71, 72 — Moderate party in Church
in favour of repeal, 72, 73— auti-
Catholic riots, 73 — oj^position to
Government from, 74 — withdrawal
of repeal, 75 — rancour of party
feeling left, 76 — growth of sense
of kinship throughout, 80 — atti-
tude to ministerial changes and
Peace of Paris, 88, 89 — accept-
ance of Lord North's fall and
succeeding Ministries, 104 — dis-
like of the coalition, 105 — Pitt's
rise to power favourable to, 106 —
her militia again demanded, 114,
115 — granted, 115 — agitation for
Parliamentary reform, 118 — ad-
vance of wealth and luxury in, 121,
122 — burgh administration, 125,
126 — agitation for its reform,
126, 127 — made handle by those
opposed to Pitt and Dundas, 128
— reform associated with revolu-
tionary principles, 129 — oppor-
tunity lost, ib. — loyal attachment
to afflicted king, 135 — support of
Pitt and Dundas, ib. — growth of
Whig and Tory parties in, 134
et seq. — the French Revolution
without response in, 138, 139 —
growth of ideas of reform, 139, 140
— emphasised severance between
Whig and Tory, 142— Friends of
the People, 139-142— the Earl of
Lauderdale, 143, 144 — Royal Pro-
clamation against meetings of
Friends of the People, 144 —
riots in Edinburgh, ib., 145 — ■
sedition trials, 149-157 — treason
trials, 159, 160 — discussed in
Parliament and denounced by
Fox, Sheridan, and Lauderdale,
157, 158 — growing discontent of
the younger Whigs, 160-163 —
Henry Erskine as their leader, 162-
164 — Whig party regularly organ-
ised, 165 — Tory party stronger of
the two, ib. — volunteer movement
and fear of Napoleon, ib., 166 —
Royalist exiles from France at
Holyrood, 166 — riots and repres-
sion, ib., 167 — commercial troubles,
168 — the younger Whigs in, 230
e( seq. — population of, 232 — attach-
ment to traditions in, 233 — struggle
between Whigs and Tories, 250 et
.s'eg. — Toryism in the ascendant,
268-270 — Lord Melville's death,
269 — management of affairs still in
hands of Dundas family, ib. — close
INDEX.
469
of war with Napoleon, 271, 272 —
the Scottish nation changed, 273 —
Toryism absorbing the more edu-
cated Whigs, 274 — reforming spirit
passing from the upper to the
middle and lower classes, 275 —
growing wealth of country, ib.,
276 — poverty after the war, 279 —
disaffection, ib. — incapacity of Lord
Liverpool's Government, 280-282
— Alexander Maconochie, Lord Ad-
vocate, unequal to the danger, 282,
283 — associations against griev-
ances, 283 — Habeas Corpus Act
suspended, 284 — arrests and trials,
284-29 1— Maconochie derided, 290,
291 — complete failure of trials, 291
— Radical riots at chief mercantile
towns, 293-296 — trials of ring-
leaders, and severe sentences, 296
— Whig meetings against Liver-
pool's Government, 298 — ' The
Scotsman ' established, 299 — ' The
Sentinel's' attacks of Whigs, ib. —
duel between Boswell of Auchinleck
and vStuart of Duuearn, 300 —
Stuart's trial and acquittal, ib. —
attacks upon Lord Advocate, 301,
302 — continued in his post, 306 et
seq. — change of spirit in Liverpool's
administration, 306 — reform of
method of selecting juries, 307, 308
— burgh reform again stubbornly
fought, 308, 309— Scottish business
entrusted to Lord Lansdowne and
three Whig representatives, 309,
310 — Canning now Prime Minister,
and trusted in Scotland, 310 — bitter
animosity between Whigs and
Tories, ib., 311 — reaction and
softening of party bitterness, 312,
313 — movements towards reform,
313 — beginnings of religious re-
vival, ib., 314 — Thomas Chalmers
a leading influence in Scotland,
314-339— his work in relief of the
poor, 322-329 — growth of Whig
party, 348 — non-intrusion contro-
versy, 359-363 — Lord Grey and
Parliamentary reform, 364 — Scot-
tish feeling in favour of reform,
ib. — urgent need of it in both
burgh and county franchise, 365 —
Lord John Russell's first Reform
Bill, ib. — Scottish petitions in
favour, ib. — rejected, and second
VOL. II.
