LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
SCOTTISH RULERS AND BRITISH SENTIMENTS
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Although we English hold our Scottish fellow-subjects in the greatest esteem and respect, it is a subject for congratu- lation to many of us that our new Prime Minister is not only an Englishman, but a typical Englishman—one who will himself share and respond to the fundamental sentiments of the English people in their relations with foreign peoples. For some psychological reason the Scottish rulers of Great Britain, Kings or Prime Ministers, from James the First to Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, have rarely appreciated our in- grained dislike of foreign dictation.
The roots of this divergence of feeling doubtless lie deep down in the history of the two nations. Scotland and Scottish affairs in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were closely interlocked with France and French affairs ; the relations between the two countries were very intimate. The English, however, under their Tudor Sovereigns, learnt to regard all foreign nations with a certain suspicion and even disdain. We learnt, in fact, to be insular and to depend on ourselves alone. Under Henry • the Eighth the Reformation was a national as well as a moral revolt—an insurrection of our ra ec against the domination of Rome.
During the reign of Elizabeth this sentiment became still more developed. The Queen herself was its greatest pro- tagonist : " have no foreign shepherds marking my sheep " was her reply to the offer of a foreign potentate to confer a decoration upon one of her subjects. Her support of Drake and her other Sea Captains, her share in the victory over the Spanish Armada, and her general attitude toward that country, placed her on the crest of this nationalist wave of sentiment. At her death even the Puritan historian, Neal, who had, together with the sect to which he belonged, suffered under the persecution of her reign, concludes his censure thus :
"Notwithstanding all these blemishes, Queen Elizabeth stands record as a wise and politic Princess for delivering her upon record
from the difficulties in which it was involved at her accession, for preserving the Protestant Reformation against the
potent attempts of the Pope, the Emperor, -and King of Spain abroad, and the Queen of Scots and her popish subjects at home."
With the accession to the throne of the Stuart dynasty all was changed. During the reign of the four Scottish ;Kings the State descended from the rank it had hitherto held and began to be regarded as a Power hardly of the second order. .James the First shunned hostilities. with a caution that was proof against the insults of his neighbours and the clamours of his subjects. Charles the First, his son, went further. In his endeavour to attain to the position of an absolute Sovereign he invited subsidies from France and received them, a factor which, together with his general subservience to that country, contributed largely to the disfavour into which he fell with his English subjects.
With the Commonwealth under an English ruler how different became the foreign policy of Our Country ! After half a century, during which England had been of scarcely more weight in European politics than Venice or Saxony, she became at once the most formidable power in Europe. •
Yet with the Restoration under our third Scottish King, Charles the Second, all was once more changed. To emancipate himself from the control of Parliament, he placed England in the unenviable position-of a vassal of France to make- peace or war according to the directions of her Sovereign. To what fate this would have led Charles the Second, if he had lived longer, who can say ? His successor, James the Second, became also the vassal and hireling of France. " Assure your master," he said to the French Ambassador, " of my gratitude and attachment. •I know that without his protection I can (lo nothing." Rochester, the leader of his Cabinet, asking for money, went further : Represent to your master," he said, "how important it is that the King of England should be dependent, not on his own people, but on the friendship of France alone."
How little the Stuart sovereigns understood the English temperament ; how inevitable was their fall !
John Stuart, Earl of Bute, a descendant of Robert the Second of Scotland, does not seem to have understood us much better. The all-powerful chief Minister to George the Third, at the cost of a deep stain on the faith of England, freed her from her German connexions. The war with France and Spain he terminated by a peace honourable indeed and advan- tageous to our country, yet less honourable and less advan- tageous than might have been expected from a long and almost unbroken series of victories, by land and sea, in every part of the world. So high ran the feeling in England against Bute that he was even attacked in his chair, and was with difficulty rescued by a troop of guards ; he could hardly walk the streets with safety without disguising himself.
Surely there is some parallel between these historical mis- understandings of our English sentiments by our Scottish rulers of those days and the apparent inability of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald to understand the feelings engendered in England by his readiness to allow his foreign policy as regards the Rassian loan, and even certain phases of his domestic policy, to be dictated to him by the Soviet. Many thousands of us, just plain Englishmen and voters, felt this such an unspeakable indignity that we hurled him from power. We have the perfect certainty of our ancestors that when our foreign policy is dictated by a foreign Power it means no good to England.—
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