XV THE SCOT AND ENGLAND

Although the political relations between Scotland and England would seem to have been of the smoothest since the Act of union, and in spite of the fact that on the whole the merging of the two peoples under one Government has tended hugely to the benefit of Scotland, it is the Scotch fashion to lament the union with groans and to insist that 1707 was a black year for Scotchmen. I believe that were it not for the circumstance that Scotland cannot produce capable men even in the way of agitators we should soon have at St. Stephen’s a Scotch party which would be just as troublesome and just as noisy and truculent as is the Irish party. I believe, too, that within twelve months’ time as big a[195] demand for Home Rule and as much disquiet and rebellion could be got up in Scotland as have ever existed in Ireland. Fortunately, however, the Scotch possess neither the requisite agitators nor the requisite pluck to indulge in serious demonstrations against the Imperial Government. So that they have to content themselves with futile grumbling and petty acts of disloyalty. The Scot has always been more or less of a fine hand at a treason. Out of Scotland has come the only treasonable organisation which England can boast of at the present day. I refer, of course, to that absurd group of persons who once a year decorate the statue of Charles I. at Whitehall with cheap wreaths, and circulate leaflets which profess to prove that the reigning monarch in these realms is a usurper, and that our only true monarch is a woman by the name of Mary, who lives somewhere on the Continent. In any country but England these gentry would be laid by the heels; though the mere fact that they are Scotch renders them quite ineffective.[196] We can afford to smile at them. All the same, we must remember that if they could make trouble they would. Even in the matter of the King’s Coronation the Scotch have managed to give us the usual display of stupid insolence. Writing to his paper in May last, the Scottish correspondent of the Times said:

“The approaching coronation of the King and Queen seems to have awakened rather less enthusiasm in certain quarters than either the Jubilee or the Diamond Jubilee of her late Majesty. It would be absurd to make much of the difference, but it does exist. In a word, the celebration of the event will be distinctly more official than the rejoicings over the two notable epochs of Queen Victoria’s later life. Two circumstances have helped to bring this about—the Royal proclamation of two successive holidays, and what is known in Scotland as the ‘numeral.’ They are both absolutely sentimental considerations, but they have had a slight influence. Trades councils, becoming ‘permeated’[197] with Socialism, protest against what they are pleased to call the ‘mummery’ in London, and the association of themselves therewith through local rejoicings, and the idea of losing two days’ pay in one week is just sufficient to arouse their resentment, which some corporations have tried to appease by ignoring the proclamation, or applying it, on their own initiative, to one of the days only. The ‘numeral’ connotes the quasi-patriotic objection to the assumption of the title of King Edward VII. by his Majesty. Some Scotsmen persist in refusing to see that, in calling himself the Seventh Edward, the King neither intended to, nor did, insinuate that he was the seventh of that name who had reigned over the United Kingdom, and they declaim in grotesque fashion against the payment of any kind of homage to the Crown. Their insignificance is shown by the snub administered to them recently by the Convention of Burghs, which is nothing if it is not truly and characteristically Scottish: their influence is no less unmistakable[198] in the resolution of several public bodies to omit the ‘numeral’ from the inscription on their coronation medals, and in the untimely fits of economy that have overcome some local authorities not as a rule averse to feasting.”

It is the old tale over again. The Scotch braggart cry—“unconquered and unconquerable”—is made to rend the welkin whenever the opportunity serves. Edward the Seventh, of course, cannot be Edward the Seventh of Scotland. It would never do. Therefore the “numeral” must not appear on Scotch medals, and the rejoicings are to be as far as possible of an official character. The ululation over the loss of two days’ pay also is eminently Scotch. There is a time for work and a time for play, says the wise man; but the whey-faced Scot plays always with a certain disconsolateness because he feels that he is losing money all the time. The fact is, that Scottish life and Scottish manners are almost entirely dominated by the more evil traits of the Scotch character.[199] Independence and thrift must be read into everything the Scotchman does. Poverty-stricken, starveling pride has been the ruin of the Scottish people. It has made many of them sour, disagreeable, greedy, and disloyal; it has made some of them hypocrites and crafty rogues; it has narrowed their minds and stunted their national development; it has made them a by-word and a mock in all the countries of the world, and it has brought them to opprobrium even among Turks and Chinamen.