Reform Bill brought in, 366 —
secured finally, 367 — enthusiasm
in, ib. — election resulted in Whig
victory, 368 — new Scottish ad-
ministration, 369 — the Scottish
Burgh Reform Bill, 371 — Patronage
controversy in the Church, ib. —
the Veto Act, 373, 374 — the
Annuity Tax, 375-377 — Commis-
sion to inquire into the affairs of
the Church, 378— its report, 385 —
conflict between Civil and Ecclesi-
astical Courts, 391-405— the Dis-
ruption, 409-422 — the Free Church
in Scotland, 416 e;! seq. — develop-
ment of middle classes in, 425, 426
— Whig supremacy, 426, 429, 430
— Parliamentary and burgh reform,
428— the Scottish Poor Law, 431,
432— the law of entail, 433, 434—
growth of commerce and manufac-
tures, 434-436 — coal and iron
industries, 436-438 — Tweed manu-
factures, 438 — the Scottish dialect,
439, 440 — exaggeration of ver-
nacular in modern literature, 440,
441 — great advance of middle
class, 441 — Edinburgh no longer
distinctively Scottish literary capi-
tal, 442 — more cosmopolitan tone,
ib. — old national education, 441-444
— imperial grants to parish schools,
447-450.
'Scotsman, The,' established, ii. 299.
Scott, Sir Walter, on Jacobitism, i.
95 — a member of the Tory party,
ii. 250 — supported Volunteer move-
ment, ib. — reasons for his Toryism,
254 — in connection with ' The
Sentinel' attacks on Whigs, 299 —
impressed by the greater bitterness
between parties in Edinburgh than
in London, 310 — his attachment
to the older views and traditions,
341, 342 — Scott and currency re-
form, 342-345— letters of " Malachi
Malagrowther," 344, 345 — his
Toryism stronger, 345 - 347 — his
prediction of coming change, 346.
Seafield, Earl of, on Queensberry's
side, i. 37.
Seaforth, Earl of, joined the Earl
Marischal's force, i. 98 — rents on
his estates paid to, in defiance of
law, 102 — estates of, sold and re-
purchased, ib.
2 H
470
INDEX.
Session, Court of, attempt to reform,
averted, ii. 130 — remodelled after
1808, 269 — declared Veto Act
illegal, 391 — decision upheld by
House of Lords, 392 — interdict in
Lethendy case by, 394 — in Strath-
bogie case, 395 — resentment of
Church of Scotland against, 396 —
continuance of interdicts by, 398
— defiance by Dr Chalmers of, 399
— the General Assembly and, 405
— its later position, 442.
Sheridan, Sir Thomas, tutor to Prince
Charles Stuart, one of the seven
companions of his landing, i. 187 —
at Culloden, 290, 291.
Sherifl'muir, battle of, i. 88.
Shippen, William, representative of
Jacobites in 1740, i. 159 — pro-
verbial for honesty, 166.
Sinclair, Sir John, member for
Caithness, character and attitude
to Lord North of, ii. 86, 87— his
introduction of sheep into the
Highlands, 274.
Skirving, William, tried for sedition,
ii. 155, 156.
Smith, Adam, a member of the
"Select Society," i. 4.32 — his
reply to Sinclair, ii. 87, 123 —
his admiration for David Hume,
192, 202— account of, 196, 197—
made Professor of Logic, and after-
wards of Moral Philosophy, in
Glasgow, 197 — his theory of ethics,
ib., 198 — 'Inquiry into the Nature
and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations,' 199 — his doctrine of Free
Trade, 200 — flaws in his system,
ib., 201 — his character and influ-
ence, 201, 202— his death, 202.
"Society, The Select," formed by
Allan Ramsay, the artist, 407-409
— its members, 432 — its effort to
improve the reading and speaking
of the English language in Scotland,
477, 478.
St Andrews, at the time of the Union,
i. 127, 128 — Moderatism at, ii.
317 — Thomas Chalmers teaching
Mathematics at, 316, 317 — as Pro-
fessor of Moral Philosophy at, 317.
St John, associated with Harley, i.
64, 65 — made Lord Bolingbroke, 75
— encouraged the .Jacobites, ib. — -
vacillation and dissimulation of.
76 — jealousy of Oxford, ib. — de-
stroyed chance of Stuart restoration
by shifty conduct, ib.
Stair, Lord, ambassador to France,
on Jacobitism, i. 95 — appointed
Commander in Flanders, 167 —
victory of Dettingen won by, 168
— threw up his command in
disgust, 169.
Stevenson, John, Professor of Logic
in Edinburgh, ii. 184-186 — his
teaching based first on Locke and
then on Reid, 184, 185 — his
personal influence, 185 — Dr Alex-
ander Carlyle and Principal Robert-
son acknowledged his influence as a
teacher, ib.