The career of the Scotchman in England has been picturesquely summarised by Dr. Cunninghame Graham:

“In the blithe times of clans and moss-troopers [he says], when Jardines rode and Johnstones raised, when Grahams stole, McGregors plundered, and Campbells prayed themselves into fat sinecures, we were your enemies. In stricken fields you southern folks used to discomfit us by reason of your archers and your riders sheathed in steel. We on the borders had the vantage of you, as[200] you had cattle for us to steal, houses to burn, and money and valuables for us to carry off. We having none, you were not in a state to push retaliation in an effective way. Later, we sent an impecunious king to govern you, and with him went a train of ragged courtiers, all with authentic pedigrees but light of purse. From this time date the Sawnies and the Sandies, the calumnies about our cuticle, and those which stated that we were so tender-hearted that we scrupled to deprive of life the smallest insect which we had about our clothes. You found our cheekbones out, saw our red hair, and noted that we blew our noses without a pocket-handkerchief, to save undue expense.… So far so good. But still you pushed discovery to whiskey, haggis, sneeshin, predestination, and all the other mysteries both of our cookery and our faith. The bagpipes burst upon you (with a skirl), and even Shakespeare set down things about them which I refrain from quoting, only because I do not wish to frighten gentlewomen.… King George[201] came in, in pudding time, and all was changed, and a new race of Scotsmen dawned on the English view. The ’15 and the ’45 sent out the Highlanders, rough-footed and with deerskin thongs tied round their heads, … they marched and conquered and made England reel, retreated, lost Culloden, and the mist received them back. But their brief passage altered your views again, and you perceived that Scotland was not all bailie, prayer-monger, merchant, and sanctimonious cheat.… Then Scott arose and threw a glamour over Scotland which was nearly all his own. True, we were poor, but then our poverty was so romantic, and we appeared fighting for home and haggis, for foolish native kings, for hills, for heather, freedom, and for all those things which Englishmen enjoy to read about, but which in actual life they take good care only themselves shall share. The pale-faced master and the Highland chief, the ruined gentleman, the swashbuckler, soldier, faithful servant, and the rest, he marked and made his[202] own, but then he looked about to find his counterfoil, the low comedians without whose presence every tragedy must halt.

“Then came the Kailyarders, and said that Scott was Tory, Jacobite, unpatriotic, unpresbyterian, and they alone could draw the Scottish type. England believed them, and their large sale and cheap editions clinched it, and to-day a Scotchman stands confessed a sentimental fool, a canting cheat, a grave, sententious man, dressed in a ‘stan o’ black,’ oppressed with the tremendous difficulties of the jargon he is bound to speak, and, above all, weighed down with the responsibilities of being Scotch.”

As I have already mentioned, Dr. Cunninghame Graham is a Scot.

The whole truth about the Scotch relation with England is that the Scot is more than sensible of the advantage it brings him, but being by disposition wise as a serpent, he is afraid that if he did not pretend to deplore it, it might not last in its present comfortable unrestrictedness. Of course, this fear is entirely[203] baseless. The Englishman is too easy hearted to make laws against needy aliens whether from north of the Tweed or elsewhere. All the same, the Scot continues to howl on principle. He will not have our King, he will not have the “numeral,” to call him English or even include him under the term British is an indignity and an outrage. The Act of union was a big mistake: the poor Scot has been trodden down forbye ever since, and altogether he is sorry that he is alive. And, for my own part, I am quite inclined to think that there is much to be said for the latter sentiment.