Stewart, Dugald, account of, ii. 221-
226 — influenced by Professor Reid,
221 — acting as deputy for father
and Adam Ferguson, ib. — succeeded
latter in Chair of Moral Philosophy
at Edinburgh, 222 — his system,
character, and influence, 222-224
— his connection with the Whigs,
224, 225.
Stirling, James, mathematician, at
Leadhill mines, i. 363, 364.
Strathbogie, test of the Veto Act at,
ii. 395 — action of the Presbytery of,
ib., 396, 403 — refusal of congrega-
tion to enter chui-ch of, 404.
Stuart, Prince Charles, invited to
Paris, i. 172 — character and train-
ing of, 172-174 — journey from
Rome to Paris, 174 — at Gravelines,
ib. — French fleets wrecked in
Channel, 175 — in Paris, 183 —
John Murray his trusted confidant,
184 — preparations for the enter-
prise, 185 — anchored at Erisca,
beside South Uist, 186— advised
not to make the attempt, ib. —
landed at Moidart, ib. — seven com-
panions, 187 — adhesion of Lochiel,
ib., 188- of Duke of Perth, 188—
incredulity of Government, ib. —
alarm and reward on head of, 189
— English soldiers taken prisoners,
190 — the standard raised in Glen-
finnan, 191 — personal account of,
192-194— with Lochiel at Auchna-
carry, 194, 195 — received emissary
from Lovat, 195 — his force daily
increasing, ib. — marched east-
wards to meet Sir John Cope,
INDEX.
471
196 — English force avoided battle,
ib. — reached Blair-Athole, 197 —
Perth, ib. — many adherents, il/. —
enforced levies without violence,
198 — proclaimed King James VIII.,
199 — and redress of grievances
under the Union, ib. — set price on
Elector's head, ib. — crossed the
Forth and encamped two miles
from Edinburgh, 202, 208 — de-
manded surrender of city, 207 —
Edinburgh captured by Lochiel,
209 — made his entry in state, 210-
212— ball atHolyrood, 213— deter-
mined to meet Cope on morrow,
214— march to Tranent, 215 — won
the Battle of Prestonpans, 216-224
—residence at Holyrood, 225-239
— his clemency and moderation,
226, 227 — levies made and new
adherents secured, 228, 229 — court
and council at Palace, 230-232—
hopes of French succour, 232 —
determined to march south, 238,
239 — overbore his council, 239 —
left Edinburgh, ib. — seized Carlisle,
240 — dissension amongst followers,
241, 242— seized Preston, 243—
beloved by Highland troops for
courage, gaiety, and tact, 243-245
— Wigan, Manchester, and Derby,
245 — few English Jacobites joined,
ib. — looked forward to triumphant
entry into London, 246 — Lord
George Murray advised retreat, ib. ,
247 — Prince indignant but forced
to give in, 247 — in retreat, 247-250
— pursued by Cumberland, 250 —
successful skirmish, ib. — re-entered
Carlisle, ib. — fortified Carlisle, 251
— retreat into Scotland, ib., 252 —
news of French expedition, ib. —
levies on Dumfries and Glasgow, ib.
— Lord Lewis Gordon with new
force, 253 — size of Prince's army,
ib. — siege of Stirling, ib. — victory
of Falkirk, 256-259— returned to
siege of Stirling, 269— dwindling
of Highland army, 270 — chiefs
advised retreat to Inverness, 271 —
carried out, 272 — guerilla wai'fare,
ib., 273 — Loudoun's force cooped
up at Inverness, 274 — Ruthven
taken, ib. — the Prince at Castle
Moy, ib. — Loudoun's attempt to
capture him defeated by handful
of Mackintoshes, 275 — Inverness
seized, 276 — Forts George and
Augustus taken, ib. — Loudoun
driven out of northern shires, 278
— force posted on the Spey, ib. —
activity of Prince's troops, ib. —
failure of hopes from France, 279
— heroic efforts, ib. — character
and condition of Jacobite forces,
284, 285 — at Drummossie Moor, ib.
— army worn out by night march,
288 — soldiers demoralised, ib. —
battle of Culloden, 289, 290— the
Prince's wanderings in Scotland,
291— escape to France, 292.
Stuarts, the, Scottish loyalty to, i. 6,
7, 8, 9, 12— its growth after the
Revolution, 13, 14.
Sutherland, Earl of, a Hanoverian, i.
86.
Swift, Dean, i. 158.
Tencin, Cardinal, champion of Jacob-
ites in France in 1744, i. 171 —
invited Prince Charles Edward
Stuart to Paris, 172.
Thomson, Dr Andrew, leader of the
Evangelical party in the Church of
Scotland, ii. 314, 335 — his friend-
ship with Dr Chalmers, 335.
Thomson, James, his sympathy with
nature, ii. 33 — influence on English
poetry, 33-35.
Thurlow, Lord, opposition to Acts of
Conciliation for the Highlands, ii.
112.
Tolbooth, the Edinburgh, Glasgow
magistrates marched to, i. 108 —
Poi-teous mob burned down door
of, 118.
Townly, Mr, captain of the Man-
chester Regiment, trial of, i. 310.
Traquair, Earl of, entered into Jacob-
ite association, i. 171.
Tullibardine, Marquis of, joined the
Earl Marischal's force, i. 98— joined
Prince Charles Stuart, and raised
his banner at Glenfinnan, 191 —
secured adherents at Blair-Athole,
197 — account of, 311 — surrender
and death in the Tower, ib.
TuUidelph, Principal, of St Andrews,
Moderate leader in Church of Scot-
land, i. 394, 395, 400.
Tweeddale, Marquis of, leader of
Third party in Scotland, i. 28 —
472
INDEX.
made Commissionex-, 30 — as Scot-
tish Secretary, 369 — deprived of
ofEce, i6.— his administration, 459.
Union of Parliaments, i. 28.
Union, the, of 1603, i. 1, 3— state of
Scotland before, 2, 3.
Union, the Treaty of, completed, i.
44 — slow growth of benefits of, 45-
48 — attempt to repeal, 72-75.
Universities, the Scottish, regenting
system at, ii. 172, 173 — four chief
subjects of curriculum at, 173 —
disappearance of regenting system,
ib. — replaced by professoriate, 173-
175 — loss of national influence, 226.
Utrecht, Peace of, i. 85.
Wade, Marshal, and Clan Mackenzie,
i. 102 — at Glasgow suppressing
riots, 108 — roads made in High-
lands by, 133 — his administration
of the Highlands, 180 — description
of his roads, 181 — his work de-
stroyed by folly of the Govern-
ment, 182 — concentrated British
and Dutch troops at Newcastle,
228 — Charles Stuart too quick for
him, 239, 242, 243.
Wallace, Dr Robert, mathematician
and opponent of Hume, i. 417.
Walpole, Horace, slanders of Scot-
land by, 472, 473.
Walpole, Sir Robert, financial creed
of, 104, 105^his taxation of beer
in Scotland, 105 — opportunity for
Jacobites, ib. — forced to change
plan of taxation, ib., 106 — riots
caused, 106-108 — mistaken policy,
109— aroused faction, 120, 121—
personality, influence, and charac-
ter of, 151-162— his fall, 162 —
announced resignation to King
George, ib. — created Earl of Ox-
ford, ib. — failure of attempted pro-
secution against, 163, 164 — died,
177.
Webster, Dr Alexander, leader of
Highflying party in Church of
Scotland, i, 394 — character and
influence of, 414-417 — opposition
to theatrical performances, 439.
Wellington, the Duke of, adminis-
tration of, ii. 363 — the Church
question the question of the hour,
386.
Wigau opened to Prince Charles
Stuart, i. 245.
Wilkes, John, on Scotland and the
Scotch, i. 470 — challenged by
Forbes, 471 — dislike in Scotland
of, 484.
Wilkie, a member of the " Select
Society," i. 432— author of 'The
Epigouiad,' ii. 34.
William III. , i. 9-11 — misery of
Scotland during the reign of, 14-
26 — guilt in Massacre of Glencoe
shared by, 21, 22.
William, Fort, English garrison at,
i. 133.
Wilmington, first Lord of the Treas-
ury, i. 1G2— died, 169.
Wilson, John, succeeded Dugald
Stewart in the Chair of Moral
Philosophy, ii. 226 — his intellec-
tual character, 227.
Wishart, the brothers, Scottish di-
vines, i. 417, 418.
Wolfe, at Battle of Falkirk, i. 258—
at Culloden, 294.
York, Duke of (Cardinal), Prince
Charles Stuart's brother, designated
commander of French army to be
sent to meet the Prince, i. 252.
Young, Mr, presented to the parish
of Auchterarder by Lord Kinnoul,
ii. 391 — case which tested the
Veto Act, ib., 392.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.
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809
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Craik, Henry, Sir, 1846-1927.
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